First week at Tenwek

It has been a week of work both for me (Eric) at the hospital and Jodi at home teaching the kids. We have adjusted well I think and are enjoying ourselves. The first day was hard to get much done at the hospital because an elaborate greeting is needed for everyone I knew, which was the majority of the hospital staff. There is a three stage handshake, hugging on each side of their body, then asking about family and such. It was kind of bad that I couldn't remember more names, but even worse on day 2 when I couldn't remember who all I already greeted. It is bad form to go through a big greeting 2 days in a row!

I was assigned to the Medical ward, which consists of 1 large room for men and 1 for women. There are about 20 beds in each room and, unfortunately, about 25 people in each room. So they just hop on in with another sick patient and cuddle up for warmth at night. The people with fevers are the warmest, so if you get one of them you are lucky (the ones that are vomiting aren’t as good).

The illnesses vary greatly from things we see at home like strokes, pneumonia, and skin infections, to more African illnesses like malaria, meningitis, and tuberculosis. Then there is a whole slew of folks that we simply don’t know what they have. They tend to slowly dwindle to death as we continue to be clueless of how to help them. The medical floor averages about 1 death per day, but there were three over the last 24 hours. We are really struggling to keep a 21 year old college student with rheumatic heart disease from being number four.

We estimate that 40-50% of the patients have HIV. The prevalence of HIV infection in our area as a whole is about 7%. This makes winning the battle against whatever illness they have difficult.

It looks like Tenwek has pretty good OB coverage, so I don’t know how much of that I will do. That is where all the exciting stories come from, so you might just have to read more boring stories this time around. Perhaps I will just make up a few good stories if I run out of interesting material (perhaps I have already hit that point).

The kids continue to be enjoying themselves here. Our 2 next door neighbors have 3 girls that know English fairly well. They are the kids favorite playmates, which is amazing since Nathan has been in a “No girls allowed” phase (to the point of writing it ON his bedroom door with a marker before we left, by the way).

Speaking of Nathan, he was the first to succumb to the stomach bug. But in true Nathan form he felt like he was going to vomit in the morning and was eating burritos by lunchtime. Friday night the bug hit Eric. He completed rounds in the morning and slept most of the afternoon. He, on the other hand, is staying as far away from burritos as possible.

Yes, we eat burritos here and just about anything else we want. The only difference is that you have to make everything from scratch. So for burritos, for example, you soak dried beans overnight then cook them forever the next morning. We live very close to the butchery, so we hear our hamburger bellowing in the morning, and could be eating him for supper. The tortillas are rolled out and cooked on the stove. The salsa and guacamole are also made from scratch of course. So although it is more work (partially done by hired house help), the end product is fantastic.

The fruit has been delicious and we have been eating everything mango since they are wonderful right now. Mango on cereal, mango smoothies, mango salsa with fish, mango juice, homemade mango jam, and just plain mangos. Other fruits that we have plenty of are papaya, pineapple, and bananas.

Things we miss? Walnut Creek Cheese accessibility. Dutchman pastries. Of course, friends and family. This morning Julia curled up on Jodi's lap, in tears because she misses Furbee, our dog, among other things associated with home. Both kids have felt overwhelmed at times because of all the new people, different schedules, etc. But overall, they seem to love it. They have instant friends next door, Eric is home for lunch almost daily and even was here this morning some to read geography to them...fun. And what could be better than spending most of the day with Mom - in school, during recess and all afternoon? We're all enjoying this time together - away from cell phones, long-term responsibilities at home/work, etc. It's good to really get away from everything for a few months...that way we'll appreciate home and responsibilities in a new light when we do return.

And by the way, we got our toilet fixed.

So far, so good.