June 25

Okay so I can't come up with a cool title for my post so I'm just gonna go with date sooo here goes.

Wow, wow, wow! Never go into something thinking you know what's going to happen! I'm still adjusting to the idea of all the things that we've been doing since getting here.

First of all, I need to apologize to everyone who has been checking this regularly. I haven't had as much access to the internet as I thought, but I'll try to keep everyone up to date on here.

Two medical students, a doctor and I arrived in Migori on Thursday night. We are staying at a separate house from the 11 other pre-med students that are here because there's not enough room in the house they usually use. This has actually really been to my advantage because I have a chance to ask lots of questions during our down time.

Friday was our first day at the hospital. We start at 8 AM at a meeting with Dr. Agullo where we go over the interesting cases and get everyone's input and also reports on how many patients were admitted, discharged, or passed. Then we basically get to choose what we want to do at the hospital. My first day, I did rounds with Dr. Agullo in the maternity ward and then went over to the surgical ward. Then we go home for lunch. The other students have been here so long that they don't go back to the hospital after lunch-I hope I never get that complacent. We literally have access to whatever we want to do (I'll get more into the medical stuff in later posts since I'm just filling you in right now).

Friday night Josh, the program director, threw a birthday part for Candance and there were crates of beer and wine and tons of food. We eat a lot of beef and chicken, rice, vegetables (their main vegetable looks like spinach but tastes a lot more like wheatgrass...I can't remember what it's called), and their staple food-ungalee. I have no idea if I'm spelling that correctly, but it's a very dense brick of maize flower that is very similar to grits. A lot of the doctors came to the party too and afterwards we went "downtown" to a few clubs. Okay, going to clubs was absolutely not what I had in mind when I signed up to come to Kenya, but it was so so fun! We were very safe because of everyone we had with us, but as you can imagine we got a lot of attention because we are "mzungu" which is the Swahili word for "white person."

 One of the local men came up to me and said, "I saw you dancing and I'm falling for you!"
"But you don't even know me," I told him.
"Ahhh but I've seen you in my dreams-I love you!"

There were several more interactions like this, which are really hilarious but completely harmless as the doctors know a lot of people that work at these places and look out for us.

On Sunday we got a car and drove to Lake Victoria where we saw lots of the local townspeople, boarded a ferry, and ate lunch at a resort. A "resort" here is like a really bad Super 8, but with an awesome view. We were supposed to go souvenir shopping while there, but we didn't realize that the shops closed at 3 because it was Sunday so we missed that, but will go somewhere later.

Today I did rounds in the pediatric ward and then watched a C-section and DNC. One student can scrub in on each surgery so I got to watch a couple other girls assist and can't wait to do it myself. Afterwards I did maternity rounds and learned to fill out discharge papers. This is actually really hard for me because I'm not accustomed to all the terminology and how to read charts, but hopefully I will learn to do it well before I leave. Then we came back for lunch. After lunch, Chelsea, Sarah (the two medical students from St. Louis that I rode with from Nairobi) and I went back to the hospital. We played with some of the kids in pediatrics, and then went to physiotherapy where we were allowed to practice putting on plaster casts.

We finally were done at the hospital at 4:30 when we walked into town to get water. The only thing the program doesn't provide is water so we go into town about every other day to get 5 L jugs of water and carry them back up. I love doing this in the late afternoon because the kids are out of school and chase us around saying, "Mzungu, mzungu! How are you?" It's hilarious because they can't all speak great English, but every one of them can say, "How are you?" and "I am fine, thanks!"

Anyway I need to stop hogging the computer, but I'll try to do this more often so I can give y'all better details and more interesting stories. But for now I hope everything is well in the U.S. and I can't wait to share more with everyone!

Also, if you want to get in touch with me, the best way to do so is leaving comments on these blogs or email me at hdrabek@hotmail.com