Hike to Kipkinur

While I was on call last weekend, Kris had the opportunity to hike with some of our friends up Kipkinur (spelling totally made up by me and probably wrong). Here are some pictures in no particular order. Special thanks to Mike and Ashley who watched Dominic while I was at the hospital (in other words, most of the day!).

The trail is pretty muddy and a bit overgrown.

The day started off quite misty

And finally, the view of Kipkinur at sunset from the hospital. Kipkinur is the little bump on the skyline between the setting sun and the treebranch on the right of the shot. People say it looks like a thumbnail rising above the mountain ridge.

Thanks for visiting our blog! Let me know if there are particular pictures you would like to see next month!

Kim

Natural Resources

Have I mentioned yet that Dominic has started Kindergarten? Before COVID-19, we used to meet for devotions and prayer from 8-9am four mornings per week with the other physicians and volunteers at our compound. However, when social gathering restrictions began in Kenya around the end of March, I decided to use that time to work on reading and writing with Dominic. As time went on and we ran out of workbooks, our neighbors very kindly offered to let us borrow their Kindergarten homeschool curriculum and books. So Dominic’s first day of Kindergarten was April 6. Because…why not, right?!?

First day of Kindergarten!

In the last week, we’ve been reading and learning about natural resources. Dominic’s “homework assignment” was to go outside with Kris and list the wealth of natural resources we have in Western Kenya.

•  Farm land: In the mountainous region where we live, there are no large fields of crops. However, most families have a “shamba” or small farm at their home to grow vegetables and corn for their own family, and maybe a little extra to sell in town. Every other week, we order about $20 USD of fruit and veggies from Eldoret. We buy the rest of our fresh produce at a stall right outside our compound. Many families also keep cows and chickens. We’re lucky to have our milk delivered to our house (1 L fresh milk every weekday) and I pick up eggs from a coworker every week.
  
  
  
  
• Rivers: All the water to the hospital and compound comes from a mountain stream. The line has recently been upgraded thanks to the hospital’s engineer. We purify the water with a UV system. Many of the houses also have rainwater collection systems (we just got ours installed last week!).
• Solar: As the weather is usually overcast for at least part of the day, we can’t rely on solar for all our energy needs, so we are connected to the “grid.” However, almost all the houses on our compound now have solar energy available for our overhead lights and many of the electric outlets in our homes. The bigger energy savings come from the solar water heaters on our roofs. These supply hot water to our showers and kitchen sinks, which significantly
  reduces the amount of “grid” energy we use.
• Forests: Every weekend, we see people (mainly women and young boys) walking down the road with huge stacks of branches on their backs. The forest around here is abundant. The government has regulations regarding what type of wood can be collected from the forest for firewood, to keep the forest healthy. Houses are mostly made of brick or cement, but the forest supplies wood for cooking, heating, and building fences.
• Geothermal: I recently spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out how Kenya generates most of its power, assuming that it would be hydroelectric. However, it appears that geothermal makes up a large proportion of electric supply, mainly around Lake Naivasha, where we visited three months ago.

Throughout the developing COVID-19 crisis, we’ve considered ourselves lucky to be in Western Kenya for two reasons. First, we’re so rural and remote that the virus (as far as we know) has not yet reached our county, so we have had plenty of time to prepare, watch, and learn from other countries and hospitals. Second, we know that even if the supply chain completely shut down, we really have everything we need to survive in this land with abundant natural resources.

I recently read, and understand now in a way that I would not have understood before, that the most vulnerable in the COVID-19 crisis are the urban poor. Although they may be physically closer than we are to the food supply chain, they are economically incredibly distant. In an urban setting, they can’t fall back on their family farm or livestock to survive through difficult times as the rural poor can. Living hand-to-mouth in a slum is vastly different than living hand-to-mouth on your farm, although certainly both are precarious. When I become frustrated with the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Kenya and the apparent disregard for social distancing recommendations in Nairobi and Mombasa (the two major cities and epicenters of the disease here), I have to remember that the poor in those cities are literally making life and death decisions as they face starvation if they don’t get out to work. We have been challenged during this time to try to support our local economy in whatever small ways we can, and to steward our natural resources to the best of our ability.

The "C" word

I know the news has been bleak lately. Many of us have seen major changes to our lives, our daily routines, our relationships, our plans for the future. Maybe some of you have been thinking, "When is Kim finally going to write a post about the 'C' word?"

Well, here it is.

My first blog post on...

Crafting in Kenya!

As you may have guessed, Hobby Lobby and Michael's have not yet opened branches in Kenya. So, craft time requires a little more than the usual amount of creativity. We have been very blessed to receive a few care packages from our friends at World Medical Mission, including some very fun crafting supplies. I also used up some valuable luggage space on our return from North America in January to pack some yarn and knitting supplies. Here are a few of the projects we've worked on in recent months.

Display shelves

A few colored popsicle sticks, a little stiky tack, and we finally have a place to store Dominic's "collections" of buttons and small rocks. If it doesn't fit on the shelf, it has to be given away or thrown out!

Earring/Jewelry organizer 

All the homemade earring organizer ideas I saw online include things like empty picture frames...harder to come by than you might think here in Kapsowar! But I did have this item sitting around in a cupboard...can you guess what it is? I'll have to figure out how to hang our Christmas ornaments next year since I used the little ornament hanging hooks to hang the necklaces. That's not too big of a deal though...our Christmas tree is about 14 inches tall!

Picture frame

This one is self explanatory. I think the sticks complement the beachy theme :)

Easter "baskets"

We brought Jelly Bellies and chocolate eggs back with us in January (yep, we found chocolate Easter eggs in January in British Columbia) but had to find a creative way to pass them out to the neighbor kids. 

Tree costume

Hat + safety pins + fresh foliage = a tree? Good enough for Dominic's preschool play, anyways! 

Alright, enough about crafting. Seriously, here's the news on coronovirus in Kenya. Schools remain closed, meetings including church services are prohibited, non-essential travel is discouraged and Nairobi and Mombassa are completely roadblocked...no one in or out by plane, train, or automobile. Or bicycle, actually. 

Out here is Kapsowar, we have completed our contingency planning, our isolation and quarantine wards are built, we have no more short term volunteers, and now...we wait. We read the news, we pray for all of you who we know are in affected areas or working on the front lines, for all of you who are in vulnerable populations, and we pray that our little corner of the world will be spared from the pandemic. And we wait. 

And craft!

See, it all comes around in the end :)

Lots of love to you all,

Kim

Epic fails in Kenya

Kristopher and I have lived in ten different homes during our nearly twelve years of marriage. That doesn't include short periods of time where we lived in someone else's home (eg with my parents this summer). We've actually had rental leases on 9 different residences, and owned our home in Utah (by far our longest stay in any one residence). Adjusting to a new home, new neighborhood, new city is ALWAYS a challenge. Adjusting to a new continent, country, and culture is all the more challenging. We've done our best, but some of our failures have been comical (maybe not at the time, but in retrospect...). Here are a few examples:

Dominic wanted a chocolate cake for his birthday. I thought this was a great time to use the bundt pan I brought back after Andrew and Elyssa's wedding. The result looked a little like a donut (okay, a lot like a donut) but that's okay - donuts are a real treat here.

(See donut shaped thing with stars exploding out of it, back row)

Today, I was craving chocolate and decided to make the cake again. I probably should not have substituted vanilla yogurt for sour cream. The result is still tasty, but somehow even less aesthetic...

One late night in Nairobi, I completely forgot everything I had ever learned in chemistry class and set a glass bowl in the sink to wash the dishes. In went the boiling water from the kettle, next the cold water from the sink...

Most women in the US are counseled to undergo c-section if their baby is breech (meaning bottom first, not head first). However, in Kenya, vaginal breech delivery is more common. I was called to the delivery room one day out of my clinic for a breech delivery. The woman had arrived completely dilated with the baby's little bottom already visible, so we checked the baby's heart rate (normal) and proceeded to deliver the baby. Only after the baby was delivered and required significant help breathing did we realize there were in fact TWO babies, and the normal heart rate we had heard was from the (previously undiagnosed) TWIN! Both babies did fine. And just in case you're wondering how often that could possibly happen - the exact same scenario played out again less than two months later!

One of our first trips to the market ("soko") in Kapsowar, we bought some unripe bananas. They sat on our counter for at least a month before Gladys, our house helper, told us that those bananas are for cooking, and they would never turn yellow.

After our "exile" in Eldoret, one of the last things we did was stop at the mall to load up the car with groceries. I first went to the fruit and veggie market and spent over $20 US on fruit and veggies. That might not sound like a lot, but in Kenya, that's a LOT of fruit. Not wanting it to spoil in the hot car, I left it at the "bag check" area of the grocery store. I remembered that I needed to pick it up - about 4 hours later, when we were finally back in Kapsowar. Amazingly, our neighbor Mike had to go to Eldoret the next day, stopped by the grocery store, and returned with my full bag of groceries!

Try as I might, I cannot keep straight the Swahili words for bottle ("chupa") and underwear ("chupi"). It's an embarrassing mistake when all you want is some bottled water at a restaurant!

On our return from Andrew and Elyssa's wedding, Kristopher and Dominic both wanted to sleep on the second flight (Frankfurt to Nairobi). This flight departed Frankfurt around 10am and arrived in Nairobi around 11pm, and they slept the ENTIRE flight. Great - until Dominic was jumping around our hotel room at 3am, having run out of snacks and activities and still raring to go!

Now for a few successes:

Termites are ubiquitous after an evening rain. They are attracted to light, and will crawl through the tiniest cracks under doors or windows to get into your house. At first it was really gross, then it became a sort of game to see how quickly we could kill them when they came in. (Termites, for the record, don't really squish like other insects. You just have to give them a good quick whack, and they're done for.) Feeling lazy one night, I took off my flipflop and hurled it across the room, knocking a termite out of midair. Ten points! Dominic has been trying to replicate that heroic feat ever since, with minimal success. If you enter our house after a rain, watch out for flying footwear!

I'm not sure if this is a success for an American living abroad, or a failure of American culture; for culture day at language school, I made this rendition of "Snicker salad." I used genuine snickers, apples, and grapes, but the closest thing to Cool Whip I could find was strawberry flavored "Dream Whip."

I think I've already shared this picture on our blog but it bears repeating: talking Dominic into wearing his bathrobe and a free eye mask from Delta for a Halloween costume was a major success!

Turning this:

Into this:

For $30 USD!

I hope you've enjoyed a chuckle along with us. We pray daily for our friends and family all over the world during this really strange and difficult time, and we appreciate your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement as well. Blessings, and stay well!

Kim

Post Residents Retreat at Lake Naivasha

We just returned from a wonderful, relaxing, rejuvenating retreat at beautiful Lake Naivasha, Kenya with our fellow Post-Residents and many of the World Medical Mission team from the US. The theme of the retreat was "Boundaries." In short, we were encouraged to set healthy boundaries that help us to thrive as individuals and families, so that we can avoid the burnout which is so common in the medical field in general, and in the developing world in particular. My favorite analogy from the weekend was from Dr. Jim Ritchie (Chogoria Hospital), who compared setting personal boundaries to a river:

A river within its boundaries has direction, is powerful, and is life-giving. A river without boundaries, on the other hand, can be destructive.

Every morning we enjoyed sessions with the World Med folks, and our afternoons were free to enjoy the beautiful resort and explore the area. We really enjoyed taking a boat out to Crescent Island (technically now a peninsula, not an island) and going on a "walking safari."

Obviously we didn't take this aerial shot, but it shows how Crescent Island got its name...

Crescent Island was previously uninhabited by much wildlife, but in the 1980s several species of animals were brought to the island for the filming of "Out of Africa." After the film was completed, the lions were removed from the island but the other species were left and the park was established. You can drive or boat to the "island" and walk quite close to all the animals, including zebra, giraffe, water buck, wildebeest, Thompson's gazelle, impala, flamingo, and several other species that I don't remember. There are hippos as well which you should NOT walk up to, and at night hyenas are known to cross over into the park and keep the animal population under control.

Thanks so much to our wonderful friends at World Medical Mission who put on a lovely retreat and are always encouraging and supportive! And speaking of support, thanks to our supporters who helped fund Kris and Dominic's travel expenses to and from the retreat!

With love,

Kim, Kristopher and Dominic