Mom visits Kenya - Part I

I convinced my mom to come back to Kenya for a bit after the holidays. I use the word 'convinced' for a reason. To say that my mom works hard in the US is the understatement of the century. She is a passionate, tireless, and selfless woman who doesn't quite understand the definition of a vacation! (she is probably shaking her head in denial as she reads this). Anyway, I was not only excited to give her a taste of Africa, but I was also looking forward to spending some quality mother/daughter time. Both missions were definitely accomplished!

I must admit that I was a bit nervous to have my mother come to Kenya. Worrying is an intrinsic part of my nature so of course questions like - Will she get malaria? Will she get sick eating the food? Will something, ANYTHING, bad happen that I, her only daughter, will forever be responsible for and friends and family will look away in disgust since I was the one who convinced her to come here? Yes, I know...ridiculous thoughts...but I'm sure that most of you can relate.

Our trip started in Nairobi where we celebrated NYE at the baggage claim in Nairobi airport.













The next day, we headed to the giraffe center to get up close and personal.






















Nairobi is very westernized so my mom was shocked to see the variety of restaurants, the luxurious hotels, and the well paved and organized roads throughout the city. I took her for our first exciting food experience at Habesha, a great Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi.













We were off to Eldoret the next morning for several days to check out where I have been living and working for the past 5 months. I think she was pleasantly surprised with the compound I'm living in and the double gated security! However, the hospital was tough to see and she could only handle 15 seconds of the ward until she did a 180 for the exit as she stated "I can't believe that people in the US complain about not having a private room in the hospital and these people are sharing beds." You can hear this time and time again, but I think to witness it first hand is an experience that changes your perception drastically. It was surreal to see my own mother go through this, and I think it helped her understand why I am so determined to work in global health in the future.

We also ventured into the market where my mom decided that she wanted to sit with the ladies selling potatoes to really get the full market experience.













One of our main goals in Eldoret was to deliver the sneakers and cleats donations that we collected for the Tumaini Children's center. THANK YOU for all who donated!!! We arranged to meet with the older boys' team to give out the cleats and watch them play soccer for a bit.



























Another highlight was our roasted goat dinner with the TB team! They gave my mom Masai fabric which she wore throughout the entire dinner.













More pictures

....and we're back!

Wow. What a month! There is no way to sum up the past month in one post so I am going to work on giving you tidbits of my travels over the next few posts. I went back to the US for the holidays and it was a whirlwind of seeing friends and family and getting my fill of America. I am not going to bore you with a play by play of my daily activities. Instead, I thought it would be fun to share with you the things that I have realized I really love about the states (most of them are food related of course!).

1) SUSHI: By the end of 3rd year, I think that I was eating sushi about 3 times a week (thanks to a restaurant that gives students amazing discounts and made my vice affordable). By last October, I was dreaming about spicy tuna and I made sure to get my fill over the holidays...on three different occasions. :)
2) Bagels: I didn't think that I missed bagels that much but when I bit into my first taylor ham, egg and AMERICAN cheese on an everything bagel sandwich my tastebuds were dancing.
3) Cheese: All of the guidebooks claim that Eldoret is known for cheese and yes, we are very blessed to have ANY cheese available. But honestly, whether you buy gouda, new highland, mozzarella or cheddar it all seems to taste the same. It was great to walk around the Wegmans cheese section and enjoy white stilton with cranberries, camembert, comte and fresh mozzarella.
4) Target: I don't typically support our western consumer habits but I will admit that I now appreciate the convenience. I must have spent an hour walking around just staring at all of the options. An entire wall of trail mix! Gizmos and gadgets for every room! toothpaste...shampoo? sure, choose from about a thousand different brands. It's a bit excessive and overwhelming but I suppose useful when you are looking for specific products.

Things that shocked me a bit:
1) How expensive everything is. I felt bad for my friend who had to listen to my rant about parking fees in NYC and how many street children we could feed with that money.
2) Cold weather and snow.

Some picture highlights...

Christmas get together with some fabulous people












Holiday cheese platter












The family at the Christmas table












Imani Workshops sale












Way too much snow

Holiday Break

I am going back to the states for the holidays so I am taking a vacation from the blog. Thanks for reading!! Please check back in mid January for a new post!

Goodbye for now Eldoret...














Merry Christmas!!!! (I found this hat in the local grocery store and thought it was hilarious...)

Child Contact Register

I realized today that it has been almost 6 weeks since I have posted about my side project. Originally, I was interested in targeting the children on the wards with TB in order to find the adult source cases in their home. However, after exploring the wards a bit, I realized that there was a lot to fix in terms of peds TB diagnosis before that project could be feasible.

Anyway, after several weeks of reading about childhood TB, I finally came up with an idea that I am really excited about! All of our active TB cases are managed in two TB clinics in AMPATH (one for the positive sputum smears and one for the negative). The World Health Organization recommends that all active cases are asked about the child contacts in their home since children are very much at risk of getting infected in the home. In fact, >60% of childhood TB cases have or had a recent positive household contact in the home! Unfortunately, TB in kids is neglected by many TB control programs because it contributes little to transmission (children are usually sputum smear negative...meaning they are not contagious) despite the fact that TB is a major cause of mortality in HIV infected children.

I really think that many of the active TB cases who are treated in AMPATH have children at home who are also TB infected or have TB disease. My side project is to create a child contact register to record information about all of the children exposed to TB in the household. A clinical officer is responsible for filling out a child contact form for each active source case, and it has actually made them educate parents more about TB symptoms in children and encourage parents to bring their children in for HIV testing!

One of the first patients who came to clinic today was an HIV+ male who had pulmonary TB. When we started asking about his children, we found out that his 6 year old daughter has been coughing for the last 2 months and she is not getting better with any medicine. Then the dad told us that she has not been tested for HIV, even though him and his wife are both positive. The clinical officer did a great job educating him, and he promised to bring his daughter back in January for HIV testing and TB screening if necessary! When the project got started, I was just excited about finding the kids who might have TB, but I also think that this will be a useful tool for getting more children tested for HIV!

We also had a hospital employee bring his children in because they had been sleeping in the same room as their uncle who has pulmonary TB. They are completely asymptomatic but check out their chest xrays! This is a classic picture of hilar lymphadenopathy that is often seen in TB in children.
Child 1 (adenopathy on the right with some atelectasis)

















Child 2 (adenopathy on the left)

















Other kids are not fortunate enough to have a father who is a hospital employee. Many children are brought in much later once they are symptomatic for several weeks or months. My hope is that the register will help us bring these vulnerable kids to care sooner rather than later.

Tuigoin 8k

This Saturday, I had the ultimate Kenyan experience. Since October, one of the research assistants in the TB office has been talking about a cross country meet he organizes in his small village. He has been hosting this event for the past ten years to empower the young children in the community to get involved in healthy activities. He heard that a group of us would love to run so he graciously invited us to participate!

My mentor arrived in Eldoret last week and she happens to be a marathon runner so we had a great group representing the US.

We started out at Emmanuel's home where we met his family and walked around his beautiful farm.












Afterward, we headed to the center of the village to watch the races. Here are some highlights...
The older men 2k winners












The women's 8k...check out our competition...












We came in last, but we finished!












The highlight of the day for me was when I was asked to give away the prize for the men's 12k and the guy in charge plopped a sheep into my arms...












This event really brought the entire community together, and it reminded me of the impact a few people can have if they remain dedicated to something they truly believe in. This event started with one volleyball tournament 10 years ago and now it has grown to several volleyball matches and multiple running events that attracts thousands of people from the surrounding villages. Living proof that major things can be accomplished with little resources!

Imani Workshops

Imani means ‘faith’ in Kiswahili. The workshop was created in 2002 in Eldoret, Kenya to provide income opportunities and counseling for women who have suffered from poverty, hunger, and stigma associated with HIV/AIDs. Imani Workshops is a branch of the Family Preservation Initiative under the Indiana University/Kenya Partnership’s Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) program, which provides HIV preventive and treatment services to more than 100,000 adults and children in western Kenya.

The women at Imani make handcrafted jewelry, kenyan bags, aprons, shirts and handmade paper products like journals, picture frames and cards. The women are empowered by working at Imani to make a normal life for themselves despite the difficulties associated with HIV/AIDs.

I visited Imani for the first time a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed. Many of the items are made from recycled material: old donated Oprah magazines (apparently they are the best for jewelry making!), recycled hospital paper, and scrap metal.

Here are some of the women grinding hospital paper...

The bead makers (they were absolutely thrilled to be in this picture and made me take at least 4 different shots of them posing!!)













The workshop...

I will be hosting an Imani sale when I am back in the states for the holidays. Below is a link to an album with some of the items I will be selling. All of the proceeds will go directly back to Imani to support higher salaries and additional job opportunities at the workshop!

Imani

Please let me know if you are interested in any of the items and I will try to bring your requests back to the states!

Eldoret 12km race!

So I was somehow convinced to run a 12km race this past Sunday. A bunch of us are training for a half marathon in February so we thought it would be good for training purposes. Anyway, my training buddy from the group got sick last minute so I ended up running by myself for most of it!

What we did not realize is that this was an intense qualifying race for Kenyans...aka I was about 100 meters behind within 30 seconds and then couldn't see the rest of the women after the first mile...

This led to some amazing comments from the Kenyans cheering on the sidelines that I would like to share with you:

1) Keep trying...Never die!
2) Unataka bota bota?? (Do you want a bicycle taxi???)
3) Good try!
4) Ooohh Mzungu!! (laughter) Will you finish??
5) Push it dada! (sister)


I decided to embrace the embarrassment and started yelling back "haraka haraka haina baraka!!" (hurry hurry has no blessing) which just led to even more laughter. Good times!

Towards the end of the race, an elderly Kenyan woman who must have been in her 70s or 80s decided to jump out and run with me towards the finish. Definitely the highlight of the race...










The only wazungu in the race!