Habari Yako!

Habari Yako!

We are halfway through our first week in Kenya now and settling in well. We are forming a routine of early starts, 3 delicious and very varied meals prepared for us per day and our work in the medical centre and with the children. Since we last posted we have been involved with many of the charity's different projects. 

Our main focus is at the medical centre where we have been working with Godfrey, the clinical officer and the nursing team. Godfrey's job involves seeing around 40-50 walk in patients per day and forming a rapid diagnosis with the support of the simple but effective laboratory tests available to him- more on this in a later post. As well as the outpatient work, the centre has 3 small wards for inpatients and a very busy maternity ward. The children supported by the Nasio Trust get their treatment for free and we have already seen a number of them benefit from the centre. 

Today we were introduced to the Spirulina project which meant an earlier start than usual. Spirulina is an algae which is grown in large tanks housed in a greenhouse from which it is harvested every morning. The Spirulina produced by the charity is used as a nutritional supplement to ensure the children are well nourished. We helped with the harvesting of the algae by passing the tank water through fine sieves before drying the drained biomass. This is then blended into powder and put into the capsules. The process is encouraged by agitating the algae and a number of different chemicals aide the growth including urea, sodium bicarb and potassium chloride. A chemistry lesson at 8 in the morning was not what we were expecting!

The rest of today was spent with the children both at the St Irene's Centre in Musanda and Noah's Ark in Mumias. The kids have taken to calling us 'Aunty Tabby' and 'Uncle Yacob.' We were greeted with a welcome song on our arrival to Noah's Ark and given a tour of their beautiful school. We have been struck by how endlessly happy all the children appear to be and are finding it very infectious. We made the mistake of teaching them 'Round and round the garden,' and we are now grieviously the victims of much tickling. 

We are back in the medical centre for the next few days and look forward to updating you with some more stories from there.



 


 

Comments

  1. Jane6 March 2020 at 10:13

    What an experience. So lovely to hear about your experiences over theee. Keep them coming xx

    ReplyDelete

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