Day Five The first real working day! I was to go to Dreamland hospital to observe the child health clinic and help if possible. Kathryn was off to start her house building she can write about that! When I arrived at Dreamland, via a lift from Paul and Pat, it was quite quiet with no patients around. Sister told me that the mums and babies tend to arrive all morning despite being told to come at 9.30 for education before the immunisations. This seems to be the way in Kenya, the church service starts with one or two in the congregation and is quite full by the time the service finishes! So the clinic proceeded the same way. Sister started the education about immunisation, which diseases would be covered, how many injections this would be and the reason for immunisation. There were about 9 mums there at the beginning but more than 25 by the time she finished. It was all very relaxed with mums wondering in and breast-feeding when babies cried. The education was in Swahili with the odd word of English but I managed to get the gist of it!. Then another sister talked about family planning this I didn’t understand but there was quite a bit of amusement amongst the ladies. Then the mums all registered the babies and they were weighed. They then queued up for immunisations. I had the job of keeping records of which injection in the course each was receiving. After a while sister was needed to run the ante-natal and family planning clinic so we handed over the immunisation to others and we moved to the clinical rooms. We saw 3 ladies, one who wanted contraception but had a breast lump which needed further investigation. She had to be referred to the local district hospital as Dreamland still has no electricity so scanning is not yet possible there. The next lady wanted to resume her injectable contraceptives after a break to have children. The final lady was too late for family planning! She had a baby in December last year and didn’t realise she was pregnant again!! Sister estimated that she was 8 months!!! She thought she was just getting fat!! Many women still believe they cannot get pregnant whilst breast-feeding maybe this was to blame! Anyway it was now lunchtime and Paul was ready to leave so I had to go or miss my lift and lunch. After lunch I went to have a meeting with Judith about the health plans for the community units and I offered her some diet sheets which cover healthy balanced diets for each group of the community and were in English and Swahili. She felt these would be useful so I promised to photocopy them for her so at least one of each could be left in each community unit. I arranged to go out with her on Wednesday to visit at least one of the local units. Now Kathryn’s day!
Today was my first day of constructing the house in Mbakalo. The house is for a family with the mother and grand-mother, 7 children… and a recently born child to one of the children, a girl who is still at primary school! The father of the family was killed by his brothers after a fight about the land, the whole family live in two tiny buildings, one for the boys and one for the girls, the cooking is done in a falling down outhouse. Hopefully, the house we will build will make a big difference to them, it will consist of a bedroom and living room. When we arrived noone else was 
there so we had to wait for Khafwafwa, who would measure out the house and do all the difficult measuring! Not wanting to look lazy to the locals Matthew and I sat and started to help harvest and shell the maize. Not too soon in I had blistered fingers and my skin was raw, the ladies showed me how to do it without causing myself so much injury. I think they thought I spent all my time having manicures as I had ‘soft’ skin, I was determined to show that I was not soft! I regretted this the following morning when my fingers were raw and trhe blisters had all popped and I had to continue digging. Anyway, once Khafwafwa arrived we started the real work. We had to dig 2ft deep holes for each of the poles that would hold up the roof, we had only a metal stick and a bowl to do this, so it took longer and harder work than I expected. Once this was done the women started digging up the earth which would make the mud for the walls; this work looked good and reasonably easy, little did I know how strong the women were! As soon as I started they all laughed at me getting the ‘jembe’ (a kind of hoe) stuck in the ground, they told me to use more energy, but I was using it all! Anyway, I got the hand of it eventually, but they still laughed at how slowly I worked… and I kept on hitting myself in the head with the jembe as I flung it in the air. We had a well needed lunch and lots of water. By the end of the day the house was starting to look like a house and we were just neatening up the edges. The doors still had to be done and the mudding, but that was to come!
there so we had to wait for Khafwafwa, who would measure out the house and do all the difficult measuring! Not wanting to look lazy to the locals Matthew and I sat and started to help harvest and shell the maize. Not too soon in I had blistered fingers and my skin was raw, the ladies showed me how to do it without causing myself so much injury. I think they thought I spent all my time having manicures as I had ‘soft’ skin, I was determined to show that I was not soft! I regretted this the following morning when my fingers were raw and trhe blisters had all popped and I had to continue digging. Anyway, once Khafwafwa arrived we started the real work. We had to dig 2ft deep holes for each of the poles that would hold up the roof, we had only a metal stick and a bowl to do this, so it took longer and harder work than I expected. Once this was done the women started digging up the earth which would make the mud for the walls; this work looked good and reasonably easy, little did I know how strong the women were! As soon as I started they all laughed at me getting the ‘jembe’ (a kind of hoe) stuck in the ground, they told me to use more energy, but I was using it all! Anyway, I got the hand of it eventually, but they still laughed at how slowly I worked… and I kept on hitting myself in the head with the jembe as I flung it in the air. We had a well needed lunch and lots of water. By the end of the day the house was starting to look like a house and we were just neatening up the edges. The doors still had to be done and the mudding, but that was to come!
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