Let the clinic begin! 6-2-2025

 I was able to get the convent to have a light breakfast of cereal, milk, hot water for tea or coffee and some fruit put out for us for the rest of the week. They normally won't agree to a time before 7am at the earliest. I let them know that while we liked their hot breakfast selections, I understood the schedule of the cooks. This little compromise was a good thing for everyone. We left for the clinic around 7:25am and were there at 8.  This won't be the case for the rest of the week, since today was a national holiday that celebrated some freedom under British rule before Kenya gained full independence. Traffic should be much worse the rest of the week.

                                            The clinic location before we set everything up

We had a host of setbacks at first, our tents and tables had been delivered to our convent instead of the clinic and we were missing some key items needed to run an eye clinic such as eyecharts and spiral notebooks used for registration of patients. We worked through all of this and our dear friend Catherine worked behind the scenes procure everything that was lacking. It didn't really matter because a handful of people had showed up. There was a great deal to celebrate, however. We had a large number of volunteers from the local church and Catherine had arranged for extra triage workers as well as our friends Billy and Alison to help get the clinic up a running. On the first day, the morning always looks like a trainwreck, the afternoon gets a little better. You never know what to expect on a holiday, we have had them falling them middle of the week and seen huge numbers of people. Being on the first day of the clinic had the advantage of giving us valuable time to cross-train our volunteers on several jobs, since it is good when we are busy to be able to move people around to fight bottlenecks.

For example, Deborah helped with the eyechart exams which we had setup on an outside wall of the church, since the building is corrugated metal without any lights. That's a position that requires standing. She began helping in the triage station in the afternoon where you get to sit a lot.

Deborah praying over one of our patients

By the end of the day, we had seen about 170 people, all of whom will go home and tell their families and friends about the free vision clinic that really is free, where they experienced the love of Christ. I wouldn't be surprised if we see 500 or more patients tomorrow once word of mouth goes out. Time for bed, need some rest before another big day. Blessings everybody.