Maybe we should go forward…
Today the Mashavu team was pulled in many different directions. The day officially started off at 09:30 with individual team meetings to discuss the plan of action for the week, specifically focusing on getting ready for our Endarasha Clinic on Thursday. The BIOE team also began to discuss plans for a peer reviewed journal paper honing in on how this trip has affected students’ views on designing for the developing world as well as reflecting and commenting on the structure of said design classes.
After these meetings a group of us were going to go into Nyeri to see the Outspan Hospital Health Clinic which was providing free medical consultations and antibiotics as well as food and clothing for street families in Nyeri. We were ready to go by 10:45, but Andrew had to make a “quick” trip into Nyeri to pick up supplies for the CYEC and the Eco Village teams. While we waited for him to return, some people decided to catch a few rays of the African sun, and actually got slightly burned, some discussed future journal publications and some worked on writing journal bound papers. At 12:00 Andrew still had not returned to take us to the clinic so Khanjan decided that we should just get all of our things together for the day and walk over to CYEC for lunch.
Lunch was served at 13:00 and afterwards a number of Mashavu people helped the Eco Village Ag team enclose the green house frame with a special type of plastic to help crops and other plants to grow. Around 14:30 Mike Fickes, Sara Fucci, Peter Butler, Katie Workinger, Maggie Slattery, Katie Briggs, Jimmy Mesta, Mike Perone, Renee Stepler, Brittany Flaherty, Stefanie Auf Der Mauer, and Steve Gargulio loaded into a matatu and a taxi and headed off to the clinic. We were told that the clinic was being held in the Outspan Hotel, but when we arrived at this country club look alike there were no street families in sight. The manager of the hotel knew nothing about the clinic but suggested that we try the Outspan Hospital, strike 1. Once at the hospital we again did not see any street families, strike 2, but we were able to learn the actual location of the clinic from some of the hospital employees. So we all loaded back up into our respective modes of transportation and drove to Whisper’s Park where the clinic was actually being held. As soon as we walked through the large iron gates which served as a way to regulate who could get into the clinic, we were mobbed by people taking pictures, hospital employees running the clinic and children who just wanted to talk to us. We were at the clinic for about an hour and a half and during this time we were able to gain some excellent contacts at the hospital and in the community as well as lots of valuable information pertaining to how the clinic was run and what exactly the clinic was doing with regards to testing. We found out that they were taking clients’ family and medical histories to try to form medical records for them, as well as clients’ temperatures, pulse rates, blood pressure and weight. They also had two doctors on hand to diagnose any of the sick patients and free antibiotics to give out to those who needed them. Eventually some of the teenage boys who were high from huffing glue in the open at the event, worked up the nerve to come talk to us and at that point even though we were in no danger we felt uncomfortable and decided to leave. While we waited for Andrew to come to pick us up we used our time to scope out supplies around the market which could be used in future designs as well as doing a little souvenir shopping.
Meanwhile, back at CYEC, Aaron Fleishman and Julia Wittig were hard at work finishing up a paper about the validation and verification that they received for Mashavu in Tanzania during the previous summer. James Bock, Jon Sauer and Matt Prindible played in a football game with the CYEC kids while Anthony Zmoda watched because he was still slightly injured from the previous game. When the dust had settled, the score stood 1-0 with our guys being on the victorious team!
Once the soccer game was through and everyone had returned from the Outspan clinic, we had a debriefing about what we had encountered at the clinic. This meeting was cut short with the announcement of supper, and was resumed later in the evening at Ivory after the usual Daily Mashavu Meeting.
Some other things to note about the day were that on the way back from the clinic we stopped at an ATM and as we were leaving we accidently backed into a parked car. The owners were a young couple and instead of flipping out, as most people in America would have done, they smiled, talked to Andrew for a few minutes and then went on their merry way. Also, before we went to CYEC for dinner, we stopped back at Ivory to drop off some purchases. While there, they saw a curious person walking back and forth with white stuff all over his face. We were amused to find out that this “stranger” was actually Khanjan who had apparently received not one but two haircuts that afternoon. Today Khanjan also invited Robert, the manager of Ivory, to CYEC, for dinner so that he could see just how good the food and service was at CYEC because Robert had been inquiring why we did not eat at the hotel every night. We do not yet know if this act will have any effect on our service at Ivory, but we are hopeful that it will speed things up a bit. Also, today is Maharishi, Kenya’s 46th Independence Day celebration. So lots of people are celebrating everywhere and the hotel is really hopping!
