It has been a rough few days at the Sally Test Center.  On Monday I had to take Eden to get some of her immunizations and one of them gave her a really bad fever.  She was sick Monday and Tuesday and it was hard to watch.  Also, one of the boys that has been a wonderful leader and helper to us at STC took a turn for the worse over the weekend.  He was too weak to even come to the celebration yesterday.
I told one of the guys that works here that in the midst of my excitement about getting to spend time with the kids and hold babies, I forgot that these kids are patients at the hospital.  They are sick and have such sad stories and some of them even die.  The teachers that I work with are wonderful but I have no idea how they do it year after year.
On a positive note today both Eden and Michael were feeling better.  Eden ate two bowls of cereal for breakfast (she normally doesn’t finish one) and she ate well the rest of the day.  She even ate an entire banana before I left at 5.  Michael was up and walking this afternoon and said he still felt tired but he didn’t feel as sick.  He gets daily chemo treatments so he’s bound to have low periods.  Please pray for the kids and the adults that are at the Sally Test Center.  We have fun, but there is a lot of sadness, too.
I met with Eden’s social worker from the hospital today.  She wasn’t able to give me very much information but said that she would talk to the chief children’s officer at the hospital and have information for me tomorrow.  At least we got the ball rolling.  YEA!! 

Meghan and I decided to try out a local church here on Sunday. We forgot to arrange going with anyone, so we went to the big church near the hospital that had posted their times out front. They had three services: 8am English, ?? English (Main), and 11:00 Swahili. Since we couldn’t remember the main english service time, we were forced to go to the early service (early service!?! ). I can’t remember the last time I went to an early service in the States, but its probably a lot like this was! This was a big pretty big church (see picture of it on our photos page), but there were maybe only 10 people in there when we sat down!

We had been hoping that the English service would have at least a few white folks: we were right, Meghan and me! So that was a little odd, but we got a program, sat down and waited. The service started on time (not on Kenyan time, ON time!) with about 20 people.

After a few hymns there were about 30 people and it happened. Its what every new church goer dreads: we were called out. The pastor said, “We would like to welcome all of our visitors (bam! 60 eyes on us) to Assembly and we invite them all to stand up (bam! 62 eyes on us as the pastor looks at us). Meghan and I debated for about 2 seconds faking like we were regular attendees, but for some reason I don’t think that would have fooled anyone. So we had to stand, people clapped, the assistant pastor shook our hands, blah blah blah, we’re going to the 9:00 AM service next week!

After church we walked back by the Sally Test center and spent some time with Eden and the other equally cute babies (you wouldn’t know it from how Meghan talks about the STC though!). Meghan had packed a sandwich for herself, but I just bought some corn on the side of the road for 14 cents (picture on photos page). It tasted like a 14 cent piece of corn too! The corn here is more like field corn, not as tender as in the US…and just grilling the corn doesn’t help it any!

That afternoon I went with some of the AMPATH guys to play soccer. Its the first time I can remember playing an outdoor pickup game, on a mostly uncut field, with a bunch of Kenyans, and just some posts for goals! It was quite fun. The altitude (7000 feet) was killing me, but I managed to score. Even though we ended up losing 5-3, I went home satisfied!

For dinner we finally cooked the frozen whole chicken we bought last week. Our Kenyan roommate (Pamela) helped us cut it and then saute/boil it. It turned out to be pretty good, but Meghan was thoroughly grossed out by the whole cleaning, gutting, carving procedure. I’m pretty sure we’ll just be buying the chicken breasts from now on!

I’m up and watching the Colts beat up on the Cardinals at 3:30 AM. Our neighbor has a 42 inch TV and a satellite: this is a very nice taste of home!

We had an ultrasound today over at the Riley Mother and Baby Hospital. Sierra was able to see the baby’s head, arms, heart beating, ribs, and legs. It was being a little difficult so it took her a few minutes to get the wand in the right position. Meghan turned a little bit and … Click to continue »

Ben and I met a woman from the US that lives here full time and has an OB/GYN office here. She was at dinner with us tonight and she said that we can go in tomorrow afternoon (assuming she doesn’t have any emergencies) to have an ultrasound to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. YEA! We’re super excited to get to see the baby again! Please pray that everything goes well and that things look good!

Good news! I found a meal that I consider a success! I made Mac and Cheese last night with a slightly varied recipe because we could only find Parmesan cheese in the store, but it was really good. Ben says he liked the soup better, but I know that I am right.

I have been very busy at the Sally Test Center. We go in the morning around 9 and I stay until Ben is done with work at 5. We dance with the kids from 10-11 and 2-3 each day. The rest of the time is spent playing, holding babies and planning lessons and dances. It’s really nice to be busy during the day and to be able to use my skills in a helpful way.

I have already completely fallen in love with one of the abandoned babies (I know, you’re all shocked). Her name is Eden and she is SO cute. They are guessing she’s about 10 months. She was found alone and brought to the hospital at the end of August because she was so malnourished. She is doing really well and is crawling some and will pull herself up on my legs to get me to pick her up. She likes to stick her tongue out at me so that I will stick mine out at her, then she tries to grab my tongue. The Sally Test Center closes at 4 but since Ben doesn’t finish work until 5, I sit in the waiting area in the peds wing and hold her. When the babies leave the STC at 4, they are put two to a “crib” in the wings. I will have to take a picture of the wings. They are shocking. No private rooms just rows of beds. And the cribs are like cages. One of the peds docs told me that during the night (from 4pm-8am) no one holds the babies and they rarely have diaper changes because the nurses are so busy. It’s really sad and when Ben comes and I have to put Eden back in her crib she cries and cries and I want to join her (but I’ve only done it once).

Anyway, I’m trying to come up with a great plan for a way to adopt her before we come home in December. Any great ideas? All suggestions are welcome! Hope you enjoy the new pictures!

Well, we made it to Eldoret! We flew Friday morning (left our hotel at 4:30am) from Cape Town to Johannesburg and then spent about six hours sitting in the NWA lounge in Jo’burg which was really nice. We then flew from Jo’burg to Nairobi and got in on Friday night. We had a bit of a rough night in Nairobi between the phone call at 1am and the strange old man that thought his friends were staying in our room. He rang the doorbell four times between 5 and 6am. Saturday morning was spent in a meeting with some people from CHAK (Christian Hospital Association of Kenya) explaining the benefits of using OpenMRS in their hospitals (I played a vital role in the conversations as you can imagine).

We flew to Eldoret Saturday afternoon and made it to our new “home” in time for dinner. We lucked out and were invited to dinner at the Chinese restaurant in town by Joe Mamlin (the man who runs the program here). Sunday we tried to sleep in but between the rooster crowing from 4am-11am, the dogs barking all night and day and the gates opening and closing that didn’t really happen. We went grocery shopping (an interesting experience) and then I set up our room while Ben worked. The plan was that I would do a lot of cooking here which is why we needed a kitchen but the cooking has not been a huge success. This is mostly because we have no way of measuring anything and we don’t have any basic ingredients that you might find in the US. So far I’ve attempted spaghetti and tomato soup and both were edible but far from delicious.

Ben worked today. He really had it rough, sitting outside on a covered porch enjoying the sunshine and light breeze while “working”. I got up at 7:45 and headed with two other women to the Sally Test Center. We danced ourselves into puddles of sweat with the kids there then walked the 15 minutes back to the IU House where we had lunch then walked the 15 minutes back and spent the afternoon dancing some more. Ben met me at the hospital and we walked another 10 minutes into town to do some more grocery shopping.

My poor little pregnant body is exhausted. My feet and ankles are swollen, I had to hold my hand in the freezer to get my wedding rings off because they were cutting my skin, and my toes look like stuffed sausages. However, I want it noted that at 4 1/2 months pregnant I was leaping and twirling and doing arabesques which impressed everyone that were there. The good news is that we won’t be dancing as much everyday starting next week.

We have been so busy that we haven’t even had time to take any pictures of our house. We will post pictures soon so that you can see where and how we’re living!

We have had a pretty busy few days here in Monkey Valley. On Friday night we went in to Cape Town for dinner and drinks. (One of us had more dinner and one of us had more drinks). It was fun to the see variety of people here and the similarities and differences between a city in South Africa and a city in the US. On Saturday we drove down the coast toward Cape Point. We stopped at several places along the way and had dinner right by the water where we got to see a whale.
The conference began on Sunday and quiet Monkey Valley is now filled with the clicking of geeks typing and deep discussions about modules and reports. I have attended several of the sessions, a couple intentionally and a couple unintentionally. I’ve seen Ben present four times and it’s very fun to watch him work.
I think Ben had high hopes that his programming knowledge had been leaking into me and that I would really wow people this week with my computer skills. I have to say that I can talk the talk. I know all of the lingo and can follow a conversation, but my lack of nerdiness was confirmed yesterday. I attended a presentation that Ben did on synchronization (which I think I figured out is something about making sure that all of the clinics have the same patient information) and Ben kept talking about this ‘parent’ and ‘child’ and ’siblings’ and the entire time I thought it was so nice that he was actually talking about people and what OpenMRS does for real, living people. Unfortunately I figured out about ten minutes before the presentation ended that those were also computer terms (although I don’t know what they mean).
The good news is that we now know for sure that Ben is a geek and I never will be and I think we are both happy to be what we are and to not be what we aren’t. I have to say though that after watching some of these people I am very thankful to have ended up with my geek and not one of the others.

Meghan mentioned in a previous post that we were able to look up from our computers for about 30 minutes last week and take a walk along the beach. I just uploaded those recordings to a great video sharing site called blip.tv .

You can see the three videos here:
http://wolfes.blip.tv

(I also took some video when we went over the the Indian Ocean side, I’ll let you know when I am able to upload those)

After our delightful walk on the beach last night (it was breezy but extremely beautiful watching the sun set over the ocean) we came back for a few more hours of work and then headed to dinner. We had a very interesting experience at dinner.
People who are attending the conference next week are slowly starting to arrive and last night three men from Zimbabwe joined us at dinner. Ben and I introduced ourselves to them and when they heard Ben’s name one of them said, “Oh, so you’re the OpenMRS guy!”
Ben played it off very nicely giving other people credit but they made several comments about his work and how important he is to OpenMRS.
It made me laugh because earlier this week I had commented on how everyone wants to run things by Ben or get his approval on stuff before they do them. Of course, I’ve known for years that he’s the best programmer around, but it’s funny to suddenly be surrounded by others that also think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’m anxious to see what happens next week when 150 people are begging for attention from ‘The OpenMRS Guy’ (make that 151 1/2 because I’ll be in line with everyone else ).

In other news, the whales are back, although much further out than they were before. And also, I’ve had several opportunities to chat with the two guys that are here from Kenya. One of them is married and his wife is on leave for the month of October so he said that I could hang with her. They are also going to take us to their church. I asked for details about his church last night and he said it is small and everything is in Swahili but he promised he would do some translating for us. I’m already missing our church and although we can download the sermons it’s not quite the same as being able to worship together and watching Aaron in action.
It is much warmer today and I spent a while sitting outside soaking up the sun and watching the ocean. We’re having a barbecue tonight (they call it a braai here) and tomorrow we’re going out into Cape Town for dinner so there’s a lot to look forward to!
Here’s a shout-out to my Grandma who fell yesterday and had to go to the hospital. We love you Grandma!

It turns out that blogs are very persuasive. We’re taking a break to go for a walk on the beach. YES!!