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!! 🙂