Sunday Funday
Like the other six days, this Sunday morning too is a beautiful one with the busy snow white clouds moving eastwards adapting more of a grayish color. The leaves scented breeze is a little cold with slight warmth, so today might be the first day we are experiencing rain in Kenya. This didn’t discourage the happy energetic birds, because they are carelessly singing and chirping here and there. It is around 8:45am but the private and commercial vehicles look like they have been circulating around the city of Nyeri with the red rich loamy soil embedded into their tires all night.
Waiters of Ivory resort Hotel are already in the conference room that is been used for breakfast and meetings with flasks of tea, ceramic cups and coffee beverages waiting for the Humanitarian Engineering group to stop by for breakfast. They have been there since 7:00am without knowing that everyone is allowed to sleep to 9:00am. With a smile on the elderly waiters face who was wearing a slightly worn out blue suit, he asked me to stop by for a grub, and politely told me that no one stopped by for food. I replied to him with a relatively wide smile on my face and walked out to the front yard of the hotel to get my daily share of nature’s gift; the delicious natural smelling air, green leaves and flowers, the slight warmth of the air.
After 10 minutes of appreciating having the chance to be here, I happily walked back to the conference room to get breakfast, where I met about five of my colleagues biting and chewing their sausage, bread, fried eggs and salad, and sipping their steamy hot tea and coffee. Without wasting anytime, the lean waitress with thick curly black hair, white shirt and black slacks horridly walked to my table and poured me a cup of steamy hot water. She reminded me that I don’t want milk in my tea, and sausage on my meal. I gently said yes, impressed. Her name is maybe Grace or Naomi, I couldn’t remember unfortunately, but amongst 37 of us, the 5ft kind waitress with thick black lips remembers exactly what I like to order for breakfast.
Despite the fact that I was very tired the night before, I feel good this morning watching my colleagues walk into the conference room for morning food. The smell of fresh oranges, water melon, fried eggs and coffee is mixed in the room air while I chewed on my last piece of soft organic wheat bread.
Time flew like a scared bird before everyone assembled at the conference room for the daily briefing at 10:30am. All the teams (Mashavu, WishVast and Essential Design) reported to the coordinator, Khanjan Mehta about the projects, clinics and general progress. Various members of the groups and kiosk operators described their major success and milestone. As a kiosk operator, I detailed how my kiosk went, and how the CYEC students picked up the whole diagnostic process really fast. I was happy to talk about it. Mr. Khanjan then informed us that Dr Peter Butler (Bioengineering professor at Penn State who got his initial flight cancelled) had arrived in Nairobi and he will be joining us later in the evening. He then outlined the events and work for the next three days. The meeting was dismissed at 11:49am as everyone dispersed to either having launch, or getting ready for the field interviews.
At noon, the atmosphere was filled with music from shops and cars, and the noise of the vehicle mostly Mutatus boasting of Kenyan pride, cruising on the dusty and bumpy Kenyan roads. Most of my colleagues ordered chicken, chips (fries) and chipati for launch. I had some fries with some Nigerian spice I brought with me, and drank from my Highlands water bottle. I was assigned an interview team, consisting of Alice Lee and a young man from CYEC called Duncan. Duncan is a local, so having him was a good thing because he can translate to us information that we cannot understand at the interviews. We walked into a nearby neighborhood and started interviewing people about fun and entertainment. It was a great experience because the place consists of a diverse group of people. There are single old women who only take care of their goats and depend on their siblings for income and university professors who live in nice condos. There are law enforcement officers who have so much to say about the political system in the world and Kenya, and there are a lot of students who just want to make a decent living and live their lives in Nyeri.
At 6:00pm, we called it a day and walked back to Ivory resort. We talked about how great it was to go into the community and have a feel at their worlds. Most of the group members were back and sitting in the front porch of the hotel having dinner. We ordered dinner and went into the debriefing meeting of the day at 9:00pm. The sky was clear with the moon bright white in the middle of the sky and I wondered whatever happened to the grey clouds early in the morning. It didn’t rain and the air was slightly chilled and smelt really good. Dr Butler arrived and without wasting anytime, he started working with us to get all the Bioengineering devices in perfect working condition.
As usual, Mr. Mehta coordinated the meeting this night. He started by asking the interview teams about their experiences that day, and fortunately there were a lot of funny stories out of them. We then went over the progress of the devices and called it a day. Most of the teams went into working on their devices while others went to bed to get good rest for the next eventful day.
-bello
After a long day at the clinic, we were treated to a lovely dinner at the Banana Leaf. The dinner consisted of an array of authentic Kenyan dishes from pumpkin and coconut soup to cow intestines mixed with small pieces of cow stomach lining. Many of us decided to try a little bit of everything, not knowing exactly what we were eating until Graham announced that the dish which looked similar to noodles was actually cow intestine. Overall the food was very good and unique. The restaurant played current popular American music and allowed a few of us to connect our ipods to the dj station. Everyone enjoyed the dinner experience and it was truly an excellent way to conclude the first successful Mashavu clinic.
This morning we began the day starting with a debriefing session at 10:30 am. We discussed the important points that were successful during the Mashuva clinic and what could be done better for the next clinic;we also set our plans for the rest of the day. Brianna, Gill, Rene, Shengnan, Alice and Bello were broken up into teams of two to conduct social surveys in the local area which consisted of health questions and another which asked questions about what Kenyans in the area do for fun. Brianna and Gill worked together with David, member of CYEC, and Alice and Bello worked alongside Duncan, member of CYEc, to collect data about what Kenyans do for fun. The members of the CYEC helped translate the questions to the villagers and the answers that were given. Shengnan and Rene worked with Ms. Ebdallah, member of CYEC,as their translator to ask the villagers questions about their health. All groups encountered similar issues with langauge barriers and the hestitation from the villagers to participate. Many villagers didn’t exactly understand why collecting this information was important and were expecting something in return for their time. Another problem that arose was some of the questions that were being asked seemed to mislead the villagers. The fun survey consisted of a question that asked what would you do if you were given a 100 schillings, many of the villagers thought they would be recieving 100 schillings at the end of the survey. The groups came across many interesting people and recieved some very good data.
The rest of the Mashavu team spent the day re-evaluating how to improve their specific part and caught up on improving sections that needed to be updated. Roma and Samir re-evaluated the concept of operations. At future clinics the process will begin with collecting the patients vital signs at the first computer, then collect history and contact information at the second computer, from here the patient will continue to the post-interviews then meet with the doctors. The assessment group spent time putting the data collected from the vital signs into the computer database. Steve continued to work and improve the labview program.
