Weekend in Nairobi!

            On Friday, Neeli and I went to the hospital in the morning to participate in rounds. We couldn’t find the doctor we are supposed to follow so we decided to ask one of the interns from Seattle if we could follow him for a while. He said it would be no problem at all and added jokingly that it would be great if we could figure out what was wrong with is patients for him. This is when we reminded him that we have only finished one year of medical school. His name is Kelly and he’s probably almost 7 feet tall with long hair that he keeps in a pony tail. The cause of illness in most of Kelly’s patients still hadn’t quite been pinned down. One of the patients was thought to have a disease called Black Water Fever, which we learned was a form of malaria so severe that it caused renal failure. We also saw a patient with congestive heart failure, COPD, and inactive leprosy sores. When Kelly examined this patient, he measured the patient’s JVP. Hmm, so maybe POM (Practice of Medicine) is helpful? I thought this was funny because we had learned that JVP was rarely measured anymore, but I guess when you are in a 3^rd world country you have to rely on cheaper (in this case free!) and more basic examination tools. Another patient was thought to either have pulmonary TB that spread to his cerebellum or primary lung cancer with a metastasis to the cerebellum. Before moving on with his case, they would need to biopsy the mass in his lung. Kelly was a great teacher. He explained everything very well and even went over chest x-rays and CT brain scans with us. Once we finished rounding with Kelly, we found Dr. Mirielle and began rounding with her. Dr. Mirielle is from Madagascar so she too kind of sticks out from the majority of the crowd at Kijabe Hospital. She too is a great teacher and truly cares for her patients. We saw one of the patients that I had seen my first day at the hospital. This patient is HIV positive, has Karposi’s sarcoma, neurosyphilis, TB, and a resolving herpes zoster infection. The herpes zoster infection (which affects the nervous system) was so bad that it had caused the patient to become paralyzed from the hips down. This not only means that she could no longer walk, but that she also could not control her bladder/bowel movements. Dr. Mirielle explained that since the infection had resolved her strength was starting to return, but since she is incontinent she is not able to benefit from physical therapy. When she would wet herself, the therapists would just send her back to the ward. Dr. Mirielle tried to find an adult diaper for her, she was told the hospital did not have any and the patient’s family had no money to buy them. It’s so heartbreaking to me that this woman’s only option is to sit in her own filth until one of the nurses can clean her.

Giraffe Centre

            We finished at the hospital around 1 pm so we went back to our house to take a nap before heading to Nairobi for the weekend. Our driver arrived at 4:30, but we did not reach the apartments we would be staying in until 8:40! It takes about an hour to get to Nairobi from Kijabe and we stopped on the way to buy groceries to make dinner later. We did our best to buy the ingredients to make pizza. After foolishly asking if there was any pepperoni in the store, we decided to go with lamb sausage as the topping for the pizza since one from our group doesn’t eat beef and another is allergic to chicken. Once we left Westgate (the mall with Kenya’s version of Wal-mart – Nakumatt), we got stuck in the worst traffic I have ever seen. We would literally go for 15 minutes without moving an inch! When we finally did move, all the cars would lurch forward at once to fill every available space on the road. Even though we were pretty close to the apartments, it took us about an hour to get to them. It was great to see everyone from House of Hope once we finally arrived. We traded stories of what we had seen at our respective sites while preparing dinner. The rest of the night we enjoyed watching some TV and just chatting with each other.

Trevor and a giraffe

            Around 10 am Saturday morning we left the apartments to take full advantage of our day in Nairobi. We grabbed lunch at Nairobi Coffee House while we figured out our plan of action for the day. After lunch, we went to the Giraffe Centre first. It is made up of about 104 acres of land with 8 giraffes and a few warthogs here and there. There is a feeding area right when you walk into the centre and the giraffes are only feet away. They stand at the edge of the fence where visitors can feed them little pellets of food. It is so fun to feed them! They have super long tongues that feel like sand paper and when you hold out a pellet, they wrap their tongue around it. They are also a lot bigger up close than I thought they would be. JR even let one of them lick him – 3 times! Once we left the Giraffe Centre, we walked down this trail intended for bird watching. We never saw many birds, but it was still a nice walk! Trevor thought he found some cool eggs, but when I came over to see them, I laughed at him because they were actually giraffe droppings. From there we went to another park with crocodiles, turtles, ostriches, a giraffe, and a camel. Sounds like a random assortment of animals, but the park was mainly geared toward crocodiles. When I first saw the crocodiles, I didn’t even think they looked real. Our tour guide proved they were by poking them with a long bamboo stick. First they would hiss without even moving a muscle. Once they had been provoked enough they would snap their jaws shut which made a funny popping noise. One of the crocodiles was 47 years old! We also saw teenage crocs and baby crocs. The guide picked up one of the baby crocs for us to get a close look. Then he let each of us hold it ourselves.

JR and a baby croc

I didn’t even want to touch it at first, but after some convincing, I had the thing around my neck! After spending some time with the crocs, we saw some turtles. One was around 20 years old and the other was 50 years old. The guide also let us hold these. Just as Toug was reaching for the older (and much bigger) turtle, it started peeing everywhere! Soon after the smaller one did the same thing. It was pretty funny to see – probably because I wasn’t the one in the path of the urine stream! The giraffe at this park was a different kind of giraffe than the ones we had seen at the Giraffe Centre. It was smaller and its spots looked a little different. Once we made our way through the park we headed back to the city to do some shopping at the Masai Market. This was a pretty nerve racking experience, but I found it a little bit exhilarating at the same time. As soon as we entered the market, we were swarmed by brokers. The brokers try to break up your group and force you toward products they are promoting. They also bring items to you and tell you that you need whatever item it is, and when you say no, they just keep badgering you. There were a lot of really cool items in the market – Masai blankets, carved masks and animal figurines, paintings, tons of beaded jewelry, and other little trinkets. I managed to buy 5 things for 1,000 shillings (which is about $10). I was pretty pleased with my bargaining skills! For dinner, we went to Carnivore, one of the top 50 restaurants in the world! It is basically like Fogo de Chao plus some exotic additions like ostrich, crocodile, and camel. The food was really great, especially after Neeli and I had been eating fruit and bread all week!  For dessert, I had pineapple pie with vanilla ice cream – so amazing! After dinner, we went back to our apartments and spent the rest of the night there. 

The 50 year old turtle!

Dinner at Carnivore - Michael, Neeli, Me, Trevor

            On Sunday, our driver came to pick us up around 1:30. On our way back to Kijabe, Neeli and I stopped at Nakumatt to pick up some groceries for the week. We still hadn’t eaten lunch so we grabbed croissant ham and cheese sandwiches at Dorman’s on our way out. Dorman’s is basically Kenya’s version of Starbucks. After we arrived in Kijabe, we unpacked our things and decided to take a walk around the compound since the weather was so nice. We always see tons of beautiful, exotic flowers and birds, but this time we also so some monkeys! The first one we saw was sitting on top of some trash cans rummaging through the trash. At first we thought I thought it was a bird, and then a cat, until I finally realized it was a monkey! Right when we saw it, we both kind of freaked out a little because we thought it might come after us. Neither of us had our cameras with us, but we decided we should go get them and try to snap a picture of the monkey. When we got back, the monkey wasn’t there of course, so we just continued our walk. Then, we noticed a ton of monkeys in this low lying area with tons of ivy and trees. There were probably over 20 of them and we stayed watching them for at least 30 minutes. Later that night we attempted to use our oven, but unfortunately we couldn’t find the pilot light to get it started. We spent over 30 minutes and used about 15 matches, but never figured it out. I think we’re going to have to get our neighbors help on this one! So that was our weekend in a nutshell!        

It's hard to see, but there is a monkey sitting on a stump in the middle of the picture