Sukuma!
Sukuma!
It's been a busy few days since we last posted with lots happening in the medical centre and beyond.
Our Wednesday morning began with a home visit to one of the Nasio sponsored children. We were told the harrowing story of how this little girl had become an orphan and how she is now cared for by her grandparents. The mud hut we visited was split into two rooms, one with a collection of chairs and the other a sleeping area for the grandparents and two children. The whole building was not much bigger than a shed with mud floors and walls but the grandmother was overjoyed at how it offered her family a safe haven. We learnt that this incredibly stoical lady in her seventies was responsible for ploughing the family farmlands by hand, planting local crops such as black nightshade and selling them at the local markets in order to see the family get by. This trip was an eye-opener in terms of the realities of how local Kenyans live.
We moved from here to St Irene's for our weekly outdoor play session with the children and we left exhausted! Four hours of singing songs, playing games and being used as human climbing frames was as tiring for them as us- it was nap time for one of the classes when we wandered through later on.
Wednesday concluded with our second Nasio baby being born and that has been an ongoing theme of our week. We have now been involved with the births of five incredibly cute, healthy babies. This included two either side of our dinner late on Thursday evening, popping back to the guesthouse to refuel on chapatis before delivering another little boy. It has been especially satisfying to return the next day and see both mother and baby doing well and being able to give them their first immunisations.
It was great to meet up with Nancy (head of Nasio) and she has given us lots to be getting on with. One of these projects aims to assess the impact of the malaria vaccine, a new immunisation that started in Kenya last September. We want to assess the uptake of the immunisation by the local population as well as the impact on reducing malaria cases and so have started working with the team to start gathering data.
On a side note, we are very pleased to know that we will be working somewhere in the South-west next year. Only 180 jobs to rank, time for a Tusker...
It's been a busy few days since we last posted with lots happening in the medical centre and beyond.
Our Wednesday morning began with a home visit to one of the Nasio sponsored children. We were told the harrowing story of how this little girl had become an orphan and how she is now cared for by her grandparents. The mud hut we visited was split into two rooms, one with a collection of chairs and the other a sleeping area for the grandparents and two children. The whole building was not much bigger than a shed with mud floors and walls but the grandmother was overjoyed at how it offered her family a safe haven. We learnt that this incredibly stoical lady in her seventies was responsible for ploughing the family farmlands by hand, planting local crops such as black nightshade and selling them at the local markets in order to see the family get by. This trip was an eye-opener in terms of the realities of how local Kenyans live.
We moved from here to St Irene's for our weekly outdoor play session with the children and we left exhausted! Four hours of singing songs, playing games and being used as human climbing frames was as tiring for them as us- it was nap time for one of the classes when we wandered through later on.
Wednesday concluded with our second Nasio baby being born and that has been an ongoing theme of our week. We have now been involved with the births of five incredibly cute, healthy babies. This included two either side of our dinner late on Thursday evening, popping back to the guesthouse to refuel on chapatis before delivering another little boy. It has been especially satisfying to return the next day and see both mother and baby doing well and being able to give them their first immunisations.
It was great to meet up with Nancy (head of Nasio) and she has given us lots to be getting on with. One of these projects aims to assess the impact of the malaria vaccine, a new immunisation that started in Kenya last September. We want to assess the uptake of the immunisation by the local population as well as the impact on reducing malaria cases and so have started working with the team to start gathering data.
On a side note, we are very pleased to know that we will be working somewhere in the South-west next year. Only 180 jobs to rank, time for a Tusker...
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