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Published: February 19th 2009
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Arsim Dispensary and Clinic
the eye clinic is on the left and the dispensary is on the right. The Dispensary here at Arsim services virtually all of northwestern Kenya with medical needs. Our friend, Gloria, is living and working here under the joint auspices of the Government of Kenya (Ministry of Health), ELCK (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya and WMPL (World Mission Prayer League). There are probably a couple of other acronyms to contend with, but I forget.
We are spending a second day here in the heat and dust without Gloria to help us interpret customs and what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t. Fortunately, she left us in the charge of a couple of her staff members who are most helpful and speak English far better than our Samburu.
Before we came to Kenya, my impression was that everyone here speaks Swahili. This is not necessarily true. In fact, this part of the country - a pretty rural district - everyone speaks Samburu, which is the language of the tribe that inhabits this area. They are bordered by the Rendille tribe (they speak Rendille), the Maasai people (who speak Maasai) and the Turkana tribe (guess what they speak). The Samburu, Rendille and Maasai are generally friendly with one another and are distant relatives.
the Ward
In case you check in for a while, here's where you and your family can stay - the General Ward. Their languages are even similar enough that each can understand the other. My understanding is that they are even closer than say, Spanish and Italian. The Turkana, however, are the ones that don’t really get along with anyone, particularly the Samburu. There are open feuds between the Turkana and Samburu but it has been several years since the last really violent clash. Fortunately, we are staying at a place that is pretty much on the far end of the district from the Turkana area.
The clinic and dispensary are located in a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. They are several block buildings mostly detached from one another and are surrounded by a fence. The fence is mostly to keep the goats, cattle, camels and monkeys at bay. If any humans really wanted to get into the fenced compound, they could easily open the gates or simply climb over the fence.
The dispensary building has a pharmacy, examination room, consultation room and a couple of others. The Clinic has a primary eye clinic as well as an operating theater. Johns Hopkins it ain’t. However, much good work gets done here trying to save the eyesight of the
Our Digs
This is the house formerly occupied by the Jackson family. Pretty fancy, huh? Samburu people suffering from Trachoma. I’ll tell you more about that in a couple of days.
There is also a newly-built maternity ward. It is not completely finished yet, but when it is, it should significantly reduce the rate of infant mortality. There’s an office building where the office staff holes up and works on database, office and media to keep the various sponsoring and funding agencies happy. Plus they also produce materials that keep the individual and church donors informed.
Gloria’s house is a block building that our church helped build (financially, not physically) joined with a carport to a mirror image house built for a missionary couple at the same time. The kitchens have cold running water, a real luxury in these parts. If you want hot water for bathing or dishwashing or doing laundry in the utility sink, you heat it on the stove. The stoves are propane apartment-size affairs that light with a match. There is none of that foo-foo electronic ignition stuff around here.
Our house has no refrigeration and with days as hot and parched as the ones here, it’s tough. Gloria has a very small freezer where she can keep
Mosquitoes R Us
Just who is that good looking guy hiding from the bugs? some meat that she gets when she goes to Nairobi - a two-day drive.
When we arrived all the windows were covered with curtains. The curtains were pinned with clothes pins or office-type binder clips too keep them from blowing around. It was stifling in here. Finally, it dawned on me to lift the curtains and try for a little breeze - bugs or no bugs. (we had been told that during the day, the bugs aren’t too bad) Well, lo and behold, the windows have screens! Once I pulled back the curtains, we could catch a breeze every 15 to 30 minutes and it actually either became bearable or we just started getting used to it.
Although we don’t have a thermometer (who’d want one?), my estimate is that the inside temperature dropped from about 100 F (38 C) to much more comfortable 85 F (30 C). At night it gets considerably cooler and by about 6 AM, I estimate the temperature to be around 75 F (24C). By then it’s time to get up and the Samburu people are nearly freezing. Actually, they got cold much earlier and keep a fire burning in their huts for warmth and also for cooking. Also by that time, my pillow is wet enough that I could wring it out. Who says I’m a hot head?
You have certainly seen the movies about people on safari sleeping in tents on cots with the mosquito net covering themselves while they sleep. Well, it’s no joke. We have those here also. The mosquitoes and other nasty bugs are pretty active at night. Our main concern with the mosquitoes is the malaria they carry. Although we are taking medicine to combat malaria, there’s no use tempting the disease. The other flying insects are mainly just a nuisance but the mosquito net helps us be more comfortable when they’re out.
I spent most of the day, Friday the 13th trying to figure out the email, internet and blogging capabilities here in deepest darkest Africa. By dinner time, I was about half way done with getting my email downloaded and blog entries loaded onto the site. It seems that since I had never blogged before and my earlier attempts were all from my high-speed connection at home, the uploaded photos need to be pared down considerably to accommodate the comparatively slow connection speed, I also discovered the Travel Blog site actually drops some of the resolution in order to save smaller images on their servers. If I make the reduction in size first, it speeds up the process considerably. It took me all day to get two days blogging posted the first day and after I discovered the trick, I was able to accomplish the next three days postings in about two hours.
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