Medical examinations and the falconry

 Yesterday and today, I spent a good portion of the day doing medical examinations of the food handlers at two local resorts (Blu Key and Coral Key, owned by the same outfit). "Medical examination" is probably a bit generous of a term for what we did: we collected urine and stool samples and checked them for urinary tract infections and parasite infections, a process that every food handler goes through semi-annually to keep his or her food handler license. We did detect a few probable urinary tract infections (hard to be definitive when the only thing you're using is microscopy), but no parasite infections. I was quite surprised (and a little disappointed, to be honest) at the lack of parasites, until the public health officer I was working with informed me that food handlers are routinely dewormed. Here are a few things that we were looking for:

 Hookworm eggs

 Ascaris egg (roundworm)

 Schistosomiasis egg

Actually, we did a schistosome egg today, but that was in an unrelated patient. But yes, I did spend most of my afternoon dealing with shit. During spring quarter of my master's, I took a class on medical parasitology (worst class ever, by the way), and every Friday afternoon, when everyone just wanted to go home and take a nap, we had parasitology lab, which consisted of us looking at slides of stool samples, trying to find parasites. So every Friday during lunch, I ended online conversations with Brad by saying, "Well, time for me to look at shit under a microscope." It became a bit of a joke for everyone in the class.

But back to the story... everyone passed their "medical examinations" and got their certificates to continue working as food handlers for another six months, and I wrapped up another week of work at Malindi District Hospital (only one week to go until I'm heading home!) After finishing at the hospital (and Dr. Childs finishing his first class of almost-ATLS), we decided to hit the town. Nothing terribly exciting: we went to the Malindi Falconry, which is more of a zoo than just a Falconry. Here's some of what we saw:

Giant, ancient turtle (the guide said he was 118 years old). He liked to be petted, so I petted him for a bit (it's like a leathery dog), but apparently he took a liking to me and started following me around. I was a little weirded out, but not too worried. I'm pretty sure I can outrun him.

Monitor lizard.

Green mambas. These are very poisonous and are found in Kenya (along with black mambas and a couple of other venomous snakes)

And, of course, falcons, which we got to play with. Not really; we just got to hold them, but that was kinda fun, too.

Finally, we had dinner at the Malindi Sea Fishing Club, where they have displayed Kenya's first grander (fish weighing over 1000 pounds). This sailfish (swordfish to us Americans) weighed in at 1250 pounds. It's quite large. There was a cricket game on the television, which I still do not understand at all, despite the fact that we were there watching for an hour and a half.

Tomorrow begins the last weekend in Kenya, and I'm going to be starting it off with a nice and relaxing scuba dive off the Malindi Marine Park :)