week seventeen

monday we got the opportunity to visit a Maasai village! our whole team took the hour long dala dala ride and then walked for about twenty minutes till we came upon the village. we first saw the well in which they draw up their water by buckets and surrounding the area was about five women doing their washing (clothes and dishes). we continued down the path and saw about four huts. i mean literately huts. mud houses held up with sticks and thatched roofs. they were extremely welcoming, the tribe was a family, four generations. meeting the great grandma was especially neat, this women was so beautiful. i hope to try and get some pictures up so you can understand a little more about the Maasai people. they’re known as strong warriors, and incredible jumpers. yes jumpers. apparently they can get several feet off the ground. they also were very different in appearance then the African’s we’ve visited in our area. they dress differently, wrapping a long strip of cloth around there bodies, tying it over one shoulder and wearing many earrings, necklaces and belts. the women all had stretched out ear lobes and all had their heads shaven. we were invited to sit under a group of trees on straw mats and spent the days hearing their stories and learning different things about their culture. we were also able to talk to a group of five midwives from the family. not one had specific training they had all learnt from there mothers or each other. we got to ask questions about how they do things and learnt MANY interesting things! things like, using thread off their robes to tie off the umbilical cord and cutting it with a razor or when they have a breach baby, they ‘push the baby back in and turn it around from the inside’... yes i would imagine incredibly painful for the mama. we also heard stories from the men, who have killed lions. apparently ‘the lions were killing their cows, so he had to kill the lion.’ he mentioned that young men will kill a lion and then cut out their heart and eat a part of it to symbolize they are no longer afraid of lions. he himself had a scar on his leg from a lion. pretty crazy!

tuesday was also an interesting day... started off with me going to the clinic and finally getting to do some antenatal care! which consists of taking blood pressure, doing palpations (feeling for the baby), measuring the stomach which helps determine how far along the mama is and listening to the fetal heart rate. it was really neat when a women, about 8 months along, came in with twins! feeling for the two heads was a little tricky because the babies were actually opposite each other, one which its head up and one down. but it was really neat, a little scary for me as i’m not super confident in it yet but all in time right? okay so then (and i hesitate to say) i went to help in the pharmacy, and while i was in there the nurse told me to come in with her to help dress a wound. she said ‘abscess’ and i didn’t really think much of it.... she handed me scissors and i started cutting away the dressing that was wrapped around this mans hand. Ash (a girl on my team) continued removing the dressing while i held the mans hand and prayed for him, as he was in a lot of pain. well it soon became clear as to what an abscess was... it is a hole that has been drained and then packed with gauze so it can heal from the inside out. the gauze needs to be removed from the hole every day and new gauze needs to be packed back inside so the wound can hear properly. well as Ash continued pulling gauze out of this guys hand i found myself getting a wee bit dizzy. so my praying turned to ‘dear Jesus help him, oh Jesus help me’ i tried not watching but of course i was curious and it was happening right in front of me. i’m pretty sure she pulled out about 2 feet worth of gauze that had been packed into his hand (between thumb and first finger). after i left and sat on a bench feeling really dizzy, i’ve experienced this right before fainting when i was young. i remember thinking ‘i will not faint i will not faint, water, yes i should just get some water’ and the next thing i know i’m hearing muffled voices saying ‘she fainted and was fitting (seizing)’ and i can feel my legs still shaking and my head was incredibly painful.... lucky for me i always faint in a health care center and get the right care! haha! i came to more and had many people come and talk over me saying ‘pole (pole-ay)’ meaning sorry and telling me i was okay.... i had two cuts, one about my eye and the other on my nose, luckily not deep enough for stitches! (i really did not want stitches) and a very large goose egg on my head. but i was okay. i sure must have looked a scene, apparently no one saw what happened but the ‘crash’ was heard through out the clinic and scared a little boy. i guess in my dizziness i had gotten up, cuz where i fell was not where i was sitting, and i’m sure i would not have been in as much pain if i had fallen from sitting down. so the remainder of that day was spent in bed... and the rest of the week of taking it easy, mainly because my head and nose hurt so much. its been a week (i’m writing this a week later) and i’m doing much better, swelling around my nose is slowly making its way down and my head looks good, cuts are healing. my bruises are also disappearing its mainly just my nose that still hurts a lot when touched. its okay normally and then i’ll forget and go to scratch it and dang, it hurts a lot. they said it wasn’t broken but its defiantly been bruised.

the rest of the week for me was much less exciting, typing community profiles up and doing team things. for some of the girls though it was the first time there have been births at the clinic! and they had 3 in 24 hours! so a bunch of the girls have now gotten to witness and help out in some healthy births. two baby boys and one girl was born last week! so precious!

i have two clinic dates this next week so i’m praying for big things to happen, and not me fainting again!

currently trying to keep cool, it gets hotter each day as we head into the ‘rainy’ season. i think though its only rained three times since we’ve been here and they’ve all been at night. staying in the shade, having a wet clothe to wipe sweat away, laying on the concrete floors in our rooms and taking multiple showers a day are all ways we’ve found have helped us. but the relief doesn’t last long! we did however find out about a ‘resort’ (not like one you’d picture at home, its much smaller) about a thirty minute walk away that has a pool, but its about five dollars to use for the day, so every once in awhile i’m sure that will be very nice to keep cool for a day, well at least until you have to walk back!

take care till next time....


ps please be praying for our visa's apparently this 'letter' we need was put in the post (mail) like 2-3 weeks ago and we have yet to see it, it is the letter that gives us the okay to get the visa's processed....