A Tribute to Mama Meggi

I got so lucky having such a wonderful Msambweni family to make me feel so at home in such unfamiliar surroundings. Everyone is truly wonderful, especially my Mama Meggi. She works long hours at a hospital in Tiwi Beach, about an hour away from home. She rises each day with the sun to get ready for her day and wakes me up each morning at 6:30 before leaving for work. I love that I get to start my day out with a big good morning hug, and she never seems to care what a sweaty mess I am after waking up and just laughs as I flail around in my mosquito net trying to break free.

I’ve was sick last week when some scratches on my legs became infected (because of course I’m going to get a leg infection while in Africa… but thankfully it’s fine now!) and she took such good care of me. When my fever first started to rise last week she took my temperature and then stated very matter of factly, “Well, it’s probably not malaria, those fevers are usually 39C or higher. Yours is 38.6C so it could be an infection or it could be sadness.” After assuring her that I was plenty happy in Msambweni and didn’t think my ‘hotness of body’ as they call fevers here was being caused by sadness she took me to get some antibiotics which took care of the infection.

Each night she lets me help cook dinner over our little jiko, or charcoal burning stove. I haven’t mastered my favorite food, chapatti, yet, but I have gotten pretty good at cooking fish and coconut rice. It’s a mission of mama’s to put some weight on my while in Msambweni, and the morning that she heard I ate 2 chapatti’s with my breakfast she was so thrilled that she proclaimed, “Molly! This day will surely go down in history!”.

I had a blast with her at the wedding last weekend and I’m excited to be going to an event to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday with her this upcoming Saturday. (I don’t know what that celebration entails, but I’ve learned to just go with it and it will surely be fun!)

Mama taking care of a chicken at the wedding

Mother and daughter :-)

Wedding Pictures

So many cute things in this picture (I mean, look at Suleiman's hat!)

Dressed in my Nigerian Finest

Blessing the food before cooking

With Sulie before the wedding

Swahili Wedding Weekend

This was a weekend I’ll never forget! I knew things were going to be good when Mama proudly proclaimed, “We’re going to make you look like a Nigerian!”…

The preparations started Friday after work when a woman came over to paint me and Mama with traditional henna wedding tattoos (Don’t worry Mom, they’ll wash off in a few weeks!). It was a labor intensive process—it took 2 hours to paint my hands and legs and then Mama and I camped out in front of the fan for another 2 hours while they dried. The woman who was painting us was so excited to see her artwork pop against my light skin and took copious amounts of cell phone pictures. I was the epitome of Swahili hotness once it was done; everyone who saw me in town commented on how “smart” I looked.

Saturday morning the family headed off to my Mama’s home village about an hour away so we could help prepare for her cousin’s wedding. Weddings here are weekend-long celebrations, with family and friends arriving a day in advance to help prepare food and begin the celebration. Everyone was so friendly, but almost no one spoke any English—I got a lot of mileage out of nodding and smiling, remembering how my mom used to tell stories of how her deaf students would do the same in large group situations where no one spoke sign language. I was so happy Sulie and I had bonded so well last week because he clung to me and gave me an air of legitimacy—it looked much better than if he had still shrieked in terror at my sight! Late afternoon, Mama proclaimed that it was time to make me look like a Nigerian, and we were off for clothing change #1. She dressed me in a louder outfit, complete with headwrap, and we were ready to start preparing for the evening’s festivities. We had dinner and hung out until about 10, when a traditional Swahili band came to start the Taarub dancing. Women were still sewing outfits by candlelight past midnight, many rounds of chai were passed around to help keep everyone awake, and the music built as the night went on. I went to bed ‘early’ around 2am, but the celebrating continued for at least a couple more hours! Hundreds of people were there—for such a remote village this wedding sure drew a croud.

The next morning, anticipation was in the air. Mama dressed me up again and I got to watch her kill and prepare a chicken… I’ll just say I’m glad we don’t eat much meat in Msambweni and leave it at that. After more cooking and visiting Mama changed me into my 3^rd outfit and everyone started to get ready for the ceremony. We sat under shade trees, men on one side and women on the other. There was lots of talk in Swahili, and then the groom and his procession entered the bride’s house for the actual ceremony. Mama let me sneak in with her for a peak, and I saw the bride and groom pouring water and doing reciting what I think were their vows. She was lovely in green (white dresses aren’t a traditional thing here… unfortunately neither is wedding cake). After more proceedings the bride and groom left on piki piki (motorbike) and everyone started to head home to recover from the weekend’s festivities.

I'm having problems getting pictures uploaded with my extremely 'reliable' internet modem that I'm using to get service in Msambweni. I'll try to get some up soon, but in the meantime check out some wedding pics at mollyinkenya.tumblr.com ! xoxo miss you all!

Island Outreach

It costs 300 shillings (about $4) to get from Funzi Island to Msambweni District Hospital. Unfortunately, that’s far more than most of the islanders can afford, so once a month the Mother-Child-Health team packs up and goes on an outreach day to Funzi. I got to join along yesterday, and it was unlike any day of work I’ve ever had! We drove for 45 minutes, then, when we were bordering the Indian Ocean in the middle of nowhere we got on a small motor boat. After a half hour long boat ride to help me work on my sunburn, we arrived on the gorgeous island.

The people living on Funzi Island are so poor, it was really hard to see. It makes Kisita Kwao, the village I live in, look downright modern. I had ventured to Diani Beach, the closest tourist hotspot, earlier this week for a little R&R (thanks to my pale skin I can walk into any hotel and enjoy the amenities without being questioned). Comparing my experience in Funzi with the excess of Diani is really tough. How do these places exist within just a couple of hours of each other? It’s like being transported to different worlds. Luckily, comparing the two makes Msambweni look like the perfect medium.

I got to give dozens of babies their Oral Polio Vaccines, and the rest of the team vaccinated for measles and gave the BCG vax for tuberculosis. We had a relaxing lunch of beans and chapatti on the island after clinic and left feeling like we had accomplished a lot.

On the way to Funzi Island

Me and Nurse Jane

Carrying free mosquito bed nets to the clinic

So many moms and babies showed up that there was overflow outside the clinic

Funzi Island

Winning Over Suleiman

I finally did it, my 2 year old brother Sulie likes me! It was quite the challenge, I must admit. He had never seen a white person before, so when I arrived last week he shrieked in terror whenever he laid eyes on me. Mama and Baba made an effort to have him around me and show that I was okay when I interacted with them, and referred to me as his ‘dada’ (sister). By the end of last week he was firmly indifferent. He no longer cried at the sight of me, but if it looked like I was going to be touching him he would lose it. I turned this into a game and would giggle whenever he’d be afraid of me touching him, which helped him feel like he was in control. Once he was okay with me laying my terrifying white paws on him I did a lot of singing and dancing. He loves the song ‘Waka Waka’ (how does everybody here love that song? I thought I was the only one who was obsessed!) so I’ve sang it hundreds of times since I’ve arrived while bobbing his arms up and down in mine. The final step of my plan was to carry him to his favorite place, the beach. The cousins and I go there almost every day, so on Monday I just picked him up like it was no thang and by the time he realized I was the one carrying him we were on our way to the beach so he had nothing to complain about. Since then we’ve been bonding all the time—I showed him pictures of his mama on my laptop, more singing and dancing to Waka Waka, and mama even had me help feed him dinner last night when he was being fussy and wouldn’t take food! He’s gone from crying at the sight of me to crying when I left for the hospital this morning; I’ve finally won over Suleiman!

Showing him pictures of Mama on my laptop

Baharini (at the beach)

My buddy!

Hey Mami, Kanga?

This weekend was full of adventures. On Friday I went to Mombasa and met up with a friend who’s doing her internship on the North Coast. I navigated the matatu and ferry rides by myself which was a major accomplishment—they can be pretty intimidating. We walked around the city on Friday and then at night went out to a club called ‘Florida’. There were some interesting characters there, but I did manage to make friends with some pirate fighters. Seriously, though. They were Italian sailors on leave from battling the Somalian pirates.

Saturday we decided to tackle some of touristy Mombasa things that we miss out on by not being in the city. We started out at Fort Jesus, a hundreds of years old building built by the Portuguese that was used by the Arabs and British at different time periods and even functioned as a slave castle for a while. Then we found our way to the famous Mombasa Spice Market. The aromas were tantalizing and the people were so friendly and willing to let us smell everything and try free samples. After that we headed to Biashara St., famous for the colorful cloth Kangas and Kitengas sold there. This place is insane. Calls of ‘Hey Mami! Kanga hapa!’ abounded, and the choices were enough to make even this seasoned shopper’s head spin. We finished off trip with lunch at a delicious Indian restaurant (it was my first time eating meat all week!).

When I got back to Msambweni Saturday afternoon, my weekend was really just getting started. Sunday was a wedding day! One of the neighbors was getting married, and I got all decked out in my coastal-finest and accompanied my mama and auntie to the ceremony. It was supposed to start at 9am but by 11 nothing had happened except we’d eaten and socialized. There was lots of Swahili gossip floating around that I couldn’t understand, and all my mama would tell me was that the groom hadn’t shown up and ‘he’s probably sick’. Thankfully I have a 15 year old friend Aisha here who came over later in the day to give me the full scoop! The groom wanted to attend his brother’s wedding first, which was also held today (?) but everyone got upset and the bride’s mother denounced the groom and it was just all sorts of news. Quite an interesting experience for my first African wedding! All in all it was a very successful first weekend in Msambweni :-)

Fort Jesus

Spice Market

SO many kangas!

Communal eating at the wedding

My Aunt and I at the Wedding

On the Other Side of the Operating Table

Wednesday and Friday I spent my time at the hospital in the operating theatre. Fortunately, for once I wasn’t the one being operated on! There’s no surgeon at Msambweni District Hospital, but there’s a visiting orthopedic surgeon from Belgium for a bit and the regular doctors actually do quite a few procedures. I got to observe and do some minor assistance, and seeing things from the other side of the operating table was quite an interesting experience. They use spinal anesthesia and keep the patients awake for almost all procedures done here. As somewhat of an anesthesia connoisseur, I was shocked and appalled until I asked one of the doctors about it. She explained that ‘the people here are very mystic, they prefer not to be put asleep all the way’.

I’ve been really enjoying my internship so far. I spent this past week in the Maternal-Child Health ward, and will be there again next week. Then I’ll be moving to the HIV Clinic, and finally to the Maternity/Neonatal Ward. The nurses and doctors are all really welcoming, and it’s so powerful to be learning in such a different environment than I’ve been exposed to with my hospital experiences thus far. People come to the hospital from all of the rural villages on this end of the South Coast, and there’s a desperate need for greater access to healthcare here. You know the patients you’re seeing are underserved when they let a scrotal hydrocephele grow for years until it is literally the size of a football. When they can’t afford the $30 operating room fee and a child’s knee goes unset for days, causing him immeasurable pain. When you weigh 30 babies in a morning and barely make a dent in the nurse’s workload. But it’s so rewarding— the joy of everyone in the room when the baby born by C-Section with meconium in his lungs wailed his first cry was palpable, and I’ve never felt prouder than when I gave 40 babies their oral polio vaccines at an outreach clinic.

The way it was

The way it is now :)

Not my knee being cut open, for once!