I am nothing short of amazed at the number of people that
showed up for the first day of the clinic.
This is a testament to the hard work of the congregations at Kawangware
and Waithaka in spreading the word to their friends and the community and to
the tireless work of our friend Catherine Wangari, who does the behind the
scenes preparation for our Nairobi based teams.
She gets permits for the clinics from each of the proper authorities,
permission to post signs and banners advertising that we are coming, the list
goes on and on!
We feel right at home with our volunteers. They have been
very friendly hosts, even cooking lunch for everyone on the team. It was rice and some excellent beans with
some very sweet bananas for dessert. We
always have to let the local cooks know that we Americans eat much smaller
portions, so it’s best if we serve ourselves, since we don’t want to waste food
or leave the impression that we don’t like the meal. We take all we want and we eat all of
that. In the past, we have had issues
with this at some clinics where the food was piled high and we just plain
couldn’t finish it, so we always gently discuss this issue before we have a
meal. It’s just bridging cultural
differences that can lead to misunderstandings if everyone is not on the same
page.
Even though we had a very successful first day, there is
always room for improvement. Catherine
and I are going to make some changes to the layout of the clinic for better
flow and fewer bottlenecks and we are also going to reinforce some of the
training in each station since we discovered some mistakes when analyzing the registration
cards last night.
I had a couple of neat experiences yesterday. Catherine brought a small boy, maybe three
years old, to me and had me look closely at his left eye. He had a hole in his lower eyelid the size of
a pencil lead that kept his tears from remaining near his eye. A simple surgery will fix his tear duct. He was a little sweetie, I’m glad we’ll be
able to help in this way.
Another nice surprise was I got to meet a Facebook friend in
person. While I was posting wildlife
photos from our last trip, Kelvin friended me and helped me identify various
birds and animals that I either didn’t know or had misidentified. It turns out he works with at risk youth in
the Waithaka neighborhood and was conducting a soccer camp in the field right
next to the clinic. He wanted me to
greet his boys yesterday, but we were right in the middle of putting away the
clinic for the night for the first time.
I hope I am able to take a few minutes sometime this week. He knows some of our Kawangware friends that
also work with street youth. I really
admire the commitment many of my young friends like Kelvin have in paying
forward the blessings they have received.
It's almost time for breakfast, I’m going to post this and
there will be plenty more to tell the rest of the week, I’m quite sure. Please continue to pray for a safe and
effective mission for us, so far this has been an incredible clinic.
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