Today was a regular start to our day, with no early meetings to attend we arrived at our clinic site on time. Todays clinic opened with drumming and singing. Always a nice greeting first thing in the morning. Here is a short snippet.
Chaos. Chaos seemed to be what our day was like. The clinic location was a smaller building and everyone was cramped inside with not much room to maneuver, there was lots of activity happening inside, and outside where a Jiggers clinic was occurring. We saw over 400 people today, and it seemed like every baby from the village was there and all of them were crying, a lot of busyness and noise. We sent a few people to hospital today and had a home visit and that patient will be sent to hospital tomorrow. We like to call it organized chaos.
Not only do our clinics seem chaotic at times there is a general sense of chaos in the community. Especially the traffic. Cars, trucks, mutatus, motorcycles and pedestrians all sharing the road, jockeying for a position. Pedestrians can be close enough to reach out and shake hands with you. There may be traffic laws but I cant seem to make any out.
We had another handful of people go to hospital again today so Zandra was gone for the better part of the day, and Jennifer & Carmella went close to the end of the day. Zandra came back with Jeff, our driver, to load up and leave. While we were waiting a few went for a stroll and returned with Alex, a young man from the community. He is taking music in school and we had the opportunity to listen to him. This young man has made school a priority in his life.
We normally have 2 vehicles carrying our supplies, the boxes went inside with 9 of us in the back and three in the front seat and 3 suitcases on the roof. We had to make it back to Kakmega by 6pm to pick up Patti’s estranged suitcase, we made it with about 10 minutes to spare. She was pretty excited to get it back. Carmella and Jennifer came straight back to our guest house from the hospital, so it was a very long day for them as they didnt get back until close to 8pm as there was some car trouble for them.
Team Member Intro: Meet Tanya, who lives and works in Calgary. She says “I have always wanted to do a mission and life has finally made room for it now. CNFA is a nurse led organization that offers free health care to anyone who comes to a clinic which fulfills both of my values of nurses leading the way and doing what we do best – caring for those who need us!! I am honoured and humbled!
