Carpe Lux

Help, I’m running out of snappy titles! 😀

May is still the rainy season in Kenya, and rain that started about 8 pm yesterday evening did not stop until about 8 am this morning. Grounds at the health clinic that were already waterlogged became worse, and we were all slogging in mud the majority of the day. On the plus side, we should have beautiful weather for our last clinic day tomorrow, and then for our safari on Saturday. Hard to believe this trip is almost at an end already!

You can see from the photos above just how swampy it got. Still, we had a better crowd today than yesterday. It continues to amuse me that the Kenya residents always want to ask us how we can stand the cold in our short sleeves. It was in the mid-60s to low-70s today, which is normally a bit chilly for me, but with little breeze and high humidity I was quite comfortable with no additional layers.

Amazing things continue to happen this trip – several more people accepted God’s call, and the Pipeline church community has continued to be outstanding in their volunteerism and hosting. One of my favorite happenings of today was a bit simpler, though — a little girl and her brother were waiting by the table you see in the above photo, and I said hello and shook their hands as I passed. Once I turned to go into the tent, I felt a small hand grab mine again, and I turned back around to see the little girl grasping at me and beckoning me down to her level. I leaned down and she whispered, “Give me chocolate!” Choking back the desire to laugh, I had to smile and explain that I had no chocolate on me, but I did share some masala sticks I had in my pocket. This is a local snack of potato shoestrings flavored with masala.

Looking forward to helping more people tomorrow. Signing out for the night. 😀

The third clinic day was a little slow,  slower than expected, perhaps. Or friends from Pipeline explained that it was too cold for people to come – indeed, here you’ll see children bundled up in temperatures that seem too warm for such. It was in the 70s, with a breeze that may have been a little chilly at times,  but that is really cold weather for a population that lives so close to the equator.

All week an inoculation clinic has been taking place in the same health clinic space,  so scores of school children have been coming through. This clinic is a government mandate, as recently one child had come down with measles even after having shots,  so all the children must come through and have their immunization shot again. There is no such thing as an anti-vaxxer here. The nurses did start telling people about the eye clinic,  so we got more traffic from the mothers already there.

Once we packed up for the day, we headed out to a very nice meal with our guide Catherine,  at a place called Carnivore. It is a churrascaria, Kenyan style. Rather than a salad bar,  they bring you first soup and then bread and a salad/sauce tray. Then come all the meats. Most were normal fare, but they also offered crocodile, ostrich meatballs,  rabbit, and ox balls. I tried everything but that last. 😀 Catherine’s son Mark agreed to the ox before he realized what it was,  but I’m pretty sure he didn’t eat it. After a very filling meal, we came back to the hotel and all surrendered to our beds.

It has been raining all night,  so I don’t know what that will mean for today’s clinic,  but we shall see.

So…clinics. Our mission here with Vision for Kenya/Vision for Africa is to share the gospel as we hold free eye clinics for the people in underprivileged areas. Some teams head out into the villages, some teams (like ours) work in more urban settings. The church we are partnered with is Pipeline, an ELCK church that is located in the Mukuru slum. Although the people acknowledge they are poor, the church members consider themselves all very rich. Throughout the work we’ve done so far, they have been outstanding partners, even having some of the women bring lunch for all the workers each day.

The first day of the clinic, I ran the eye charts. Lining people up in Kenya is not hard – they are used to waiting and very good at knowing exactly whose turn it is. Pole pole – things go slowly. We actually didn’t have too much of a delay getting set up the first day, and I was working with the church choirmistress, a young lady named Judy. She helped me greatly whenever we had people in line having trouble with English. In all the areas of the clinic, it is necessary to have Swahili speakers for those who cannot understand us Mzungus. Of course, we are close to the equator, so I got a little more sun than I had planned for, or at least I didn’t reapply as much sunscreen as I needed. Not a bad sunburn, but not something I wanted to repeat every day. 😀

Reading Glasses

For the second day, I worked the reading glasses table. Each person coming to the clinic gets a registration card, then follows a path through the clinic, depending on their needs. They open at the evangelism tent, where they hear the gospel story, and from there proceed to have a basic eye chart check to establish their vision level. Those who have bad vision are marked as such and either sent to the autorefractor, or noted to be seen by the doctors. Each person is then sent to triage, which you can see across from my table. Two or three team members take patients one at a time and ask what their eye problems are, to get a better idea of what they need, and then the triage team member will ask the patient if they have any requests to pray with them. For those of you who know me, this is a bit outside my comfort zone, but even I did a little triage when we got busy.

Gloria helping with an active young boy

Pastor Kevin praying with a triage patient

From triage, the patient would come to see me at the readers, or go directly to the doctors for vision testing or medication. The slums are very polluted, and all of Nairobi is not

Dave making glasses

much better, as there are no limits on car exhausts and other things that add to the smokiness of the air. A lot of people have come through complaining of light sensitivity or tearing eyes, and they get eye drops from the doctors. For those who need more vision correction, those we are able to help get sent to the glasses table to have distance glasses made for them. Some we have ready made, but some require assembly to get the correct prescription. Usually Dave or Pastor Kevin will make the glasses for those who get to this station, as the frames are a little tricky to handle – the lenses we were shipped this time are slightly too large, so assembly has to be done carefully. The beautiful young lady in this photo had the most amazing smile when she discovered that she really could see distance objects clearly.

All in all, it’s been a successful couple of days. We may not have seen as many patients as we hoped, but we’ve had over 500 come through the clinic so far. Word of mouth is a very big thing in the slums, so hopefully more will come as the week progresses.

Signing off for now!