Mutomo Madness

The students have been lovely. Soft spoken, quiet and respectful. I don’t think they are used to my style. I try to get them involved in skills practice and case studies. I reward one per day with a prize. Once, when I was headed downtown, one followed me and directed me to all the best vendors and carried my backpack all the way home. I thanked her with some hot Sprite—because that’s how they sell it. She accepted politely.

Well, as on every trip, illness makes its way to me. Yesterday, in the midst of having to move from one volunteer house to another, I suddenly became violently ill. It was not a pretty sight. But as fast as it came, like a bullet shooting through my body, it was over, and I was able to teach my next class a few hours later. I am now obsessively aware of how well I boil the water, wash the vegetables and clean the kitchen surfaces, as I don’t want to make my roommate sick.  

This weekend I’m drinking a ton of fluids and eating a bunch of salt and trying to take it easy while I prepare next week’s lectures. We cut up some mosquito netting to cover the bedroom windows as makeshift screens. Bugs are a fact of life, but it’s ironic how many of us North American women are bug phobic even though we like camping!

Things are looking up though. Today we got a fan and a water fountain so we won’t have to boil water or use my tiny little filter to purify 12 ounces at a time. Woohoo! We don’t even care that the showers are cold.

The heat is mind numbing and I need to pay attention to that and get more done in the early morning before it becomes unbearable. Mornings are when the birds remind us not to be lazy . I coax my creaky body into getting going and make my strange version of coffee. Good food around here is both abundant and impossible to find. If you go to the hospital cafeteria there are 3-4 things to choose from:

1) ugali (thick, tasteless lump of cornmeal that Kenyans love)

2) rice

3) greens (collard, spinach or chard) or cabbage

4) beans

5) chapati

6) occasionally sinewy bony chicken (what I call “chicken faces”) or tough goat meat. Both are inclined to make the most avid carnivore into a vegetarian.

So we go to the market and find every kind of vegetable, papayas and mangoes galore and turn them into feasts. What’s lacking is protein. Here’s my attempt at Mexican food.

Give thanks for meals! Asante!

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