We started our 10th clinic at this wonderful school. The church is St Francis of Assis and is our only Catholic Church.  The school has been the recipient of a well by an NGO named Living Waters, and they have made great use of the composting toliets arranged and financed by Canadian Nurses for Africa. The head master is extremely grateful to this organization for all we have done for his school. He stated enrollment is actually up because of the toliets. A composting toilet has no odour. Each deposit is covered by ashes, so the toliets are used by the older children only. The toilet is set where the sun shines on it as much as possible. The waste composes into fertilizer and the liquid becomes urea, which is also used a fertilizer. The fertilizer from first cleaning out of the toliets was used on the school gardens. The difference in the gardens is quite visible with taller and healthier looking plants. The next cleaning will be sold to children’s parents for their own gardens. The money made will be used to reduce school fees for the orphans in the school. Did you know that 80% of the children that attend this school are…

Today is day 9 of our mission. Everyone is getting tired and looking forward to coming home. The irony is that we get to come home to our lives but the Kenyan’s life doesn’t change. Without their strong belief in God, they would have no hope. For many of them, hope comes in the form that life on earth is hard but death gives respite from their pain. Today’s clinic treated 640 patients and we held a sexual education clinic for 45 women. We handed out 31 pairs of eyeglasses (there is never enough), and had a follow up visit with a man who had been at the hospital yesterday. Jiggers has nearly been eradicated in this area. What joy that is! The children at the school love the soccer balls and skipping ropes and hope we can bring more. We also visited the well made possible by CNFA donations. This community has felt the impact we have made here. And that is all we want - to make a difference. We will be starting Grace’s house tomorrow. Thanks to the generous donations from the blog readers and supporters of this mission, we have raised enough money to build Grace a 3 bedroom house, with…

Today is day 8 of the 11 clinics we have scheduled this year. It was a busy day with 740 inpatient clinics, 433 children dewormed, and two patients taken to hospital. One was admitted and the second was sent home with a follow-up home visit by one of our nurses planned for tomorrow. Another female presented post-surgical complications and she has been asked to return to our clinic on Friday for further assessment. Dinner conversation tonight was active as the nurses discussed their Kenyan hospital experiences. Nurses in Kenya have huge patient loads and are expected to do all patient care and treatment. Naturally Western hospital standards differ from Kenyan hospital standards and when the two experiences clash, it can be very difficult to accept. So the next time, you are in an ER, remember to be patient and to be grateful that when you get care, it will be the best that is available. Deworming children and adults is an important CNFA program. Worms are small and white and infect humans through poor hygiene and infected water. They cause poor night sleep, intestinal blockage, and malnutrition. Many of the children in Kenya have distended abdomens which indicate they are filled with worms. We provide a…

  Monday starts with a clinic at Chavakali, a village we have been coming to for 7 years. The patients are glad to see us and we them. We treated 610 patients inside the clinic, dewormed 329 children, and handed out 35 pairs of eyeglasses. In addition, Lynn conducted a sexual education clinic for 26 women and 33 jiggers patients were treated along with two home visits. Yesterday, I asked if you would spread dung onto a friend’s floor, but today Tayla and Sephora did just that. They covered a woman’s floor with dung so she and her children can have a healthier life. CNFA has provided a nursing scholarship to one nursing student, and we have been fortunate to have Victor work with us this week. This young man is bright and enthusiastic with a perpetual smile on his face. His family tried to dissuade him from the nursing profession as it is a woman’s profession, but he is passionate about the work. He said he wants to work in a critical care unit as he wants to “save people from the grave”. For those of us on this mission, we are seeing the real Africa. We are speaking with and seeing the Kenyans…

The jiggers flea is rampant in Kenya and other African countries. It has always been present in Africa but in the past five years, infestation has become epidemic. Incidences of jiggers dropped when people started to wear shoes more frequently, but for an unknown reason, the number of infections started to increase again. Johnstone Idaki first brought this problem to our attention in 2011. He spoke of the poor and their struggles with the disease and the community stigma and isolation. In addition, the National Government doesn’t recognize the problem. Since starting this public health program in 2012, CNFA has treated 7000 patients infected with jiggers. These figures do not include 2015. Johnstone had travelled to 27 schools and treated the children infected there. Sometimes there are 4 or 5 children with jiggers, and other times, 200 out of 700 children have to be treated. Jiggers will travel to the brain and cause damage as well as making it nearly impossible to walk, work or eat. Malnutrition results and the body’s ability to repair itself becomes very limited. I will tell you a story about the treatment a man with jiggers received at our clinic. He came to our clinic at Kigama with jiggers eating…

On Saturday, we travelled to Chavakali and set up our clinic in a Friend’s Church that was located beside a busy road. Saturday is market day in Kenya and great numbers of people walked past our clinic as they attended market. On this day, food and other stuffs are purchased for the next week. In addition, the road was well travelled by cows and small livestock as they also travelled to market to be sold. All in all, it was an interesting site. Naturally, a few dropped into the clinic, about 502 people prior to 1:30 pm before we closed the clinic. We treated 27 persons with jiggers, dewormed 194 children, and handed out reading glasses and sunglasses. If you want to do something for our mission next year, please start collecting reading glasses. They are light and easy for us to transport. These communities have a huge need for something we take for granted. For those of you who wear them (as I do), remove them for an hour and see how frustrating it is not to be able to see properly or to read. So many school children also need glasses and by not being able to read properly, it affects their education.…