Roger's Orphanage & Clinic

Roger's Orphanage & Clinic
Okay so there is about a week between Nairobi and going to Roger Carter's orphanage in Magina I have missed out, but it was just more of the usual kind of stuff. Blue cross rehearsals and meetings, preparation for the workshops and running around town getting quotes and sorting this and that out for various projects and individuals.

Day/Night 1 (typed up from my notepad)
I'm perched over a table being lit by a candle, in what can only be descried as a tin shack. No electricity, no water, no flushing toilets and just pitch black everywhere. The piercing yet relaxing sounds of insects buzzing has been interrupted by the sounds of raised voices and argumens from the farm next door. I've bolted the door and feel safe here (I think).
After a day of travelling, introductions, inductions, medicating the kids for this and that and an evening of cards and Rosey Lee, I'm well and truly ready for bed.
Feckin Freezing!! (I found myself sleeping in hoodie and trousers as my blanket was so thin and I froze my nuts off!)

Day 2
I went to the church in the morning which is a small tin, open sided building filled with the wicked voices of the kids. They sang tonnes of call and response kind of songs with one boy playing the drums on a plastic oil container with his hand and one stick, and it sounded wicked. Really cool kind of syncopated rhythms.
During the day I got some little jobs done for Roger and around the site, went to town to buy some timber and saw the boys school which they were so please to show me. In the afternoon we played bingo with the kids and then played some circle games like Commando Piccolo, pulse and all those sorts of games we used to play with the kids on scheme at FRS.
That evening we talked over tea swapping experiences and stories. I should explain Rogers friend Maria was up at the site with us too. It was so cool to sit and listen to Rogers stories in his cockney patter. (I felt like I was on set at Lock Stock or Snatch lol!) He's done so much in his lifetime and has this dad like quality of being quick witted and having done everything. I could sit and listen forever, so interesting and cool.
Its my second night and this time I've mad sure I have enough blankets. A cat jumped out of the kitchen building window, right in front of me in the pitch black which scared the living daylights out of me. I hope it doesn’t work its way into my house, I really hate random cats, especially mangy wild ones!

June 23rd
Sitting outside with a cup of rosey watching the sarts in the night sky. Its pitch black, exept for the glow from my candle. The birds, the bats and the crickets are the only source of noise. There is absolute peace and tranquillity in this rural oasis away from the booming matatoos (buses) and drunken shouts which creates the soundscape to Kisumu at night. It really makes me think I should just pack in everything and move here!

After chai and a chillout I head over to the long drop (with my head torch), grabbed my sheets of the washing line. When inside my house I light a few candles and sit down to have a scribble in my note book, then off to bed, it really is another world.
[reading this back, I realise how mushy, deep and icky all this is….i think the country side does strange things to my head!]

Earlier on today I enjoyed categorising and sorting out all Rogers medical gear. It was like a little test to myself to see what I know and recognise from the reading I've been doing, first aid training and first had experience in the hospital of the various needles and devices I've had poked at me. I enjoy learning about medicine, first aid, drugs, dressing so much. So I really found it fascinating, reading everything I could and asking as many questions as I could when Roger was around.
Sitting here jotting this in my note pad in my little tin house, I really feel a millions miles away from home.

June 24th
The matches on my table have become a tally of how many nights I've been here, every night I light the candle when I get back to my room. I just found myself brandishing a deodorant bottle and torch to go and investigate the strange noise coming from the other room in my tin house. It turned out to be a bee tunnelling into the wood, pesky things are everywhere, I'll block up its hole with gaffa tape in the morning he he he

June 25th
Today was the first working at the clinic. It was a pretty eye opening and I learnt so so so much. Patients came in with the same kinds of problems again and again. So much of it comes down to bad hygiene and a lack of money for what we take as simple medicines. The majority of people drink water directly from the river. Many use something called "waterguard" which is a load of shit. People don’t use it correctly and think its magic, so many germs, bacteria and organisms can still be in that water even after using waterguard. I found it so suprising to find that women with babies and young children were not boiling the river water first! It leads to so many ilnesses you can see why there was the outbreak of cholera in kenya as a whole and indeed the village of Magina where I was.
As to people not being able to afford medicines; if I was at home and head a headache I would grab a paracetamol and know that I probably hadn't eaten or drunk enough that day. Here the money is just not available but also the knowledge of what causes illness and bad health.
There was tonnes of calpul given out to kids, a couple of millimetres at the clinic and they we filled there bottles (chilpa in luo) and I made sure that the mother knew how much to give the child by pouring I into the lid of the bottle. There was tonnes of bad coughs, colds and eye problems and this is all definitely down to the dust which comes up from the road. It also spreads so much airborne disease especially TB!
We gave out tonnes of worm pills to kids that had signs of worms or that were more at risk of getting the. The government have supposedly done a countrywide de-worming at schools but it obviously hasn’t reached this village. What surprised me was the amount of ring worm that had developed into a nasty open wound/abysses that put (usually kids) in a lot of pain. Many of these just needed to be washed with water and soap and be kept clean, but again this knowledge just doesn’t seem to be out there. Kids with bad ones carried there own population of flies that circled the open wound, all laying eggs of course. The treatment for this (which I must of done sooo many times) was to clean it up with antiseptic and then put an iodine solution on to also clean up the cut and keep the flies off. I then used an antibiotic cream and covered with a breathable dressing. Oh and ofcourse some anti-worm pills to kill any they have and prevent kids from picking it up again.
Did I mention that for the confidence of the patients they called me doctor, which was wicked. It was like the best acting part I've ever had.
One patient, an old guy, came in who complained of an enlarged stomach even though he wasn’t eating much. Roger took a look at his stomach and you could see that there were three huge lumps, so roger gave him some paracetamol and sent him on his way. Cancer in its very late stage, Roger thought that he only had a couple of months left. I guess Roger doesn’t have the expertise to tell the old guy and be 100% certain but also the guy wont be able to afford to go to hospital so why worry him. It’s a completely different world.
We saw a range of different things during the day, as it went on it began to get really hot and tiring being on my feet, working straight through without a break made me starving.

The wrest of my time there
The wrest of my time in Magina consisted of bits and bobs around the site like putting up fencing, making gates and just little jobs. I played some football and circle games with the kids at the orphanage and spent time reading with them. Two were ill for some time which did involve me getting up in the night a few times to give calpul and see to them.
There were also more clinics, one of which a girl came in with leprosy which is one of those things I always just skimmed through when reading medically books as it wasn’t something I ever thought I would come in contact with. It really is a horrible condition. As it is the girl was showing me an absys from ringworm which needed cleaning, covering and packing with antibiotics. I assume she had gone to the hospital at some point about her leg, but she wasn’t taking any medication and no action had been taken. Hospital is expensive and so are drugs, most people out in the village, or even in the city, just cant afford it.
Almost a third of her leg had turned white with thin red veins in it, but the flesh had sort of been eaten away by the condition leaving it feeling like bone or wood. To feel it and see it made me ill, not because I was squeamish or anything. It made me illl because I could see just how bad the condition is and knew very well there was nothing she could afford to do, the feeling was just this over welming feeling of helplessness. For the wrest of that day I was in such a daze with that feeling. I asked Roger to stay in touch about the girl if I can fundraise or help at all from the UK. I really wanted to chat to someone from home but even after I walked half an hour to charge my phone because of the time difference no one was home. The walk did me good anyway.
One of high points of the clinics for me was when a mother brought in her baby who hadn't been eating at all and was vomiting or had dihrea. Now, communicating with patients is not easy, the translator often misunderstands you and what you're trying to ask. So we find that the child has been treated for some other illness or malaria or something. Straight away I said to Roger that I thought the baby was on antibiotics as this is a classic side effect of an antibiotic. He thought it wasn’t the case and after a difficult 15 minutes of miscommunication it turned out that my diagnosis was right, the baby was indeed still on antibiotic. One that was probably to strong anyway, so that baby was to come off the drugs and come back to the next clinic. Felt so good to work out what was wrong, like a puzzle. You ask the right questions, look for signs and find out about the environment and situation then try and work something out.