The Internship Begins

I had my first day of my internship yesterday!  I'll be spending the summer at KEMRI, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and UNITID, the University of Nairobi Institute of Tropical & Infectious Diseases.  I was paired with my mentor, the wonderful Dr. B, an incredibly sweet woman who I can tell will teach me a lot.

My main focus will be assisting her with a research project involving breastfeeding in HIV+ women.  As I was being introduced to the project I couldn't believe my good fortune to be working on something that interests and matters to me so much.  I'll have the opportunity to work in some Nairobi City Clinics a couple of days each week and I'll spend the rest of my time in the UNITID building.  I share an office with some of the coolest Kenyan nurses who are such a big inspiration to me already.

So far I've been busy completing my human subjects training, which gives me clearance to ethically do research on people, attending a couple of lectures Dr. B. has given to U of Nairobi public health graduate students about writing research proposals, and getting to know my coworkers and how everything works.

I was expecting more bumps and hiccups to be honest, but things have gotten off to a really great start (knock on wood!).

eye love you

Anifa is sunshine for my soul.

A Week in Heaven

Hey all!  I'm back in Nairobi now after a week with my family on the coast in Msambweni.  I'm having a hard time putting the bliss I felt this past week into words; all my attempts feel cliched or inadequate, but I'm going to try!

The week started off with an adventure: my bus arrived in Mombasa at 9pm, when all the public transportation to the south coast had stopped running.  Thankfully my Baba is ever-resourceful and after meeting me at the bus station commandeered a passing matatu, convincing the driver to change directions completely and take us the hour drive to home.  When we arrived in Msambweni I instantly started to get choked up.  All of my cousins had stayed awake for my arrival and gave me the warmest welcome ever: I was home.

Some highlights of the week:

Meeting my new baby sister Sakina for the first time

Giving big love to my little guy, Suleiman

Eating the freshest mangoes, handpicked by my cousin Abee

Enjoying Auntie Tima's chapatis all day, everyday

It was truly wonderful to spend time with my Kenyan family.  It's so amazing to me, the love that can grow in a year.  Fifteen months ago we hadn't yet met, and now they've taken up permanent residence in my heart.  Leaving them to return to Nairobi was SO hard: Suleiman's goodbye shouts of "I LOVE YOUU DADA MOLLY!" (dada means sister in Swahili) melted me.  The good news is I'll be visiting them for a weekend in July, and spending another week there in August-- this is the first time we parted ways and known when our next meeting would be, making things infinitely easier.

Zurich

I'm finally in Nairobi!  The journey went smoothly and I made it to Kenya without any trouble (AND, my luggage made it this time!).  I was lucky enough to spend a whirlwind 24 hours in Switzerland on my way here, and wanted to share a few pictures from my mini-European vacation.

Msambweni Sunshine

Some procrastinating during final exam week led to the creation of this video- check it out :) I can't wait to get back to this place next week!

Go to Saigon, go to Kenya

“I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about; I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on.”

-Henry Rollins

Mwisho (The End)

"Though she was young, she was no timid child. She was curious about things. She liked to ask questions... She had a quick mind and she paid attention, picking up phrases of the language, learning how to cook rice and eat with her hands... It intrigued her, the land and the mystery. She loved the thatched roofs and the naked children, the wonderful simplicity of village life. Her eyes seemed to glow; she couldn't get enough of it. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty, in fact sometimes she seemed fascinated by it. Not blood and gore so much, but the adrenaline buzz that went with her job, that quick hot rush in your veins when you had to do things fast and right. She didn't back away from ugliness; she was quiet and steady. There was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself.

Her stare encompasses everything around her, the mountains, the villages, the trails and the trees and rivers and deep misted-over valley, the hurt and the hunger, and the joy. She said, " I know what you think, but it's not... it's not bad."

"You just don't know," she said. You hide in this little fortress behind your stuff and your comfort and you don't know. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Just swallow the whole country, the dirt and the death, I just want to have it there inside me. That's how I feel. It's like... this appetite for life. I get scared sometimes - lots of times - but it's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I know exactly who I am. You can't feel like this anywhere else."

She said it just like that and they all just looked at her with those big round eyes, not believing a word. They don't understand zip, it's like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like. That's the thing. You gotta taste it. She was there. She was up to her eyeballs in it.

She came over clean but she got her hands dirty and afterwards she could never be the same. It was like an unnamed drug. The needle slips in and you know you're risking something and though it hurts, you can't stop. The endorphins start to flow, and the adrenaline, and you become intimate with the danger and the devastation. Not bad, she said. It made her glow in the dark. She wanted more. She wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and then that wanting became needing, and needing became craving and she had to go. She couldn't pretend she was the same.

She could look at you with this little smile in her eyes and she was lost inside herself. Lost inside the country and the people and the sadness and the joy. She was the poverty. She was the land. She was still that innocent bright eyed girl from a land far away. But now, she was on fire."

-Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried