Kanini

Sunday October 19th-

Sunday would prove to be another amazing day in Ngaamba.  We would not hold clinic, instead, we would go with the locals to church and then spend the day enjoying the community and it's people.  We split into three groups and visited three separate churches.  I went to the Salvation Army Church.  To say that the Ngaamban people know how to worship is an understatement.  Think Buckhead Church, minus the strobe lights and special effects and add in some dancing in the aisles.  It was a pretty cool experience to witness.  The children were more into the worship than most of the adults, which says a lot about what they are being taught about loving God.  Once again they spent a lot of time thanking us and God for bringing us to them.  The most special part was when we got to all go up to the front and introduce ourselves.  It was our turn to tell these amazing people that they were in fact a gift to us and we were really the lucky ones.  Myself and one of my teammates Laura even got up and joined in the dancing at one point.  Unfortunately, there is video of this.  Let's just say I need to brush up on my Ngaamban line dancing skills.  After church we gathered the team back together and headed to the clinic to spend the day in fellowship with the community.  Mostly this meant we played.  A lot.  We painted nails, kicked soccer balls, jumped rope, colored, blew bubbles and even taught a group how to play baseball.  It was pretty awesome.  Most of the Kenyans who had never swung a bat before, quickly became better than most of us Americans.  It was hilarious to watch them after they hit the ball.  They ran crazy fast around the bases and even if you got them out, they stayed on base and kept right on playing.  I admired their dedication to making it back to home plate.  This time was also important not just for connecting with the people of Ngaamba, but also a time for our team to connect and build our relationships.  I cannot say enough how amazing this team was.  More on that later....after a full day in the HOT African sun, we piled back onto our bus with our awesome driver Paul and headed back to the Miryam Inn for a much needed shower.  Monday was going to be another busy day for us.  We had a full day in the clinic and Sarah and I were going to be headed to Ngaamba primary school to speak with the Class 7/8 girls.  Oh, I almost forgot the highlight of my day.  The children gave some of us Ngaamban names, mine was Kanini.  It means "little one".  That became my name for the remainder of the trip, well that and panini.  What was I saying about how awesome my team was??  I can't remember....

Monday October 20th-

A month or so before our trip our leader Rob asked for volunteers who would be willing to go and speak to the Class 7/8 girls.  This is the equivalent of 7th and 8th grade.  This is an especially important year for all Ngaamban children because in Class 8 they take a test which determines whether or not they will go on to secondary school.  Secondary school is like highschool, but not everyone has the opportunity to go.  The children must obtain a certain score on the test in order to move up.  If they don't score high enough on the test their future becomes less promising.  This is especially true for the girls.  Not making it into secondary school almost guarantees marriage at a young age, followed quickly by pregnancy.  As soon as Rob asked for volunteers I knew I wanted to do it.  I wasn't sure what I would say to these girls, but it felt heavy on my heart, because I knew how hard it was to make the right decisions in high school and how important it was to believe there was something more.  Some of the topics on the table for discussion were menstrual cycles, abstinence and future careers.  While I was pretty confident about sharing my career experiences, I felt a little nervous talking about periods, but I wouldn't be alone.  My new friend Sarah stepped up to challenge with me.  Sarah's presence on this team was a gift from God.  Sarah, like me, is a single Mom and a nurse.  To say we hit it off is an understatement.  It was a blessing to have someone who shared the same fears about this trip and was taking similar risks.  So I was comforted knowing Sarah would be coming with me to see the girls.  We did absolutely zero preparation, save for prayer, and for those of you who know me and how I like to be in control, this was TOTALLY out of my comfort zone.  At one point one of my teammates joked about me preparing a power point.  It's amazing how quickly you get to know people when you travel across the world together.  Also, of note, had there been electricity I might just have brought a power point...

When we arrived at the school we met up with three women who worked for the 410 Bridge in Kenya, Lucy, Kate and Petranilla.   These 3 women amazed me from the moment I met them and put me at ease.  We had an amazing time sharing with the Class 7/8 girls.  We talked about our jobs, what their career aspirations were, how our bodies change and boys.  They girls were so shy at first.  When we asked them if they had questions for us they just looked at their hands.  If one of them looked like they had a question and we approached them, they all giggled and whispered in each others ears.  We finally got a few of them to speak up, but it wasn't easy.  One of them asked us what to do if a boy had already approached them, in particular, this boy had told this sweet girl how he thought about her all night long while he slept.  Kate responded quickly "if he is sleeping he isn't thinking and if he tells you he can't eat either, he is lying.  He would die".  We all got a giggle out of that.  I then told them if a boy told them he couldn't live without you, they should tell him to "rest in peace".  The girls loved that.  I have a video of them screaming it!  On a more serious note we had to talk to the girls about rape.  This just broke my heart.  This is their reality.  It happens all the time.  They are vulnerable and naive and men promise them safety, material things and a life outside of Ngaamba.  Kate even shared men are coming over from the Middle East and promising the girls grand things, only to later sell them into sex slaves.  It made me so angry to think about this.  Not only are these girls in danger by the men who walk beside them in the village, men are traveling from afar to their remote village only to steal away their innocence.  I just wanted to cry.  So, we spent some time talking to them about how to protect themselves and stay safe.  Sarah even taught them a song and dance about their "no-no" square.  I have a video of that as well.  It is priceless and the girls ate it up.

Life is hard for these girls.  Something as insignificant to us as our periods can alter the course of their futures.  With little to no access to sanitary pads, the girls have to stay home and miss school during their menstrual cycle.  This affects their performance and decreases their chances for successfully making it to secondary school.  The 410 Bridge does have a program in place that provides sanitary napkins, but many of the girls feel embarrassed and scared by the changes in their bodies, so they stay home anyway.  Just another example of something we take for granted and a reminder of how some of our worries seem so insignificant.  The 410 Bridge ladies told us their parents don't spend a lot of time talking to them about their bodies or talking to them about growing up period, so our time with them, however insignificant it might have felt to us, was very impactful.  I might not ever know if anything I said made a difference to those girls, but I have to trust in my heart it did.

To finish up this post I wanted to share some of my journal from the night after I spoke with the girls.  I was pretty overwhelmed Monday night with a blob of emotions and I am sure I cried at the debriefing, yet again.  It was so much to process and I didn't really know where to begin, so I just started writing.  This is what I wrote and I apologize if it seems choppy:

 This place is beautiful in every way.  The people, mountains, animals, stonework and all its simplicity.  No frills.  Your senses are not overwhelmed and you can just take it all in.  Talking to the girls today was a gift, although sometimes I was laughing on the inside at how I was talking to them about loving and accepting themselves as God loves and accepts them.  Maybe I should send myself that same message.  When the girls asked the silly questions about the boys I laughed.  Even halfway across the world, the boys are just the same.  Their innocence was refreshing and it made me sad for our girls at home.  The things our children are exposed to that steals their innocence away...it made me sad when Lucy talked to the girls about their beauty and how even though their parents didn't tell them they were beautiful, they were and it wasn't because their parents didn't love them.  How much harder would life have been for me if I didn't have a mother who assured me what was normal and what was not and how lucky was I that I was able to first hear I was beautiful from my parents and not some boy who wanted to steal away my innocence.  

Church

 

A little fun before church with Dr Dan and the boys

Dancing 

Girl time

Ngaamba Primary School

Our Girls

Strong girls

Swing batter.  Abraham the pitcher.

Putting It Into Words

Where to even begin.  I am finding it really hard to put this experience into words.  It seems so surreal.  I went to Africa.  I took a risk and it paid off big.  I know it will take me a while to fully process everything that happened, but I need to start writing things down before the chaos of  life starts to steal my memories away.  I figure everyone has been patiently waiting for a recap of what we did, so I will start there.  I will do it in a couple of posts.

Thursday October 16th-
My Mom and Jack took me to the airport where my team was gathering to board a plane for our long journey to Nairobi.  We would take two flights, one to Amsterdam and then one to Nairobi.  I knew they would be long and I was really anxious about not being able to sleep.  Unfortunately, my fears came true and the flight to Amsterdam was pure hell.  After settling in and eating dinner most of the team had a nice dessert of Ambien.  I am not exactly sure what happened, because I have taken Ambien before, but soon after taking it I got dizzy, the flight got turbulent and over the next 8 hours I christened every bathroom on that Airbus.  I literally threw up all the way across the Atlantic.  I was a mess.  I in fact felt so poorly I had decided I would just get a hotel room in Amsterdam and come home, because there was no way I could face getting on another plane for 8 more hours.  Thankfully, once we landed in Amsterdam my team helped me rally and God intervened.  When we boarded our KLM flight to Nairobi, I was in the front row, with two empty seats next to me.  I swallowed some dramamine and life began to flow back into my body.  I stared out my window at the beautiful sky and remembered His plan and my confidence returned, as well as my ability to keep down food :) At one point during that flight I walked around to see some of my teammates and Sarah commented "she is back."  I'm sure I looked 100 times better.  We landed in Nairobi late Friday night and after successfully collecting 23 people's belongings and all the team's medical supplies, praise Jesus, we loaded a bus for a short nights stay in a Nairobi hotel.  Oh and I must not forget the one eventful part of that flight. As we came in for our landing in Nairobi, right as our wheels were touching down, we suddenly felt the plane begin to pick up speed and ascend again.  I looked at the flight attendant in front of me, with what I am sure was a look of fear and said "is that normal?"  He said, probably not, but more than likely the runway was not clear.  Thankfully, after another approach we were able to land safely, this time with no planes in our way.  Who knew a 747 could get off the ground that quickly....

Saturday October 18th-
After a restful nights sleep the team was ready to get the party started.  It was time to get to work.  We loaded back onto our bus and begin the drive to Ngaamba to see where we would be working over the next week.  I don't think any amount of preparation could have prepared me for what I would see or feel when we got to Ngaamba and I touched on it in my post, Worthy.  The welcome we received was incredible.  It was definitely the first time anyone danced in the streets in my honor.  After a beautiful welcoming from the people of Ngaamba our team jumped into action.  Some of our veteran team members told us it would take awhile to get the clinic set up and be able to see patients, but the 23 of us got the job done in record time.  We saw 61 patients in around 2 hours that first day.  When we loaded the bus at the end of the day we were exhausted and fulfilled.  It was amazing what we had accomplished in such a short time and how incredible it made us feel and it had only been a few hours.  We still had 4 days to go.  Each night we headed back to our hotel, the Myriam Inn, in the town of Sultan Hamud.  We had to leave the clinic around 4:30-5 each day in order to make it back before dark, as ordered by the Kenyan government.  I think that was ok with all of us, because by 5:00 we were toast!  Every night we would clean up and relax before having dinner together and then spend some time debriefing the events of our day.  Our hotel was right next to a mosque and I will say the call to prayer freaked me out a little bit at first.  It was both haunting and beautiful at the same time.  At times I felt a little like Claire Danes in Homeland.  Just kidding.  Our debriefs were a special time where we could process what we had seen and felt over the course of the day.  I usually cried.  Shocker I know.  It was impossible for me not to cry.  I was feeling so many different emotions.  It was hard to process it all.  The very first patient Dr Tim and I saw just broke my heart.  A mother brought in her young child, around 1 yr.  Through the interpreter she told us the baby was not walking, sitting, crawling or talking.  The baby was very hypotonic save for his arms which were drawn to his side.  After Dr Tim and his wife Wendy looked over the baby, we decided most likely he was born with a genetic condition and there was nothing we had to offer.  We then told the Mother her child would never be normal, never walk and maybe never talk and then sent her on her way.  It seemed so unfair.  In the US we would have exhausted all testing and resources to attempt to come up with some sort of diagnosis, whether it would have changed the outcome, who could say, but at least there would have been some options.  It was a big slap in the face.  This was a tiny village in Africa.  There would be no expensive diagnostic tests or interventions for this child, I mean, there wasn't even running water.  It was hard to tell what the Mother was experiencing as we talked to her.  To say the Ngaamban people are stoic is an understatement.  She just wrapped her baby back up and went about her day.  I am sure she had a family to care for and there was work to be done.  There would be no time to grieve the loss of "normal".  The other remarkable thing about these people is their faith in God.  I could spend a whole post on that alone.  After the patients were seen by a clinician they went to a different room to be prayed over.  One of my teammates remembered praying with this woman and her baby and just like the rest of the Ngaamban people she expressed her faith and trust in God and His ability to heal her child and provide for her family.  I was angry and she was grateful.  Isn't that interesting....It was the first of many experiences that I would struggle to understand.  It was a totally different world with a completely opposite set of circumstances than my own.

What a week this was going to be.  I knew my life was going to be changed by this trip, but I am not sure I could have ever prepared for exactly how impactful it would be.  I have to stop here, because I want to make sure I don't leave things out and honestly, just thinking about this small piece of the trip exhausts me, or maybe that is still just the jet lag.  Either way, I want to be thoughtful about journaling my experience, so I will work on it in stages.

Thank you again for your support.  For providing for me financially and your thoughts and prayers.  I know it was uncomfortable for many of you to send me across the world, especially to Africa, especially right now.  Thank you for being supportive anyway.  Thank you for standing behind me as I stepped out of my comfort zone and my comfortable life and took this daring adventure.  I love you all.

Here are some pictures from the first couple of days.

The road to the clinic

Our warm welcome

Waiting for us to open the clinic

God's children

Where Feet May Fail

Tuesday we had the opportunity to go to one of the schools in Ngaamba. We were there to screen the kids hearts, lungs and heads for ringworm. A team of 7 of us screened and handed out meds to 268 kids in two hours. Talk about efficiency. There still wasn't enough time though and some of the kids didn't get medications. We didn't have enough and we ran out of time. I didn't want to leave. It didn't seem fair.

The truth is however, it really wasn't about providing healthcare. It was about connecting with these children. Loving on them in a way no one else does. Teaching them to "blow it up" or fist bump, singing songs and making them giggle as we tried to pronounce Swahili. Their sweet hands reached out for us, begging for touch. We also got them to sing for us. The class one kids, the 5-6 year olds sang head, shoulder, knees and toes. I melted. Then the class 5 kids belted If You're Happy and You Know It. Thank goodness I got it on my go pro, because IT WAS AMAZING!

There is so much more to tell you, but I am bumping up and down the road on the way to the clinic. Today is our last day in the clinic, so pray we continue to touch lives and they continue to bless us.

Worthy

Yesterday we were greeted by the incredible people of Ngaamba. I was overcome with emotion when an entire village came into the road to meet our bus. They were singing and dancing, hugging and kissing us like they had been waiting all their lives for us to come. Later we were told they see us as a blessing from God. We are Jesus walking on earth. They have prayed for us and their prayers were answered. It rained the night we arrived and they said that happened because we had come. I cannot even begin to describe how all of this made me feel and will attempt at some point when I have more time. But, I don't feel worthy of this. I am just some girl from Atlanta. It is so hard to wrap my head and my heart around. I was reminded last night though that these people see me through Gods eyes. I am perfectly made in his hands and I am worthy of singing and dancing in the streets in my honor. I am also worthy of God's amazing love and grace and it is time I fully accept that. I am grateful for these people. I am a difference maker.

Quiet

Today is the day.  In less than 12 hours I will board a plane with Africa as the final destination.  Am I ready?  Kind of.  I am ready to be with the Ngaambans and to do amazing things with my team, but if I told you I was leaving with 100% confidence and no fear about anything I would be lying.  I am trying to be faithful and trust Him and His plan, but that is no easy feat.  There is a lot of noise lately surrounding travel and Africa and that noise is clouding my mind with anxiety, fear and restlessness.  Even as I sit in my silent house, which is rarely ever quiet, I can hardly hear over the "what if" thoughts racing through my brain.  Did I make the right decision?  Am I being irresponsible leaving my child?  If something happens will my family ever forgive me?  Will Jackson?  I know having these kind of thoughts is not productive, but the fears are real and today I am trying to silence them.  You should see the looks on some people's faces when I say I am going to Africa?  It is like I just told them I was going to slather myself in blood and jump into a pool of hungry great white sharks.  Don't worry everybody, I will wear my shark suit.  I know part of the reason I felt called to do this trip was because God wants me to learn how to be in His moment and listen.  He wants me to be reminded, gently, the control lies in His hands and not my own.  He wants me to know my strength lies in Him and He knows my heart.  I know I am supposed to be on this trip and I know it will be amazing.  I know it is a risk, but I don't want to live the safe life.  I want to teach Jack that incredible things can happen when you take a risk and step outside of your comfort zone.  I want him to learn to give himself to those in need, even when it is difficult and scary.  I want him to have the confidence to know he is capable of making a difference and know it is ok for him to go out and do it.  I want those things for my own life too.

So here I sit for a few more minutes in the comfort of my home, with my cup of coffee.  I will allow myself a few more minutes to be in the quiet.  I will not be overcome by fear or let anxiety pollute my mind.  I will find strength in God and the amazing people who make up my team and put my faith in His hands.  Time to be bold for the daring adventure awaits.