Thanksgiving In The Hospital

12/2/2008 - Staying with our family tradition, we had to travel away from home for Thanksgiving. Our normal destination is Santa Cruz, CA, USA. (Hi Vicki and kids – missed you this year, hope you got our Thanksgiving day message.) This year we spent our first major American holiday in Homa Bay, in St Paul’s Mission Hospital. Fortunately this was not as patients as a result of the public transport we took, which are notorious for bad accidents. The little Corollas are referred to as Cockroaches, probably since they can live, and drive, through about anything. We were at the hospital was as guests of our American friend Doctor John.

We were excited to have something to do, as progress on the vocational school project is slow. Dr John was excited to do something special for an American holiday and share it with people who appreciated it.

We took off Thanksgiving morning, shortly after breakfast. Only the four family members as Eli was not feeling well and opted to stay behind. Since there would be some extended walking involved, we all packed lightly, after all it was only for one night. No need for extra clothing, just some misc items like cameras, books and headlights. Three of us just had our small packs. The lightest packed was Nick, who only carried 2 books with him, one really more a large pamphlet.

We started off with about a mile and a half walk to the transportation hub of Mbita. We were looking for the quick transportation, the cockroaches. These seem to be the quickest way to Homa Bay over the rocky and potholed roads as they are the most maneuverable and small enough to fit the gaps between the potholes. We quickly found a ride and all 4 of us crammed in the second seat. They already had a couple for the front seat, so we only needed one more passenger. The last passenger soon arrived. So with the 3 plus the driver in the 2 front bucket seats, we were ready to take off. Still not sure how the drivers manage, as they seem to get the least amount of room of any front seat passenger. We we’re off, for the first 5 yards, where of course we had to stop and wait another 5 minutes. Once on the road for good, the ride was just over an hour. This was helped by the fact that there had not been rain for awhile and we could take the shorter, “better” down road into Homa Bay. At this point in our experience, we’d label this trip as uneventful.

Once in Homa Bay, we headed off to the hospital immediately. It’s a short walk of three quarters of a mile, give or take.

The hospital was buzzing, having in 6 or 7 inpatients and some waiting outpatients. Things are picking up there, but Dr John says it is too soon to tell if it is a trend or a blip. There were also many young men around. These were some of the kids John sponsors for school. Since the school holidays had started the kids were out of school and suppose to be home with relatives or guardians. However, most prefer to hand out with John, were ever he may be, then traveling home. John finally got most of them out of the compound and on their way shortly after noon.

We visited with the remaining staff and the few boys that stay with John semi-permanently. We are getting to know them all slowly and we are always excited to see them, and them us. We soon fell into small conversations around the compound, catching up on what’s happened since the last time we were together, what the Thanksgiving holiday was about, or general conversations about how America differs from Kenya.

Morgan and I took a quick trip back into town to hit the ATM and get some change. We then browsed the local supermarket to compare prices to Homa Bay and see what items we might want to pick up before leaving town.

The Thanksgiving feast was soon served. Since turkey as not available, John tried for duck, but had no luck there either. Finally he settled on pork, which isn’t often eaten here. It was very tasty and a nice change of pace for us. I was a little disappointed that we had nothing shaped as turkey. I thought they could have tried the tofurkey route with the ugali. Of course the tofukey would be much tastier than Ugali-rkey. Sukamawiki (greens), rice, ugali and even gravy rounded off the meal.

Almost the complete hospital staff joined us for the feast. John started off the gathering with a mostly correct history of the holiday, but either he or I must be misinformed about some of the details (last Thursday of November, 1492 and Plymouth Rock) but it got the point across. This was followed by the Johnny Appleseed song for grace before we all dug in. John was very happy that the staff actually stayed and ate with us, as he’s tried it before and they usually just dish up and take off to eat someplace else.

After lunch Joyce, Morgan and I headed back to town. We wanted to hit the internet shop and try to make some calls to the US. We were easily recognized by the internet shop’s owner, who asked how we were doing and wondered why I did not have my laptop with me.. We informed him we were now in Mbita, just here for the night and the laptop was too heavy to carry for such a short trip. I had earlier picked up some international calling cards that John told me about. We got about 10 minutes to the US for only 100 shillings, about 13 cents a minute. It was time to try them out. We located the payphones that needed to be used near the post office. Needed Morgan to dial the numbers as my reading glasses aided eye’s were not good enough to make out the pin numbers on the card. After one false start, it worked wonderfully and we got through to my parents. This time at a reasonable hour, unlike the 5:45 am call the time I tried Skype and forgot about the daylight savings time change. Had a good connection, with a minimal delay and had a pleasant 10 minute talk with them. With the last few seconds we had left on the card we gave our usual Thanksgiving host, Vicki, a ring. Only got voice mail, (which took half the remaining time just listening to all the cell phone added messages about leaving a voice mail, which they probably do on purpose to run up the minutes used on people and et more money, but that’s a separate rant) and left her a rambling message until the phone card ran out.

I spent the next couple hours reading the local paper – not much good news in it. Sometime I need to write about the current affairs of Kenya. The rest of the family spent time chatting with the staff and boys. I’m sorry I missed some of that, as one of the nurses, a Maasii, told stories of killing lions and the courtship of his wife. He has invited us all to come home with him for a weekend, so hopefully we’ll have good stories to tell and pictures show about that.

That evening we sat in the hospital’s courtyard chatting and Morgan brought out the special treat she had acquired for us – A small bottle of Johnny Walker Red and a bottle of Amarula, an East African drink made from the local Amarula berry, which is a nice sipping drink. (This must be one of those run-on sentences Morgan mentioned I was prone to have in some of my blog entries.) We were all excited about the special drinks. We spent a pleasant hour sipping drinks out of shared coffee mugs and talking. John loves having us around to chat with and tell stories to. Seems the Kenya folks are more into getting down to business with him and not just relaxing and chatting about recent events, news or past experience. We are a welcoming ear to John and his tales and extended, tangent filled explanations.

That night we each got a private hospital room to sleep in and our own bucket of water for bathing. I don’t think the hospital has had running water for some time, at least months, if not years. At this time it does not even have power. At some point power got turned off for lack payment and even though the bill has been paid in full for some time, the relaying of that info to the main Power Company office does not seem to be available. I think John said that someone must go in person to the office, show that payment has been made to the local office and request that the power be reconnected. However, someone seems to be industrious and found the control box and knows how to reconnect the power, and they reconnect it at night for the evening hours.

The night was restful and we woke up to tea and peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast.

While I wondered about town and did a little more checking on the internet, the rest of the family spent the morning marking the linens that we had sorted during our last visit to Homa Bay. They plan on starting to use them and wanted them marked so it would be less likely someone would walk off with them.

After lunch we started our journey back home. We had a few stops on the way to the cockroaches. Ashley and Travis are coming soon and arrangements need to be made. Our plan is to make them travel by themselves from Nairobi to Homa Bay, but we wanted to arrange as much of it as possible. The first stop was to secure local accommodations for them as we hope they will get into Homa Bay sort of early Wed evening. We wanted to give them a chance to rest overnight before meeting us in Mbita. John took us to the New Jersey Hotel, in which he has stayed, to see want we thought. It’s more a locals hotel then a tourist hotel, but seemed great, especially for the under $5 rate for the double room. Both the shared restrooms and bathing area are close to the room we selected for Ash and Trav.

It was then off to the bus lines to try and secure seats on one of the better ones. This part of the mission did not go nearly as well as the hotel reservation. The first choice in buses only had night runs from Nairobi and since they were to arrive at the airport in the morning, it was not a good option. They then hit the other bus lines, which are all housed together. Difficulty arose over the language barrier as we only spoke English and the clerk’s level of it was rather limited. Unfortunately there was not one of John’s boys with us to help interpret and explain our needs. Came away not having made any reservation, but thinking that most of them left to early for Ash and Trav to catch. There was mention of 11, noon, 2 o’clock buses, but didn’t really know if these were real times or not. Did discover that the buses often left late. So the plan is to ship Them off to the bus station when they arrive and hope one of the buses is late in departure and they can catch one before the evening runs start. He best we could do was to give them a list of the best to worst bus lines so they could get the better one if they had a choice. Welcome to Kenya Ashley and Travis.

Easily caught a cockroach headed back to Mbita. After the required 15 minutes seating of the four of us crammed into the back seat, we took off, to the petro station. Nick spent the time bargaining with the guy selling sunglasses, jewelry and cell phone cases off the piece of cardboard he carried around. Nick tried on a pair of sun glasses, but Morgan said they were too big, so he passed on them. The tank was full, at least full enough to get to Mbita, by this time so we were off.

Due to lack of rain, a few vehicles and the way the wind was blowing, the ride back was the dustiest we have had. I thought about closing my window, but figured I’d rather have the dusty wind cooling me off then the heat building up. And the front windows would be open, so the dust would still be flying anyway. When we arrived, both Nick and I were well coated with dust and grime, on the half of us that faced the windows. Quite a sight according to Morgan and Joyce. The walk back home was shorter as we got dropped off at the junction to the Parish compound. This cut the final walk to les then half of the first one.

I hit a milestone on this trip. I was actually looking forward to getting to bath in our luxurious standing room only bathing room.

Hope all had a happy Turkey day,
Paul

Pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/MaiersInAfrica