Life in Kenya

May 22nd, 2009 by Meredith Breeden

Today is Friday here and the later part of our week has been great. On wednesday we did a home visit to a woman named Maria and then volunteered in a pre-k type of school for a couple hours. It was nice being with kids but of course the teacher wanted us to teach them English songs and what not which we could not think of for the life of us. Luckily, with Weasy, Mrs. Wampler and my moms help we have tons of ideas except we haven’t been back to the place since (hopefully we will go back at least once before we leave so that way we can test our skills out) That night, our house mom had her really good friend over and we ate ugali (sort of like clumped rice) we ate it the “kenyan” way with our hands and there was a sauce we used with it also. It was so good and considering breakfeast isn’t a large meal here and that lunch were on our own, we ate tons of it! I seriously cannot say how much we love our host family and how much they have made our experience here1 Thursday we came to bridgeway (our assigned place) and went with a guy named moses to the health clinic. We were so excited with the idea that we would be having more work to do. He actually is the “community social worker” I guess you could say for Kawangware and helps out wherever needed. We then worked in the pharmacies (wamp in one I in the other) and helped refil medicines and fill pill packets (yes virg and kelly I thought of you nursing majors….you would be so proud of all that we are doing in the health clinic!) We did that and had a blast meeting the people! It was soooo crowded and then near lunch time (1:00 here) it slowed down and theyshut down to clean the floors (as you can imagine the floors get pretty dirty around here with dirt streets and “sidewalks” if you want to call them sidewalks. We then met Sally, our host “sister” at the movie tehatre around 3:00 and watched angels and demons. It was a good movie, pretty cheap and really helped pass the time in the afternoons (they can be kind of long sometimes since we are working in the mornings mainly and it slows down in the afternoon) Then today we came back at 9:00 am this morning and learned how to make tea( yet another domistication technique I am gaining from my xperience in Africa) I have to make this quick the internet cafe is filling up fast!! Basically tehrest of teh day we went back adn wamp worked in the “family planning section”. She said it was really interesting to hear about the myts, what type of birth controls they use ect. She even gave a lady a shot in the butt!! Monday we are doing home visits starting @ 8:30 am!! so earllllyyyy but we are really excited then my b day on thursday and safari fridayyyy!! The time is really starting to go by fast here. I promise the blogs will hopefully be longer on monday but i don\t want to take too long when people are waiting. Hope everyone is well back in the states and I’m sure we will hopefully post something after the weekend.

Love

Mere