July 6

I am starting to feel a lot more comfortable here, now that I have figured out how to get around and have met some really great people. I have been getting along really well with a Dutch girl Mary and another medical student, Rosie, who are both staying in the hostel as well. Yesterday I arranged to go to the hospital with Rosie to do rounds on the pediatrics ward and to take a look around the hospital, which is huge. It was pretty shocking. I saw some extremely sick children- conditions and diseases that I will probably never see in Canada. We did rounds with a really nice young female doctor from Somalia who was very attentive to us and explained the patient information and answered any questions we had. It took a couple of hours to get through the first room because it was so packed. A room that would typically have 4 patients in it in Canada held about 16 patients and their families. The hospital itself is extremely run down and dirty, but I was very impressed with the staff- for the most part they were very compassionate and put a lot of effort into helping each patient as much as they could, given their tight resources. It was a pretty tough morning. Although many of the kids are treated and recover, some of the stories are so heart breaking. There was one little boy who was probably about 9 who was curled up in a ball under his blankets in the back corner of the room. His mother had died of HIV, nobody knew where his father was and his aunt had abandoned him. He was HIV positive but could not be started on antiretrovirals because there was nobody to look after him who could consistently get the medicine for him and make sure he was taking it properly. They weren’t sure what was going to happen to him or where he would go. He was refusing to eat or take the medication he needed for his vomiting and diarrhea. I was surprised at how common it is for children to be abandoned in hospital. There were at least three other children in a similar situation. We also went into the malnutrition room which was full of these tiny babies who had nutritional problems ranging from rickets, to Kwashiorkor (like you see on tv when the children are all skinny except for big swollen bellies), and general wasting due to lack of food. One of the babies was so severely dehydrated that he had gone into shock and was unresponsive. Most of the other patients were in for pneumonia, TB or meningitis. As difficult as it was to learn about the very sick children, there were several who had fully recovered and were running around playing, and laughing.

Last night I went out with a group of people that I have gotten to know through Kevina. We went to karaoke which was a lot of fun (but I definitely didn’t participate). After that we went to a bar/club… Kenyans love dancing and really know how to. It ended up being a really good night - definitely a fun group of people. This morning I went into town with Mary so that we could book a safari trip to Masaii Mara reserve park for next weekend. We found a company which seems to be quite reliable, so we will be leaving on Friday to spend 3 days in the bush looking for lions, elephants, giraffes and zebras etc and camping out in the park at night. After that I went to the big Toi market with Rosie to try to find some warmer clothes to deal with the unexpected Kenyan winter. Tonight we are going to meet up with some friends that Rosie knows from the UK and head out to a nearby bar/lounge called Casa Blanca.

Overall things are getting a lot busier and interesting, and Nairobi is growing on me more and more every day. Kenya has such an interesting history and culture and learning about it while I am here immersed in it is quite an experience.