Long Day

Today was the first day that I have felt completely exhausted. The sun is so incredibly hot it’s unreal (but as we are on the equator I probably shouldn’t be too surprised) and the dust and dirt of a day of walking through the Kenyan countryside has me beat. It took two rounds of soap and water to see my feet again.

We spent the morning at a local primary school and helped one woman cook uji (maize porridge) and githiri (maize, bean, and kales stew) for 175 children over open fires (which we will ultimately conduct a nutritional analysis on). For many of the children this is the only meal they get in a day and you would be surprised at how much they can throw back. Then in the afternoon we went to the annual agricultural fair.  It happened to be the day that all of the schools from the area were there and we may well have been the top attraction. I was told that for many of the children we would be the first white people that they had ever seen. It was pretty funny. Lots of pictures, staring, skin and hair touching.

Yesterday we conducted another two food security interviews and they were in sharp contrast to the previous ones. The women that we visited were quite food secure (by rural Kenyan standards) and it was a relief after Tuesday’s interviews especially because the next crop will likely fail as well.

Tomorrow we are going to meet with the Sisters at the hospital to talk about what we are able to do around here (this is technically a community placement, not a clinical one, but we need to give back to the hospital for hosting us), and we are going to do a hike partway up Mt. Kenya this weekend. Stay tuned and hopefully I will get some pictures going (I have a very new appreciation for high speed internet – actually any internet is pretty good at this point).