3-24-12–Dubai City of Merchants Tour

Our non-chatty driver picked us up at 8am and drove us to the Burj Al Arab, a beyond-super-exclusive hotel near the beach. There we met up with a very nice tour guide named Renatta and hopped onto a comfortably-sized bus with a bunch of other English-speaking folk (bonus!).

Our first stop was the above picture, a marjolis (sp?), which is a meeting room for men. Some sheik had this building and land and would have guests come to talk to him about anything going on. The main room is on the second floor and the breeze is lovely. They are working to recreate the gardens with a ductwork irrigation system as well.

The next stop was a huge mosque. Honestly, it was just a photo stop and I don’t have any clue about it, but the building was pretty.

Next, the “wind tower houses.” This is the coolest idea – they build these towers with walls inside forming an X (it would look like an X from the top or from underneath). The idea is that the wind would be caught and funneled down part of the X, while the hotter air would rise up the other sections of the X. Perfect for a beach house!

Next we went to the Dubai Museum and finally to the spice and gold souks (which I hated, go figure).

3-24-12–Dubai Arabian Nights

OH BOY was it windy! Gotta love being in the middle of a desert with a cranking wind. Um, sand like blows everywhere. Hard. Well, we made the best of it anyway.

The guide picked us up at our hotel as well as a German couple and a young lady from Seoul. The guide said nothing, and none of us talked to each other. It was kind of weird, especially coming on the heels of our great driver in Kenya, Newton, who would tell us about his country all the time, pointing out scenes and giving us historical backgrounds. Actually, none of our drivers in Dubai said anything. It was really irritating.

Anyway, off we went driving, driving, driving in his Nissan Armada (with roll bars!). We finally reached the gates of the reserve.

The mute driver hopped out and deflated out tires. We waited while several other trucks did the same then it was off to go “dune bashing.” Weeelllll, guess I really shouldn’t have eaten that huge lunch at the hotel because all that rolling and bouncing and turning and sliding was, uh, a little uncomfortable (don’t worry, I didn’t throw up!). The ride initially was pretty awesome but then, and I know I speak for Brad too, it just got plain old. We were like, “OK, where’s the little tent camp? Had enough of this!”

We did stop for a couple photo opportunities and a cool falconry demonstration (this photo would totally rock but I didn’t catch the whole bird) but we finally reached a snuggly little camp deep in the dunes.

The tent camp was actually pretty cool. There were many tables set up low to the ground with big cushions for seats. There was also a belly dancing “stage” area with more cushions, a sand bottle guy (we paid about 4x what they sold for in the airport, darn it!), a henna lady (still have the funky pattern on my hand – it kind of makes me look like I should be on Stargate or Star Trek), a bar and a lot of food. We got bowls of tasty tidbits and were sitting back to relax when the tour folks said that dinner was served. Huh? Well what was that we just ate, then? Oh, just appetizers. Ugh. Anyway, it was pretty good. Then it was time for belly dancing. I hope she really enjoyed it (she looked like she did). We met two families from Sugar Land. Small world.

Finally, the night wrapped up and we head back to the Marco Polo hotel (nice place, but be sure to get a non-smoking room if they have them. I didn’t even think about it, they didn’t ask and my backpack still smells). We ordered a 5:40 wake up call and crashed.

3-22-12–Kibera

Kibera is the second largest slum in the world; only Soweto in South Africa is larger. We had passed by it previously, but today we had some time to kill before heading to Lake Nakuro so Newton gave us a mini-tour.

There are more tin buildings than the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. Apparently the central part of the “city within a city” is more residential, and there were market stalls lining both sides of the street that circled the area. It appears to be fairly self-sufficient. The stalls had every single thing you could imagine you might need to live and Newton said those things actually cost less in Kibera than elsewhere. For example, a loaf of bread might be 50 Ksh (Kenya shillings) in Nanyuki but only 30 Ksh in Kibera.

I could see children playing in school uniforms, women hanging up clothes, men building some sort of house, a german shepherd on a rooftop (that was odd – and there are very few dogs around Kenya, totally unlike say, the Bahamas where there are packs of strays and they aren’t generally kept as pets like we do), AK47 toting officers, trash sorting folks and so on. Aside from the extraordinarily unsanitary conditions (I swear there’s no trash pick up anywhere) I think Kibera was pretty cool. I saw one man outside a butcher shop sharpening his knife. He was using a bike wheel with a wire set up on the axel that he would step on and off of – that would make the wheel spin which would in turn spin his whetting stone. It was totally awesome. If I didn’t hate hawkers so much I would have enjoyed walking around. I’m not sure Newton would have been OK with that though!

We drove to a peak that overlooked Kibera and discovered a camera crew there filming a musician playing some weird pipes using Kibera as the backdrop. When questioned they explained that they were filming musicians from all over the globe for the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 40th year of her monarchy. So that’s kinda cool – we got to watch some of the filming and maybe we’ll get to see it on TV. Princess Elizabeth was on safari (about 100 meters from where we broke down that day) when she was told about her father’s death. She was actually in a tree when she learned she was the queen of England.

3-20-12–Nairobi walk to museums

Brad and I decided to check out the Nairobi museums, particularly the Snake House. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE walks everywhere in Kenya. That’s probably a good thing because the traffic and driving and traffic circles are horrific enough without another 2 million cars.

We looked up the directions on Google, and set off with a handwritten list of road names and turns. This probably would have worked out great but we discovered that the roads rarely have road signs. Not to mention about 2 blocks from the Guest House the construction started. If there had been road signs they were now long gone. We asked several people for directions along the way (tipping them uselessly) and ended up getting not so much lost as turned around. We finally found the back gate of Arboretum and wandered through to the main gate where we discovered that it cost $10000 Ksh  to take any photos! That’s over $12.00 for a couple of shots of a cactus. We said no way and walked right on out of that park.

 

Stopped at the State House to ask directions from yet another person with a big honking gun. Then ran into Kenyan Boy Scouts who were collecting donations to go to camp. They did their little scout creed. It was precious.

Finally hoofed it nearer to the museums but got accosted by a man with no arms begging for money. While I was curious to hear his story I refused to make eye-contact because I have some ingrained fear that they’ll see weakness and attack me for more money. The guy had lost his arms in a motor vehicle accident when he was a child. The doctors had (surprisingly) done a really cool thing and took the two bones of his left forearm and skin & muscle grafted them so that the two bones actually are separate, wrapped in skin, and act as a set of pincers. Creepy, yet cool at the same time. We gave him some money but he just kept following us.

Along the way we discovered some more mzungas from Seattle and chatted with them. They were also on a medical mission.

Brad and I headed into the Kenya National Museum. It was pretty nice. The exhibit on the bones found here in Kenya that helped piece together our evolution was really cool. I think they were the real bones, actually! There was another good exhibit discussing whether evolution is still occurring even though we are no longer permitting natural selection to occur. They cited some good examples such as disease resistance.

Nairobi also has a Snake Park so of course we had to go there. That’s when we discovered that the snake we’d seen in Ol Najura gorge in Hell’s Gate park was actually a BLACK MAMBA. How totally cool is that? The Snake Park is really quite shabby. Kris’s garage exhibition is nicer, I believe. But there is a central garden area where a variety of species were just living, wandering through rocks and little bushes and climbing trees.

Decided NOT to hoof it back up to the Methodist House so we got a cab. The cab driver and everyone we’ve told since were amazed that we walked to the museums. We figured everyone walks so what’s the big deal? However, I guess they don’t walk as far. Big difference.

Pumula was our restaurant of choice for the evening and it was totally delicious. Peter, our waiter, provided terrific service and we left quite satisfied.

3-17-12–Clinic, Day 4

We all decided to make this last day of clinic a half day. We were running low on many medicines, but to finish them off Dr. PJ literally walked out in the line of people waiting and doled out pain meds for those hurting, worm pills for those complaining of stomach/intestinal issues, multivitamins to everyone and folic acid to women of childbearing age.

As always, the view was phenomenal. Mt. Kenya seemed to be just over the hill. The wind was blowing hard and the dust was settling everywhere. I’m not sure I’ll ever get all the dust out of my camera’s nooks & crannies (or mine!).

Ending this day was bittersweet – we had accomplished a lot, but there were so many more people who needed help, ongoing help. Our pain pills might work for days or a week, but will they be able to get more when they need them? It’s heartwarming to help them, and so hard to leave.

We had a great band of workers on board and it was sad to break down that last day.

3-16-12–Day Three of Clinic

Back to the clinic. The one memorable thing about this day was one child. He was a two year old boy who had cerebral palsy. Mom was demonstrating how he couldn’t support his own head or move his arms or legs. Dr. PJ had to explain to the mother that he would never have use of his extremities and that he had severe, incurable problems. Brad said mom was young, maybe 19. It was very sad.

I’ll post photos tomorrow…

3-14-12–The Clinic, Day 1

 

		The Clinic VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

This will be quick because I’m getting tired and I haven’t even tried to hook up to the Internet yet.

The day started quite cool and crisp. It was perfect for a walk to the church where were were holding our clinic. We met around 8am and got working on arranging the check in tables, the triage area and the pharmacy. Dr. PJ and Brad generally ran the front desks using some incredibly helpful interpreters and Julie, Nikki and I worked in the pharmacy handing out meds. Generally people were coming in for aches and pains for which we prescribed 1x2x10 Ibuprofen pills (1 pill, twice/day for 10 days – I’m learning a lot of medilingo and medicines in general). We had one abscess, which Brad was all sorts of excited to suck out/cut open/whatever, I avoided watching and Nikki was excited to see. Dr. PJ was a little like, “OMG, who knows what kind of staph we have floating around here, wear a mask.” We had a couple of shots for kiddos, a lot of worm medicine and some random other stuff. I really believe we went through more than half of the common medicines, and we are just getting started.

The people are all very sweet and the translators are essential. The church folks have been super accommodating and served us morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea. They are a great group of folks.

The kids are really wonderful and deserve a blog post of their own, so I’ll stop here for the time being. Tomorrow we’ll be heading to another location down the road. After seeing 257 (official) patients today, I wonder what we have in store for tomorrow!

3-15-12 – Kinoria Church, Meru, Kenya, Day 2 of our Clinic

Another beautiful day in Kenya. The road to this church was long and incredibly bumpy. I really can’t imagine how they do it in the rainy season. And the people who come to our clinics are all walking, except for a very rare motorcycle. No cars. Not one. In fact, one centenarian was delivered to us via wheelbarrow (a photo I’m very, very sorry I didn’t get, although I do have photos of her). They travel great distances to see us. There are no subdivisions, just small, random plots of land that they use for farming a little bit. Our host mother, Catherine, also has sheep and a man who comes in the mornings to take them to graze somewhere and brings them back at night.

The one memorable thing for me this day was my new friend, Purity. She was a real sweetheart; 13 years old, gentle and kind. She sort of followed me around for a bit, then brought her friends to meet me. Purity even wanted my phone number so she can call me in the states.

Right now we are traveling to Meru, which is on the other side of Mt. Kenya. It’s on the windward side of the mountain so it is much greener and quite lush. They grow tea, coffee, bananas, mangos, avocados, arrowroot, just about anything you can think of. Rev. Kaburu’s mother lives here and we will eat lunch with her. Newton is also from somewhere along our route. We bought big straw baskets for 100 Ksh each – they might be my best African purchase!

3-13-12 = Kirimba Church School

The church we are working with has a school associated with it. It’s a co-ed elementary school and we got an opportunity to tour it while most of the kiddos weren’t there. This little gentleman is showing us how he knows so many English words. He did a great job! English is actually the official language of Kenya, although most everyone speaks Ki Swahili (I may have spelled that wrong, but I’ll check later). There are about a zillion other “mother tongues” but apparently most people can understand several, and speaking many languages isn’t unusual.

While we were touring the facility I couldn’t help but think about the schools we have and compare them. The worst school I’ve been to work is a high school near the University of Houston (WAY scary). They had their computers all chained together and I could hear raucous fights in the halls and hollering coming up through the radiators near the windows. That school was like a castle in comparison. Think back to when you’ve seen photos of your grandparents sitting on benches in rows writing with chalk and a chalk board. This is kind of similar, actually.

		Kirimba School VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It’s a boarding school, so there are bunk rooms and a dining hall and the kids wash their own clothes, and they get a gorgeous view of Mt. Kenya every day, which is certainly something very special.