MJINGA MZUGNU!

Hi!!

I’m very sorry I have been really bad about blogging lately! This weekend was our last weekend in Mombasa-as we will be in Niarobi for our safari next weekend and we leave IN TWO WEEKS! L I can’t believe how fast the time has passed. I was expecting to be ready to come home, but I have found that is not the case. Maybe in two weeks Mombasa will get on my last nerve and I’ll be ready for home…but I’m not thinking that will be the case. I mean what isn’t there to love…the dust, bumpy tuk tuk rides (that I’m quite certain have caused some serious shifting of the spine) , BUGS EVERYWHERE, mosquito bites, horrible hospital conditions, children running around everywhere without shoes…who would want to leave these things ;)? In the past two weeks I have really realized quite a bit. No matter how different or “out of your element” conditions…things can really be great when you are surrounded with the perfect company-which is exactly the case for me. J I have to share a part of my book with you…I know it’s kind of cheesy but I couldn’t help but realize this trip happened for a reason. Whether it be the people I have met, the lessons I have learned, or just the simple beauty of Mombasa…this is exactly where I was supposed to be for this month. The portion of the book I want to share is the following:

              “When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one died off—taken away by hawk or fox or by some obscure chicken illness—my father would replace the lost hen. He’d drive to a nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can’t just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to clip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don’t notice the newcomer, thinking only, “She must have been here all the time since I didn’t see her arrive.” The clincher of it is, awaking within the flock, the newcomer herself doesn’t even remember that she’s a newcomer, thinking only, “I must have been here the whole time…”

This is exactly how I felt when arriving in Mombasa…and thankfully the feeling hasn’t changed.

Today (Monday) I left my mothers and babies (meaning I’m not longer working on the maternity floor)…and headed to the medical floor. My thoughts this morning were… “I don’t like the environment of a medical floor in America…I can only imagine what I’ll think of the ones in Kenya.” So basically…I was dreading it. But come to find out…it wasn’t as bad as what I thought it would be, besides the part where we showed up an hour and a half late because we had no idea where to go and couldn’t find the director of nursing anywhere (which is quite a funny story…we knew where he was the entire time but the secretary refused to let us talk to him…I’m sure she was muttering “MJINGA MZUGNU!”(”…which means stupid white person. HAHA. SO finally we called our program advisor and he called the director and we got everything straightened out. When we arrived we met the charge nurse and then began passing medications. It started out a little….sketchy?...but definitely improved with time, well sort of. We were working with two nursing male interns…who weren’t talkative at all. Jess was giving a medication to one patient and the medicine wouldn’t flush through the IV (meaning…it is a bad iv and is no longer in the vein…everything was just pooling under the skin)…the boy was basically screaming in pain so she stopped and came back to get the intern…he came over again thinking “MJINGA MZUGNU!”(,”—I’m sure—and implied to Jessica everything was fine and to give the medication. So she is giving the medication and the IV just falls out. She came over and told them…and they said they can’t “fix it”. So this sick kid isn’t going to get his medication…they are just going to look past it and move on. So jess took matters into her own hands and tried to get IV access again…and the child just wouldn’t cooperate at all..kept flailing his arms…and these interns wanted nothing to do with helping…needless to say…the boy was missing 5ml of his medication…and they didn’t even care. After that we continued passing meds and jess and I were really impressing these interns at this point. We knew exactly what was going on (for the most part…besides some minor communication issues) and things were starting to flow nicely…it felt like we almost fit in. Of course that feeling couldn’t last for too long….I was going to give a patient a medication and picked up the container of medications (because there is no organized medicine storing system here..) and one of those “very polite, nice, organized, caring…etc” (sarcasm) interns didn’t put the lid on right. So guess who picks up the container by the lid and spills a whole entire bottle of pills….in a government hospital who runs out of medication daily and barely has enough medicine for the floor…J…Abigail. “MJINGA MZUGNU!” MJINGA MZUGNU!”( Thankfully the medicine was just “multivitamins” and the intern assured me it was “no problem”. Psh..yeah right… he just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. (I made the comment to jess at this point…maybe we should just leave, HAHA.) Surprisingly, no one seemed to get too worked up over the fact that I spilt an entire bottle of meds, whew. After finishing passing meds (and successfully starting an IV with their very difficult IV starts..) we left the hospital and came home for lunch.

Our friend Sang was supposed to leave last night, but had a mix up in flights and came back for an extra day. On Sunday Jess and I went to a part of Mombasa called Old Town and we really enjoyed it. We told Sang since he had an extra day we should go back there (it is a historical part of Mombasa and just gorgeous) so we decided to go back with him. We went to a very cool coffee shop (which we will be going back to again…because I LOVED it) and walked around the town with a new friend we met, Messi. Heis a local history student who gives tours as a means of money right now. He was pretty cool for a tour guide…because on Sunday when Jess and I went that was not the case. We had a tour guide…(who was an absolute JERK and had zero personality or humor…and really didn’t know what he was talking about to begin with) come up to us before we even got out of our tuk tuk and basically force us to let him give us a tour. So we agreed (mistake #1.) to let him show us around He told us it would be  100 shillings to go through Fort Jesus, so naturally one would assume this guy is employed by Fort Jesus and gives tours (mistake #2.) When we got up to the ticket booth the guy is it is 800 shillings- I looked back at the tour guide (who had a very complicated name and got an attitude with me when I asked him to repeat it…so I never quite learned his name) like…”uhh you just told me it’d be 100 shillings”…He says, “Don’t you have your passport on you to show you have a visa?” Now why would I be walking around with my passport on me in a city known for snatching purses…I love it over here but I’m not trying to be stranded with no passport, that’s for certain. I said no..and out of disgust and pure annoyance decided to just pay the 800 shillings (mistake #3). Come to find out…this is just some guy who claims he knows everything about this Fort….but can’t answer any questions we ask. So we go and go and listen to this guy ramble and try and get us to buy souvenirs and is just being ignorant. Then he “ends” his tour…and says “did I make you happy and you get to see old town.” We are hot, sweaty, and really just plain ole mad that we just spent that last 2 hours walking around with this large man…(wait until you see the pictures of him…) when we very well could of entered the fort, walked around on our own, done our own thing…NO YOU DIDN”T MAKE US HAPPY! We are just like thanks…have a good day ya know…trying get away from this man as fast as possible. Oh no…it doesn’t end there…he is expecting a tip. Hence the statement…”I make you happy, now you make me happy.” So we paid him off (mistake #4) and left. Thankfully when we were waiting for our TukTuk, Messi came up to us and asked us how our tour was. We didn’t hold back (because we have run out of “nice juice” at this point) and told him he was rude and the worst tour guide we have ever had. He laughed and said all clients complain about him. I’m not surprised. So anyways…back to Messi, when we saw him today when we arrived he came up and greeted us and asked why coming back. We told him that Sang and Courtney came with us this time and were going through Fort Jesus (and we opted out of going through that ordeal again) so we wanted to go to a coffee shop until they were done. Messi took us to a super cool coffee house and just sat and visited us. He then gave Sang and Courtney directions to meet us. Then he took us for a little walk through Old Town and got us back to where our TukTuk would pick us up safely. And we have learned…most people don’t help “MJINGA MZUGNU” without expecting money for it. So Jess gave him some money…and I couldn’t believe what happened. He refused to take it. He said “we are friends.” I thought that was awfully genuine because the Kenyans will do any work for a buck…so we just figured he was working. Anyways we got his number and are going to go back and have coffee with him sometime this week.

Sang just left us, which is sad, Sang was a good guy.

Jess and I are taking Phares and Isaac out for dinner tonight for being so good to us all the time…and we are going to get PIZZA! And I can’t wait…I am dying for some cheesy, fattening, greasy, melt in my mouth pizza. I’ll let you know how it is!

Tuonane,

Abigail.

XOXO

OH GOSH! I forgot to mention Haller Park…

We went to Haller Park over the weekend (which is like a zoo but tortoises and monkeys and antelope run around freely). If you ever have the chance to come to Mombasa…you should go here. But I must tell you…don’t feed the roaming antelope. We were feeding the giraffe and this antelope just strolls on up. I feel bad for him because no one is feeding him so I try and feed him and someone yells at me “NO NO he will harm you!!” Tell me…if this thing will harm me…why is it roaming freely where tons of children are? Hmmm. Anyways it was quite interesting and there are some pictures of it as well!

Enjoy!

I was having a stomach ache one night...so Silvanis made me some tea with tree bark and orange leaves...It tasted pretty horrible...but it did the trick!

Jess and Silvanis working on the tea

I just love Dollas to pieces.

Happy face...pre awful tour guide experience

Ladies and gentleman....here is the one tour guide you should avoid :)

Sitting a top Fort Jesus...BEAUTIFUL VIEW

The view

A little history...that I took a picture of because I knew I wouldn't remember

Check out these kiddos fishing...totally un supervised just trying to catch some fish...with no poles?

History abroad home!

The tour guide loved taking us into his "friends" shops...come to find out he gets a huge cut in what teh over priced amount it!

More pictures tomorrow and I will tell you all about dinner with Phares and Isaac (Phares is leaving us :() AND our dinner at our house mothers home. She invited us into her home to prepare dinner for us...FIRST students ever since she has worked here for 8 years (have I mentioned how much I love this woman?!)