Shots from Kijabe

I don't know why there are double posts

Deal w it for now.  But yes, I noticed.

Second contestant for strangest creature I've seen award

Saw this huge beetle walking across the road in Kijabe.  It got really unlucky because just one dude was coming up the hill on a motorcycle, and the bug ran into him.

Impressions from East Africa: food

I can tell you what I haven't seen in Africa yet:  not a single American fast food chain.  This isnt to say that they don't have any similar things.  I guess there are a few local fast food type places in Nairobi, although I didn't see them.  Also, lots of restaurants serve fried potatoes ("chips" they call them, as in Britain, instead of "French fries").

I haven't been able to really nail down a specific culinary style since I've been here, but the food is very tasty.  Cooked spinach seems to be common and that is one of my favorites.  Rice is standard at every meal.  Lentils and potatoes make frequent appearances.  At Saids house, his wife (Mama Kay) made a spicy red dish with meat and sauce that was excellent over rice.  Because of the amazing weather here, produce is outstanding and fruit is amazing.   Oddly, they don't seem to eat much salad despite all of the fresh vegetables.  I haven't seen anyone growing lettuce.  Actually, I only had my first salad of the trip at Dr Hansen's house, our 7th day in Africa.

When touring the hospital a couple days ago, Dr Hansen was saying how he almost never sees precocious puberty in children in Africa.  As for my own observations, I have seen very few under-nourished children since being here, but also I don't think I've seen a single over-weight child, let alone an obese one.

We were talking about the precocious puberty that we see in the states the other day.  It seems, anecdotally, more common in the African American community, and I bet there are stats to back that up.  It definitely affects Americans of all types, though.  Being here has pretty clearly demonstrated that it has nothing to do with being of African ancestry*, so it must be something about being of African ancestry in America.  Well, African Americans are more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status, and quality of diet decreases with socioeconomic status.

So what is it about the American diet that causes precocious puberty?  One culprit could be the antibiotics and growth hormones we pump in our food.  As Colleen pointed out, a chicken breast in Africa is much smaller than an American chicken breast.  Here, the chickens just wander around the fields all day eating bugs.  In America, chickens are manufactured.  Their breasts are so big they sometimes can't even walk.  Alternatively, the precocious puberty could just as easily be related to the number of calories American children get, and from where.  Simply over eating might encourage premature development.

There are a lot of claims about what American food is doing to American children.  Its hard to figure out what is hype and what is real.  Seeing a place like Tanzania provides a helpful contrast.   The food is mostly locally grown.  The cows and goats actually eat grass instead of growth hormone-infused corn.  The chickens are essentially feral.  The food is home cooked, and not from chain restaurants.  It becomes much easier to see what American food is doing to American children.

Obviously, American food has been negatively influencing American adults, too.  I had put on 10-15 pounds over the last year that was just not going away; I wouldn't be surprised if half of it was gone when I get home, if not all of it (my weight easily fluctuated).  Dr Hansen has lost forty pounds since being here.  So if anyone is struggling with their weight, just move here.  I've heard that McDonalds wants to expand onto this continent.  They should do Africans a favor, and not.  There are enough challenges here to deal with already.  The last thing Africa needs is an obesity epidemic driven by American government-subsidized industrially processed food.

Driving from Nairobi to Kijabe 2

I can't tell if that third picture is super awesome on my phone, but it looks pretty awesome, the way the shadow from the cloud is so well demarcated.  I was just taking pictures and planned to sift through them later.

Driving from Nairobi to Kijabe

Nairobi, Coptic Hospital continued

Dinner in Kijabe

Pictures from the walk to find food and our dinner at Mama Sikus a local Kijabe restaurant.

Pics from Friday

Shot of Kijabe, surgeons working, and the surgeon about to grab an undescended ("cryptorchid") testicle.

Coptic Church

Catching up

The first pic is a close up of Saids neighbors house.  A sturdy building fashioned from local materials.  Two is a last pic w the fam before leaving Tanzania.  Three is another shot of the school Colleen built.

Mount Meru

This is the mountain right by Saids house in Tanzania, but from outside of Arusha.

Most bizarre creature in Africa award?

It either goes to this guy or one of the "dik-dik"s which are antelope not much bigger than a housecat.  I saw this critter scurrying around while we were eating one night.  Then a dude caught it.  It was hard to take a clean photo of it.  It made funny noises but seemed fairly helpless when you held it upside-down.  The African people called it "karunguyeye" or something.

Day 9 / Friday: Coptic Hospital.

Today Colleen and I went to Nairobi with Dr Hansen, who was going to help an Egyptian doc there with a couple of pediatric surgery cases.  They were both young boys with an descended testicle.  This drastically increases the risk of testicular cancer so it is an important operation.

The Egyptian surgeon is a Coptic Christian, which apparently is very similar to Greek Orthodox (the inside of the Coptic church at the hospital looks just like my dad's church - look for pictures soon).  His name is Safwat, and he took us to lunch at an Egyptian restaurant by the hospital after the cases and told us his story.

He had been in Egypt and wanted to get married, but his in laws wouldn't let their daughter go until he had a reliable job.  So they wouldn't let him do more residency training in Britain, but they were fine when he got a contract to work in Uganda.  So he boarded a plane thirty years ago to start his career in Uganda.

But he never made it.  He got to Nairobi and his connection was canceled because of violence in Uganda.  He stayed in Nairobi while waiting for it to clear up but it never did, and anyway he got recruited to work in Kenya before even two weeks.  He was fresh out of training, but was supposed to work under the other surgeon at the hospital.  That surgeon basically retired like three days after Safwat started, so he was it, the only surgeon.

He did everything:  neurosurgery cases, ped cases, ortho cases, OB/gyn cases, even though he was barely trained for some of them.  In fact, he did even more.  Apparently the anesthesiologist was a drunk so he sometimes anesthetized the patients and then operated on them.  In fact, sometimes the hospital would not even have extra blood on hand.  So he would donate blood and then operate!

Course he has been in Kenya for thirty years or so now and the Coptic hospital seems very nice.  It has two operating rooms and decent enough equipment.  Plus they are working on a new building for the hospital, so things must be going well.

The cases went so well in fact that we were done well before rush hour and made it out of Nairobi without much difficulty.

Day 6, 7, 8?

Starting to lose track here.  The day after our safari was uneventful.  Did some internet, did some shopping, and took Saids family to dinner.  We went to the local Maasai market where the stuff is mostly hand made.  I got something very nice for my family after bargaining the guy down to the point that even Said was impressed.  China prepared me well.

Then the next day we drove to Kijabe.  It was two hours from Arusha to the border between Kenya and Tanzania.  The land in Tanzania is just stunningly beautiful.  Endless green pastures, rolling hills; looks like Microsoft Windows wallpaper. 

Then its two hours once in Kenya to Nairobi, from the border.  Kenya is much more barren and unforgiving.  Lots of quasi desert almost.  Very dusty, very hot.  Humans are the only mammals that have sweat glands over the whole body, and standing upright allows us to minimize sun exposure.  Being in Kenya makes me understand how we could be persistence hunters.  That is, early humans just relentlessly chased prey in the heat of day.  It's essentially a contest to see who succumbs to heat exhaustion first.  But the prey animals are covered in fur, can't sweat like we can, can't carry water, and have more sun exposed surface area.  But its not until you feel that sun and notice a complete absence of water when you really see why we won that contest. 

Then after two hours to Nairobi, it took probably another four to get to Kijabe when it should have taken one, because like I posted before, the traffic was just PAIN.

Today was our first full day in Kijabe.  The hospital here is part of AIC international I think, which is a Christian missionary group.  The children's hospital is under a special international designation too, but I forget exactly what.  We toured it today with a Vanderbilt and UAB-trained pediatric surgeon, Dr Hansen.  He is fresh out of training and actually moved here with his wife and four young kids, and they will be here at least two years, possibly more.  Dr Hansen and his wife had Colleen and I for dinner tonight at their house, which is all of 60 yards from the hospital.  It overlooks a gorgeous valley, and they get balloons in their back yard.  Excellent meat loaf and salad tonight.

Kijabe is very high in altitude.  It is thus cooler, esp at night, and very windy.  In fact I think Kijabe means windy in Swahili.  But that is good, because its much easier to sleep, and fewer mosquitoes.  Although today a huge cargo container arrived from the states full of stuff for the hospital.  We spent 2-3 hours moving I think, and it was more tiring than it should have been because of the thinner air.  Or maybe I'm just old and out of shape.

Tomorrow we are actually going back to Nairobi to watch Dr Hansen do a couple quick ped surg cases in the Coptic hospital there.  Hopefully we will get out before rush hour!  I don't want another 'Nairobi Headache' which is what happens when you breathe that much exhaust.

Pictorial inconsistency

The problem now is that I have email, but not internet access.  Bizarre I know.  So I can update the blog by sending an email to it, but not actually look at it.  I had a chance to glance at it after dinner tonight.  And I noticed that I mis-labeled three pictures from before. 
Anyway, I'm just going to post pictures and you figure them out.  Maybe ill correct things when I get home.

Photo update

1.  Colleen and I at dinner with our gracious hosts our last night in Arusha.  Saids wife is Mama Kay, his son Juma, and daughters Kay and Adija.

2.  At St Dymphna school.  The children sang some songs for us when we got there.  That same day a few new volunteers had arrived from Australia and South Africa.

3.  The sky in Africa always seems ridiculously big.

In Kijabe, Kenya

Made it to where the hospital is after a grueling drive, which included Nairobi at rush hour.  Said took us in his car which was nice, since we weren't so crowded and I had my belt on. 

Nairobi traffic at rush hour was one of the worst experiences of my life.  It was insanely slow, and we were constantly surrounded by either diesel trucks and vans, or cars without catalytic converters.  The carbon monoxide will take a week to blow off.  I might as well have ran a ventilator mask from our exhaust pipe.  Might have been better.

The other thing was, we would be at a dead stop and then finally start going, only to run into another dead spot just up the road.  This had the effect of constantly messing with your head.  You think the jam is over and its time to breathe again, and nope, stasis just around the bend.  This must have happened 10 times.

Anyway Kijabe is up in the mountains and seems nice but it was dark coming in.  It's cool tonight with a breeze.  And, good god, there are more stars in the sky than I have ever seen in my life.  I can see the Milky Way.  It's amazing.

Masaai land, and a market

Safari

Day 5: Lake Manyara Safari

On day 5, which was yesterday as of posting this (I'm catching up), Said took us on a safari to a local park. It was a 2.5 hour drive or so. Saw baboons, giraffe, elephant, black-faced monkeys, zebras, gazelles, wildebeest, buffalo, hippo, and antelope. Absent were lions, hyenas, cheetah, and leopard. Damn. I guess that means I'll have to come back. Was still a good trip.

Actually, one of the best parts of the safari was driving to the park. We went through Masaai land to get there. I'll post pictures of that too. The Masaai are always richly dressed in red garbs and usually herding animals. They live in small huts built in clusters. Thirty seconds left on my internet cafe time, gotta go!

We're going back to Kenya tomorrow.

Walking up to the hills (day 4)

Day 4: Arusha road

Our fourth day was Easter Sunday. A very relaxing day, we woke up and started walking up the road that Said's family lives on. The road went up into the hills and was flanked by dwellings and friendly people on both sides. The cool thing about the day we went up was that, since it was Easter, there were multiple tiny churches along the way packed with people singing African Easter music. We have some of that on video, but I'm not really sure how to put that on here. It was extremely hot and humid and I got the worst farmers tan. After our three hour walk I had a beer and then passed out.

Later that evening Said's wife and daughters went to a local wedding. I should have taken a picture of them. That brings me to one of the other things about Tanzania that I love. Everyone here dresses so well. Seriously, they make people in America look like scrubs by comparison. The men usually have neatly pressed pants on, rarely jeans, never shorts. They usually wear nice button-down shirts. This is even when they are doing manual labor, walking down the road in a hot day, et cetera. Women are the same way.

Walking up to the hills part 2

Impressions from Tanzania, Part I

Warning:  I am writing about things that I really know very little about.  Anyone who has seen my political blog knows I do that all the time.  Well, believe it or not, I didn't come all the way over here so I could write about the weather, and about what I did all day.  My main objective is to get at least a superficial feel for the culture and the challenges that east Africans face.

One of the shocking things about being here is that you initially don't feel like you can just casually walk among some of the "poverty" that I've seen here.  Some of the dwellings that are here would not be out of place in the set of the movie "District 9".  Not only do we casually walk through these areas, nobody seems to care.  Its not like the music stops, the DJ screeches the record, and everyone stares at us (and this is Colleen and I without Said escorting us).  The people are usually indifferent, sometimes curious, but never shocked/insulted/hostile at our presence.  I wondered before coming here if I would feel unsafe at all, but I really haven't, except for when traveling in crazy packed buses.  By the way, I don't have any pictures from when walking through places like this because I don't want to offend anyone by blatantly taking pictures of them.

The reason I put the word poverty in quotes above is because these people are extremely poor by Western standards but they don't act like we are led to believe that poor people act.  I'm not sure why there is such a gulf between distant perception and reality in this regard.  I can't have been the only American with that impression, because I would confidently say that I am less easily influenced by others, and more skeptical in general, than most Americans. 

The image we have of the third world from American television sets is a bunch of people sitting around with blank looks on their faces.  In contrast, these people in Tanzania move like they are on a schedule.  Everyone has a livelihood.  Brick-making is a big one.  Younger boys are constantly filling wooden wheel barrels full of rocks and then pulling them to the brick makers.  Lots of people are working the fields.  Machine and mechanic work is common.  Carpentry and construction is too.  Maybe the most common are merchants; it seems like every other person has a shop of some sort, or is selling stuff at market.

So there is an extremely intensive economy here, and it is surprising how intensive it is, given my preconceived notions, which I feel foolish for even having at all.  It isn't a productive economy of course, at least not by our standards.  It takes investment in capital to increase productivity.  China only 30 years ago was a hugely unproductive economy, but now look where it is, thanks to investment and good government policies for business.  The real challenge is to figure out a way to get the technical know-how and the capital in so that the people can take off.  Obviously.

Colleen's friend Mary, who runs the school for special needs children, is a perfect example.  She was an entrepreneur who had a vision and a dream of a school, but no money to buy land or build it.  Colleen provided the initial catalytic boost and Mary has ran with the project, taking it beyond the level that any one person, whether it be the richest Westerner or the most motivated Tanzanian, could have on their own.  When it comes down to it, Colleen didn't buy land or build a school.  Anyone with money can do that.  Colleen invested in a Tanzanian, and Mary turned that investment into something great for her people.  This is an incredibly important distinction that must frequently be lost on people, especially western philanthropists.

Anyway, there is lots more to write about, but I'll stop there.  The concluding theme to this post is that the people of Tanzania are far more wealthy than I ever imagined; as an American it is easy to forget that wealth means more than assets and cash on hand minus liabilities.

View from school; lunch below.

Iko wapi Kili!