Follow up

I hope this letter finds you well as summer is ending and the fall season is beginning. I wanted to say thank you for your support during my stay in Africa; through prayers, keeping up to date with my blog, or by financial means. I had a great adventure in Kenya and brought back many stories, pictures, and a new perspective. Let me know if you want to catch up and I’ll share those more in detail with you!

In the two months abroad, I spent about five weeks in a village called Sigoti in the upper Nyakach region of Kenya (only a few miles away from the equator and Lake Victoria). In the village I wore many hats and played a variety of roles. I volunteered in the local hospital, called Nyabondo, along side nursing students and cared for many patients with advanced HIV/AIDS in the medical/surgical unit. I also volunteered at the government run clinic in the village. There I gave many injections as a treatment for malaria, tested for HIV, was a pharmacist for a day, and sat in on HIV counseling. Both places were very eye opening for me as I saw the struggle to provide good care for patients with extremely scarce resources.

In the village it is a very taboo topic to talk about sex, even sex education. Because of this and the high frequency of teenage pregnancy, we gave a talk on the physical and moral consequences of premarital sex. We discussed the different sexually transmitted infections, how valued each girl is, the importance of purity, ways to say no, how to deal with sexual harassment, and different forms of protection. The girls really opened up with this us and shared their struggles about how sex becomes a means to provide for themselves financially, and requested to have more meetings about this during our stay.

My fellow nurse, Laura, and I went door to door in the village seeing people who had health concerns and wanted to see “the nurses”. We found that in the clinic and hospital, patients are given very little education about what is wrong with them. Their interactions with the doctors and nurses is that they are given a pill and being told to take it with no further explanation about what they are being treated for or how the medication will affect them. Laura and I talked with each person about their symptoms, looked up their medication, provided information on what they were diagnosed with, what their medication is for, how to take it, and then gave them ways to help with their health problem besides medication such as diet change, exercise, stretching, etc. This was one of my favorite roles because it gave us an opportunity to sit for an hour or two just getting to know our “patients”, provide education, pray with them, and then check up with them each week to see if they were improving. We also ran a small health day where we checked blood sugars to screen for diabetes, checked blood pressures, handed out deworming tablets and vitamins. We found that the majority of people we saw had high blood pressure to which we gave education and referred them to the appropriate clinic to start on medication if needed.

At times it felt like we were not needed nor doing much for the community. Kenya as a whole is a developing country and has a long way to go before it is able to change or obtain better resources. When I was feeling a little down at the end of the trip I read and reflected on Matthew 26:6-13 which is the story of the woman at Bethany who poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ head, to which the disciples chastised her for wasting such an expensive perfume and doing such a silly deed. Jesus thought the action was great and it helped to prepare him for his burial. From that story, I learned that even though some tasks I did in Africa seemed silly or had little effect on the whole picture, God had placed me over there for a reason and with a specific purpose which may seem small to me but I know he has a bigger plan for those things than what I may have been able to see.

I made a lot of friends, became a part of the Okall family, developed long lasting relationships, learned a lot about the African culture and struggles, and had a lot of fun along the way. I was able to go on a boat ride on Lake Victoria, visit the equator, walk through Kibera (the largest slum in Nairobi), see the President and Prime minister, go on a safari, spend a few days on the beach in Mombasa, and escort a 4 year old and her grandmother back to the states to be reunited with their mother/daughter over here in America.

Now that I am back in America, I started my job at the University of Kansas Hospital as a nurse, moved into a new house with two girls who graduated with me in May, and am spending a lot of time getting used to the transition from being a student to being a “professional”. I would love to spend more time talking with you about my trip and sharing pictures with you, in person or by email. Just let me know.

Thank you so much again for your support and if you want to continue to support the area that I worked with in Africa you can visit http://www.alumeimports.com and buy merchandise from local artisans who I personally met or visit http://daladevelopment.org to see how to support the development program in the village.