First whirlwind week in Kenya: part two!

My first week in Kenya continued:

So after my weekend in Nairobi, Ana-Claire and I packed up and headed out to my new home in Kisumu!! We took a 7am flight, and were on the ground in Kisumu after a quick 40 minutes in the air.

View Full Size Travel Map at Travellerspoint

We flew in over parts of Lake Victoria, which is the largest tropical lake in the world (and the second largest overall after Lake Superior). After collecting my small mountain of luggage, we actually headed straight to the office! I was introduced to my Kisumu-based team (who I had met over Skype, but finally got to meet in person!), and started in on the day's work.

First, I got a full tour of the office/clinic. It is a small, 3 room concrete block house. The first door on the left (see more pictures here: https://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/9723) is the office, where our team of 4 (5 if you include me!) shares two small desks and a water cooler. The main door leads to a small reception area with a desk for speaking to the patients. The third room is our clinical room, with an exam table, a small supply cabinet, and a bucket for washing your hands. There is a small "kitchen"...which to my untrained/non-Kenya eye actually looks like a storage closet with a foot sink. There is also a very luxurious restroom.

Our clinic building

Our office bathroom

So the norm in a lot of foreign, developing nations is a squat toilet. If you want to get technical, I've read they are actually better for your systems than "Western" seated toilets, but let's just say it will take some getting used to!

My commute to Suba - amazing scenery!! And goats in the road :)

After spending Monday and Tuesday in Kisumu organizing with the team, doing mock patient enrollments, and trying to finalize future plans for the study, we woke up early on Wednesday and headed out to our other study site in rural Kenya. I've made a map and put it at the end of the blog to help orient everyone! But basically, the other site is in another district, the Suba district (Kisumu, my city, is in the Kisumu district).

To get to Suba, you either have to go over the lake or around the eastern side of it. On the way to Suba, we drove west, towards Uganda, and boarded a ferry (with our car!). The ferry travels south across the finger of lake that protrudes into Kenya, and lands in Suba, in the town named Mbita (pronounce Mah-bee-ta, but with a really abbreviated "mah").

Sunrise over Lake Victoria

There are two sites we work through in Suba: the first is the main Mbita hospital, located adjacent to the ferry landing, and the second is our clinic. The clinic is actually located in Sindo, which is a 45 minute drive away (down a pretty rough, rocky, dirt road). In the clinic, we meet the patients, draw blood, do exams, and dispense medication. Then the samples have to travel 45 minutes (on a motorcycle) to the lab in the Mbita hospital to be processed.

This is an interesting challenge out in the rural site that is adding extra stress to a tough study, but so far the Suba team is rocking it!

On day 1 with the Suba team, I pretended to be a study patient! I was given a full exam, had my blood drawn, had all lab tests preformed, and even was prepped for (but not actually given) a spinal tap! It was an interesting experience, since I learned the whole procedure our patients will endure. Also, the team confirmed I am in great health, with normal everything and HIV negative with no fungal infections :P

After a full day in the lab being poked, examined, and prodded by my team, Ana-Claire took me to Wayando Beach Club to spend the night. It was a rather stressful drive as a serious downpour started as we left the clinic, and I found myself gripping the handles in our SUV more than a few times as the car fishtailed and slid in the thick mud and we zoomed along the road back. But we made it safely to our destination: The Beach Club is an eco lodge in the Suba district on Rusinga Island (technically no longer an actual island since a causeway was created from the mainland in the 1990's).

Pulling in the nets at sunrise!

Nile perch

The lodge is a beautiful place!! There are little cottages for sleeping (again, more pictures here), a large pavilion for dinners and hanging out, and its right on the lake! It is definitely a bit rustic, and when we were there the electricity was out. There is hot water only when the electricity is on (and even then only in one of the 3 cottages!) and are no flushing toilets. Instead, there are buckets filled with sawdust...you bury your business in a layer of sawdust after each use. I can honestly say that was my first time with a sawdust potty....

Proud fishermen!

Anyway, after an amazing dinner of fresh fish from the lake and a well-earned beer, I passed out to the sound of crickets in my little cottage! I awoke just before sunrise - we arrived in the dark and I wanted to explore the place before we were off to work again. I wandered down to the lake shore and found the fishermen pulling in their nets they cast the evening before. I watched them pull and pull and pull and pull! I must have watched for about 30 minutes when they finally started getting excited and told me to get my camera ready....and as the net came in, I saw 3 fish flopping around, and they were quickly untangles from the mass of net.

Room 1 in my place!

The fishermen were very proud of their catch of a few small Nile Perch, which is actually and introduced species to the lake. These perch can grow to 300 hundred pounds and wiped out hundred of native fish!!

After thanking the fishermen for letting me observe, it was time for breakfast and to start the day. We had a whole day working with the team, and then left in the afternoon to return to Kisumu. Since the return ferry schedule is a bit random, we decided to take the "overland" route, and settled in for the 3 hour drive back to the city.

Room 2 in my place!

The scenery was really amazing, and we spent half the drive on bumpy, dirt roads through nowhere. I was glad that it wasn't raining until we hit the pavement road that leads into Kisumu. One day I'm sure I'll write a whole post on just the roads and driving here....

We made it back, and after a long day in the Kisumu lab on Friday trying to help them finish getting ready, we got news that we had our first patient scheduled in Suba for Monday!! This meant I had until Sunday afternoon to hang out in Kisumu before I had to drive-ferry-drive all the way back to our rural clinic.

My very African themed living room!

I spent Saturday sleeping and then finally took my first extended outing without Ana-Claire's supervision: I went to the grocery store! I went to a store called Nakumatt, which is kind of like a Super Wal Mart - I bought a pile of stuff, but most importantly I found an oscillating fan :) After my 3 hours wandering through the mega-mart, I finally organized my place and took some pictures! And that officially marked one week of being in Kenya!!

And finally, here is a map (with pictures if you click the markers!!) of all the sites I travel to around Kisumu so far!!