15th - Squeemish

Gratful for the warmth of the shower this morning after the power failure yesterday. My first placement today was Kikuyu hospital. There were quite a number of us there, but we split into groups of two and I went around with Hannah. We started with a ward round, which was suprisingly quick as tthey harly had any patients (I expected the Kenyan healthcare system to be rushed off it's feet). We asked the doctor we were shadowing (Ithink his name was Dr. Goodwin) to introduce us to the staff at the surgical wing of the hospital to get the ball rolling for us to stand in on a procedure.

I introduced myself the way I usually do in a hospital to prevent the usual assumption: "Hi, I'm not a doctor, pleased to meet you." We scrubbed up (damn mask irritates my nose) and went to watch a skin graft from a man's thight to his opposite shin. Everything was going fine. Then, the intern asks us to come through to another theatre to see a vasectomy. Sure, we agreed and even that was only mildly uncomfortable at first. The surgeon made an incision in the sack, it seemed quite tough, soo it took a little while, then he clamped each side of the small incision with some forcepts and tore the sack the rest of the way open. "Hey, Hannah, I'm just off to check if anything's going on outside, I'll be back in... never." She followed me out to make sure I found a seat rather than the floor and stood, comforting me throughone of the sissiest moments of my life. But when the whiteness cleared and I could see again and had enough strength to get up again it was odd. I had a huge blind spot at the top of my visual field, which switched to the lower left of my viual field after a while and didn't clear for about an hour, leaving a cracking headache. This is new, I think I've just had my first migrane.

We had a break in the cafeteria before going to find Dr. Godmin, or whatever his name was, again. Hannah and I got talking. She's such a sweet girl, with such a sad and recent story, I just want to hug her. She's so strong just for coming to Kenya after what just happened in her life. I really admire her for that.

In the afternoon, Hannah, Layla and I went to the Nest to organise and effect a miniature olympics for the children that would last about an hour and a half (which was good, as we only had ten minutes to plan it). It went well and we all had fun.

I'm going on safari finally tomorrow! I can't wait and I've been waiting for so long. I'll probably be out of contact until Monday or Tuesday again.

Sorry about the lack of pictures.