For a good time, not a long time...

I can't believe that two months has gone by already! Friday was my last day working at the hospital and today (Saturday) I'm heading into Nairobi, with all my luggage and a sprained ankle, to start my safari tomorrow.

Friday started off average enough, I was working partly in pharmacy and partly in the pre-natal clinic (the nurses all wanted to work with me since it was my last day, don't I feel special?) But of course there had to be some excitement to see me off, so at about 10:30 we got a call to come up to Lillian's office (Lillian is one of the c.o.'s which are basically like doctors). When Halima and I entered the room, we found Lillian busy suturing a guy's head while a lady, clearly in labour, was lying on the floor in the corner moaning. Lillian informed us that the lady came in complaining of "a stomach ache" and was adamantly refusing that she was pregnant. She refused to have a vaginal exam done and even as her water broke on the floor, she repeated that she was NOT pregnant. To complicate matters, she had a c-section less than one year ago! Halima called for the Mathena (who is a certified midwife) and she came in with a rather tough love approach - hitting the lady until she allowed Mathena to do a vaginal exam. The exam of course revealed that she was in the second stage of labour and pretty much about to deliver right then and there. Being the youngest in the room they all decided that I should be the one to run to the maternity ward (down two long ramps) to fetch supplies. So I bust out of the room, past the hallway full of waiting patients and sprint down to the maternity ward. Minutes later I am sprinting past the same shocked client, my arms full of surgical drapes, a deliver pack, heaps of gauze and sterile gloves. I barely make it into the room in time to open the delivery pack as Mathena is delivering the baby. I take the baby in one of the surgical drapes , dry it off, do a quick assessment, wrap it up and head out to take it down to the maternity ward which has an infant warmer. So ten minutes after I last came sprinting past the eager audience, I emerge once more from the room, this time with a baby in my arms; an excited whisper goes through the crowd, of which I catch the word "mtoto" or baby. The baby and mother did very well and by the end of it, she even thanked us all for doing such a good job.

With that excitement out of the way we took out tea and my mum came round to take pictures. I brought chocolates for the staff as a thank you gift which were a huge hit. At first I set them out and nobody wanted to take them, then once they had tried them, all the nurses were scrambling to take three or four. They also all wanted to "book" the container that the ferrero roches came on (those little plastic boxes with the lid) as they thought they were "very smart" containers. The picture above is all the staff that were there on Friday; it took me about twenty minutes to round them all up, and for all that work, still most of them aren't smiling. Grace, my host mum, is sitting in the front, third from left. The other white lady is Barbette, another volunteer who was here for the last two weeks.

The long rains finally started in the evening and the rain pelting on the tin roof created quite a racket at home. But that didn't stop us from dancing up a storm in the kitchen - I had Grace and Bobo involved in a mid-dinner-cooking dance party extraordinary, with Footloose blasting. Bobo thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious, and Grace thought dancing was very good exercise. The evening also consisted of a good tick burning on the porch (we picked them off the cat) and a discussion about what insults kids use in Kenya to tease eachother. Moshela (from Sidai orpahange) had told us that when he was a child, the kids used to call him a "pregnant mosquito" and that made him cry. Bobo said the kids in her class go better, the reigning insult is to be told "you're married to a black, uncircumcised, pregnant mosquito". Ouch!

The evening finished with nyama choma for dinner: a special treat from Grace and Stanley for my last night. It was honestly the biggest rack of goat ribs I have ever seen! The meal was quite the feast with the nyama choma being complimented by salad and cabbages, chapati and soup that mum made. Honestly, Grace and Stanley have been so welcoming and such wonderful host parents; in a hundred ways they have really made my experience here in Kenya.

Today mum and I spent the morning playing in the field with the older kids from Sidai. Mum had brought skipping ropes, a frisbee, hackie-sacks and skip-its; all of which were a huge hit with the kids who had never seen such toys before. The girls especially figured out the skipping ropes right away. Of course the biggest hit was when I showed the kids how I can pull my finger off! You could see all their little minds working away: how does she do it? This little play time was of course how I ended up with a sprained ankle, but it was so worth it. When we went to leave the kids sang me a beautiful little song "goodbye Kelsey, goodbye"; it was adorable.

I can't believe my two months are over! Did I say that already? I am so excited to go on safari and see new countries and new people, but at the same time I'm sad to be leaving. I have told a bunch of people that I thought my path would lead me back to Kenya eventually, and I hope that truly it will.