msambweni, week five

hello everyone. i hope you are all recovering from a food-filled thanksgiving holiday. this past week in msambweni has been pretty low-key and uneventful, but here's a recap of my week.

i stayed in the pediatric ward for another week, as i was only there for two days last week. so monday and tuesday were spent there, and i saw similar cases as last week. the saddest case i saw was a little seven year old boy in the hospital by himself. he was burned with a hot metal rod by his father after his stepmom accused him of raping one of her kids (he's seven years old! seriously?!?). they took him to the hospital, and after the hospital staff told them the police were going to come, they ran off, and now he is left at the hospital to recover by himself.

thursday i went on an mch (maternal and child health) outreach program to funzi island, an island off the coast just south of here. after a twenty minute car ride and a fifteen minute boat ride, we made it to the island. we mainly just had to record a lot of the information for the government. then we went back to the mainland, and had a vaccination outreach at the village there. it definitely was not a traditional thanksgiving by any means, but it was surely a memorable one.

friday night, the msid students planned on getting together for our own thanksgiving meal. i left work early and headed to mombasa. we originally planned to go to an ethiopian restaurant (it's more of a communal eating thing), but we weren't sure if the restaurant actually existed, so we decided to go to an indian restaurant instead. i ordered butter chicken, and almost immediately after finishing my meal, i started to feel sick. i planned on staying the night at a friend's house just north of mombasa. we found a matatu, and i found a plastic bag. i won't go into details, but i'll just say it was an extremely unpleasant ride to her house. once i got everything out of my system, i felt much better, but let's just say that that will probably be my first and only time eating at an indian restaurant.

i was originally planning on going to shimoni and wasini island for the weekend, but after friday night, i thought it'd be better to keep it low-key and rest. so on saturday i just went to the beach with a few other students and headed back home to msambweni saturday afternoon.

in one week, i'll be on a bus heading back to nairobi, and in exactly two weeks, my plane will be touching down in chicago. i'm looking forward to going back to nairobi just to escape the heat-- it's getting so hot here, it's almost becoming unbearable (even the fan isn't helping much). i'm going to try to finish up most of my papers this week and study for my final exams.

until next time,
emma
:)