Hi all. I started mobile clinics and teaching this week. People just start lining up when they see the ICODEI van. Health care is free here for children under 5 but nobody can afford the transportation to get their children to a hospital. A father brought his 19 year old daughter in who had been having 5 - 15 seizures a week for the past 3 years without treatment. Another woman handed us a hospital report for her 2 year old child from September which diagnosed him with splenic carcinoma and she has not followed up. We went to a school for deaf children in the afternoon (the biggest in East Africa) which was incredible. I snuck into a dance class and saw all these children learning to feel the vibration of the drum through their feet.
Today we went to a very rural primary school for HIV awareness teaching and none of the children had ever seen a white person. I'm so glad I bought a camcorder before I came. I got the whole thing on film. They were so excited they were shaking. Our car broke down on the way out, which is a fairly regular thing and within about 2 minutes there were 60 kids around the car singing and banging on empty buckets and asking us to come out and dance. Not exactly the way a breakdown goes in the U.S. But such a better way to spend your time.
I was offered a chicken for marriage. That was a first. The other girls have been offered cows. Which is a much larger offering, obviously. Perhaps I should be offended?!
We all caught boda bodas (bikes with seats on the backs) this afternoon to come into town for a Tusker beer. Life is really great here.
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