Technology

Technology and I have never been the best of friends. You could just ask my patients from my old nursing days in the US. Trying to figure out some of those IV pumps was a real nightmare!!

But technology in Kenya is an interesting thing. For example, here I sit in the middle of a Kenyan village in the middle of nowhere and I am on the internet!!!! We use a satellite uplink. Sometimes it works great and sometimes.....well sometimes not so great.

Another interesting thing is cell phones. Almost everyone here has a cell phone. You buy "scratch cards" to put credit on your phone. So it is a pay-as-you-go system. No monthly plans, no paying for incoming calls. It is actually a great system. But it is a bit ironic that you can be sitting by the river where people are watering their cows, and suddenly you hear the tune "Jingle Bells" going off from someones cell phone.

Then there are the showers..... I don't have running water at my house. So I have the privilege of boiling water and hauling it to my outside shower for a bucket bath. But some of my colleagues with running water have these incredible electric shower heads. I know, I know, electricity and water aren't supposed to go together right? Well somehow this incredible shower head flash-heats the water using electricity as the water passes through it. There are certain parts of the shower head that are not advisable to touch. As in you get a wake-up shock. Then there was the shower head that caught on fire, but that is a story for another time and another place..........