Wednesday Healthworker Demo

Notes from Wednesday June 2nd, 2010

 Early in the morning the “advanced team” set out for Nairobi on their way to the Ngong village site. That team consisted of Khanjan, Steve S., Jeff, Roma, Samir, Aaron, and Dr. Butler.  Their goal was to first head to Nairobi and pick up the food and the Mashavu banner for the demo that they were going to give to the community health workers in Ngong the Village of Olosho Oboir.  It took a while to get the food in Nairobi but after that the team left for the long drive into the valley to the village.  When they arrived the health workers were gathered under a tree meeting with the clinic doctor.  While Khanjan and Dr. Butler went and talk to them Jeff and Roma set up the kiosk that was going to be at the clinic for both the Wednesday and Thursday demos.  While that was happening Samir and Steve went down to the boys secondary school 30 minutes away to get everything set up for Thursday’s demo.
 After everyone had gotten their food the health workers came to Jeff’s Kiosk and got their blood pressure and temperature taken.  They were all very excited to see the system and have it explained because they could see how easily it could help their remote villages.  The pulse ox wasn’t working that well but the people thought that there was something wrong with them instead of the error being on the equipment.  We tried to explain to them that it is impossible to have a blood oxygen level of %-41 but they weren’t having any of it.  Aaron  sat with the doctor in his office and got the website up to show him how the information could be sent from both the kiosk at the clinic as well as the kiosk at the secondary school.
 Overall the demo was a great success.  Because of its remote location the people there were exactly the type of people that Mashavu can affect the most.  They wanted to know when they were going to be getting one and how soon all the devices could be ready.  They were a little let down when we told them that it is still in the developmental phase.  It did however get everyone really excited who was there and those same people were going to be attending the demo the next day.  Once one person understood the system then they would explain it to their friends and so on.  Word of mouth is how news travels in the village and we got the word out for sure.
 After all meetings were over the advanced team went back to Ngong to stay in the Shade hotel.  There the team ate dinner and got to bed early because they would be leaving at 730 the next morning to head back to the clinic in the village.  All and all the day was a great success and the whole team felt that they had done what they went there to do.