Sat and Sunday

So Friday was our day in Nairobi @ the Coptic Hospital.  Saturday we basically did nothing, read the entire day.  I already finished one book and am halfway through another, but that one is a thousand or so page modern history book, to give an idea of how much I've been reading.  The book I finished, The House of God, is a book about residency in the 70s.  It paints what some would argue is an accurate picture of residency, although clearly an extreme, cynical, and jaded one.   Sunday, as can be seen in recent pictures (and more coming) we climbed a volcano.

There were two other people who went with us, but we didn't know them.  They are colleagues from a hospital in Seattle working at the Kijabe hospital, both doing family practice.  The guy is Michael, who is in his first year of fellowship, and the girl is Laura, a pgy-3 (ie post-graduate year 3, or third year resident).  Anyway, this volcano is Mount Longono, and it is a national park in Kenya. 

There are established trails leading up to the crater, but they can be steep.  It took us 45 minutes to get to the rim.  Once there we walked around the whole thing, again on an established trail.  But things can be dicey.  The trail is really narrow in some parts, surrounded by steep rocks in others, and often runs right along a cliff or at least a hill so steep that it is functionally a cliff. 

The rim itself was also not flat, so there was lots of trudging uphill in some areas or trying not to slide down in others.  The altitude was fairly high, which made everything more exhausting than it might have been, but it wasn't much higher (if any) than Kijabe, so its not like we weren't used to it or vulnerable to altitude sickness.

It was sunny, but also pretty windy sometimes and not too hot, so weather-wise it was perfect.  We got some awesome views of the Great Rift Valley as can be seen from pictures I've added.  Going around the rim took us about 2 hrs 45 min, so the whole hike from start to finish was almost exactly four hours.  It was the most fun I've had in a while!  A nice relatively easy day climb I'd recommend to anyone who is ever in the region.

After the hike, our driver from Kijabe took us to this local strip and we went to a butcher who was running a restaurant of sorts.  So for lunch we had some ugali (sp?) which is just white flour + water filler, and a chunk of goat.  And that description is intentional.  The guy brings a goat leg, shin and thigh all together, having been grilled already.  Then he rips it apart and cuts it up right in front of you.  It was kind of like Fogo de Chao, African-style.  Very tasty meat though.

Monday we should have an interesting pediatric surgery case.  Tuesday I have no idea what is going on.  Wednesday we will be flying to London.  It's a later flight but we will probably go to the airport four hours early, if not more, because we don't want to risk getting hosed by Nairobi traffic.