Mzungu in the Clinic

After several weeks of sickness I'm finally back in the saddle. I'm still coughing quite a bit. But with my asthma and recovering from pneumonia I expect that will likely continue for a few weeks. But I'm definitely a thousand times better than I was Christmas week.

The other night William and I were settling in to watch a movie on the computer before heading to bed. We heard a vehicle outside. Now you have to understand that our village is a bit off the beaten path and hearing a vehicle at night is not part of our norm. So William went outside to check it out. Shortly later he called me and told me I was needed at the clinic.

"There is a mzungu (white) lady there and Kiptoo (the Kenyan nurse on call) wants your help." As I put on my boots I kept thinking. What the heck is a white lady doing at our clinic in the middle of nowhere at this hour?

It turned out that she was a college student from Wisconsin. She was with a team of 9 other students and teachers who were staying about 20 min from our clinic. They are in Kenya for a few weeks and are running a children's camp. She had just arrived a few days earlier and was super jet-lagged and having some altitude issues. More than anything she was overtired and afraid of getting sick in a foreign country. We gave her some medicine to help her sleep and some oral-rehydration-solution just to give her a little boost. I prayed with her and instructed her to come back the next day if she didn't improve. Well she didn't come back so I'm assuming everything was okay. It was just a funny way to start 2010 with one of my first patients being a college student from the USA.

This week I'm busy getting reports filed, clinic schedules organized, and paperwork ready for patient care in the new year. We are launching dental services at the clinic this week so I'm also getting the dental tech oriented and settled in. It's a week full of paperwork and admin. I'm definitely looking forward to what 2010 holds for the clinic as well as for William and I. Thanks for joining us in the journey!