The clinic begins!

It’s Monday morning and I write this first part just after having awakened from a fitful night.  I was sleeping pretty well until it sounded like a pack of dogs went nuts outside of my window at 2am.  I never really got more than a few minutes of good sleep until a rooster began crowing at about 5:40, a little before I needed to get up anyway.  I never sleep real soundly the night before the start of a clinic, with all of the details that need to be handled to get the show on the road running around in my head, but I think this one takes the cake!  On the brighter side, I know I’ll sleep great tonight, since Monday is always our hardest day and you wonder how you can do a whole week of this.  It gets easier and smoother as the clinic begins to function on all cylinders as the week goes on.  Time to see if the staff was able to pull off a 6:30 breakfast to get us on the road before 7:15!

This section is being written after 8pm after a very good, long, hard day.  We sis get an early breakfast and got to the clinic before 8am to find over 200 people already waiting outside.  They welcomed us and, after we waited a few minutes for the large room we would be working in to be unlocked, we got down to the business of getting about 15 footlockers situated in the areas where they would be needed, we got tables in place, ordered more tables to brought in from the nearby church in Kawangware and the tents were beginning to be setup.  We were ready to see our first patients after a short devotion in which Catherine led us in singing “This is the day” a song based on the Bible verse which says “This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.”  Pastor James led us in prayer and our work day began.  By noon, over 500 people were already through the clinic or on the grounds and being registered.  Catherine and I decided to stop letting people in if we reached 600 patients, since we wanted to make sure we could serve everybody before closing time.  At the end of the day, 571 people had attended the clinic and a remarkable 565 of them got treatment of one kind or another.  There is usually more slippage between people coming through the door and actual patients as people have to leave for one reason or another. 

We got back to Rosa Mystica around 5:45 and were able to shower and take short naps before a 7pm dinner of liver, chicken, kale, rice, potatoes and bananas for dessert.  The three of us counted the registration cards to get statistics for both our project and for the Kenya Ministry of Health.  We are all now ready for bed after a very eventful day.  Thank you, Jesus for letting us show your love to the people we met today!