Despite my belief that I would begin doctoring today, nothing of the sort happened. After a very European breakfast of crepes, a chocolate croissant, and tepid milk (which is seriously gross, but I'll tolerate because that's the best way for Malarone, my anti-malarial, to be absorbed), I walked the long and strenuous walk of about three city blocks to the hospital, to do a meet and greet of pretty much everyone who works there. Do I remember their names? No. Let's be serious. There were about fifty of them. Maybe not that many, but it was quite a few.
There was one patient I observed (not cared for or even examined), a kid who was being diagnosed with malaria. They diagnosed using a rapid test (kinda like a urine pregnancy test, but with blood). There's an ongoing study being run out of USAMRU-K to evaluate malaria drug resistance patterns, so they consented the mother for the kid to participate in the study--and by participate in the study, I mean they took a little more blood than usual so they could culture the malaria parasites and test it against ten different drugs. Then they took a few drops for blood smears (which is the gold standard of diagnosis for malaria) and gave the girl CoArtem, which is the WHO first-line drug of choice for anyone with malaria who is not so sick that they can't swallow pills. Nowhere in the world has their been a case of resistance to CoArtem reported, so it's a good drug. Then they'll check the kid's blood again in a week to make sure she cleared the infection.
Following a lunch of real Kenyan food--some sort of stiff corn mush, which is used as the base for a soup and really salty fish; I'm not a fan--it was back to the hospital to do some admin stuff (Metsanze, the clinical officer I've been following, do some admin stuff, that is) while I checked my email. I don't know what I did while traveling to Kenya, but my calf has been killing me since I arrived, and I didn't pack any ibuprofen (there's a method to my madness, which I'll explain if you care to know). Despite me asking several times where I could go to get some, regardless of cost, it wasn't until late afternoon that they took me to a chemist (pharmasist) to get some. And they weren't done with me yet. It was on to two different craft markets, which was kinda cool, because you can see the whole process, from them chipping a block of wood, to something like this:
Yes, that says "Hakuna Matata". It's not a Disney phrase; it's Swahili for "no worries". I thought it was cool that it was a real thing. The craft markets had all sorts of other things, including entire sections of elephants and giraffes from the very small to the "seriously, there's no way anyone can get that out of here and to their house."
I'm very happy that Metsanze is interested in showing me around, but there's really no need to do all of it in the first week. I'm exhausted, and I still have more than five weeks in Kenya. Not only that, but I need my down time.
I did finally get down time once it started raining, thus ending the sight-seeing of the day, and I decided to go for a swim in this pool, which is pretty close to 25 yards long:
Following my swim (of approximately 1500 yards; weak, I know, but I haven't been swimming in forever), it was out to dinner, to a restaurant that is really called "I Love Pizza". I didn't order the pizza, because I had that last night, but the four cheese gnocchi wasn't all that bad :)
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