Rocks and Responsibility

The week has gone okay. It is hard for Ashley to still be patient with the pace of things. He is doing a little better every day. We are thankful he had Thursday and Friday off this week. On Thursday Ashley took Maggie on a walk down to the base of the river dam at Tenwek. It was a beautiful, steep walk. That afternoon we took our first trip into the town of Bomet. It was the typical developing country small town. There were dirt roads and lots of small buildings and roadside stands. The grocery store was surprisingly nice. It had only 2 types of cereal, but it carried ice cream and Tabasco sauce. We also saw that there is a bank with ATM and post office in town. It is only about 4 miles from Tenwek. When we returned we were sitting on the front porch a chameleon fell out of the tree, kind of random. Thursday evening we had breakfast for supper. Afterwards Ashley and one of the other doctors went outside for awhile and threw around the Frisbee.

Friday was a big day. Sarah is still very sick, but praise the Lord she felt well enough to go on a hike Friday morning. We all walked down to the “rickety” bridge at little ways down from the dam. It was a beautiful walk, nicer than most parks back home. Maggie made the trip exciting as she was on Ashley’s back in the backpack and would firmly grab hold of a tree without him knowing. When we arrived to the bridge we knew why he had the name it did. The bridge consist of posts and planks crossing a swift river. The gaps between the board were easily enough for a leg to fall through. Needless to say, we did not take Maggie across the bridge and we were pleased to know that a work team would be coming in replace the bridge soon.

For lunch Friday we ate samosa (seasoned meat pockets) from the hospital, mmm… Afterwards Ashley met with the national coordinator for family practice in Kenya. Along with him was his wife and a visitor who is a recent FP grad who actually is friends with some of our good friends from our residency. The session was fairly overwhelming as it was a chance for Ashley to learn the Kenyan medical system, a review of what family practice means in Kenya, and what his responsibilities would be as coordinator at Tenwek.

Family Practice is very different here as it is more inpatient oriented than anywhere else. There is also a large amount of surgery the residents are supposed to be able to do. In Kenya, a medical degree is a bachelors degree earned after 6 years of school after high school. Then a one year internship is completed. Then the young doctor must work for at least 2 years before he can apply for a residency, which is a master’s program. Therefore, it has be connect to a university and requires research and some in class training. The program is fairly new in Kenya with the first national graduates anticipated in December. Tenwek currently has 3 third year residents. They are very smart and hard working. We will be getting a new resident here in January. The position as coordinator is fairly intimidating as Ashley’s counterparts were involved at faculty positions at other programs and universities before coming here. Ashley also learned a lot about people and that the work here is much like living out one’s faith, especially requiring a lot of humility. The Kenyan people are very good at reading people and seeing if they are sincere or arrogant, which is a good thing and something else that will help all of us remember to ben

After this Ashley quickly met with World Gospel Mission regional coordinator who helped Ashley with the Mac. Praise the Lord he was able to get online with it, but we are still having issues with wireless connections at our house. After this the folks that Ashley met with that afternoon all ate at our house for supper, along with another couple.

Next we went to a praise and worship service at the Africa Gospel Church near us. It held about 1000 people and is a beautiful church. The locals sang for awhile, and then the mission team from Pittsburg performed. It was nice be with our friends joining the locals in worship.

Saturday morning Ashley met with FP folks again for just a few minutes to upload some documents onto his computer. We then took Maggie to a birthday party for one of her 3 year old friends. It was fairly similar to a party in the states and Maggie seemed to have a good time. That afternoon we rested. While the girls took a nap Ashley planted and an avacado seed, our first plant in Africa! We have been anticipating this for over a week as it took us this long to get a pot. One of our workers was able to buy the only small one she could find in the town next to us. But we had to borrow the gardening tool from a neighbor to complete the task. That evening we ate pizza and borrowed some movies from our neighbors video library.

Today was church and this afternoon it was rainy. That kept the neighboring kids playing inside and allowed us all to take a nice nap. This evening we had a cookout at a neighbors house. It was a bring your own meat party. We then had a special time of celebration. We read the passage of scripture where the Israelites set a pile of stone after crossing the Jordan in remembrance of what the Lord had done for them. We did the same thing with each family placing a stone in a pile and telling of something that the Lord had done in the past year. It was encouraging to hear everyone’s stories. They all had their struggles, but in the end all saw that God was, and will be, faithful.

Here is a praise report. We left our car behind to be sold by Sarah’s grandfather. The other day we realized it was time to make another payment. Later that day we found out the car had sold, and for more than we had originally asked. We have our struggles, but saw this as another example of God confirming us being here.

2 examples of everyday life here that you may find interesting. The first is keys. Every door here has a key. And there are plenty of keys to go around. The problem lies in the keys are not marked well and it is hard to know what goes where. For example, we have 3 different locked doors to our home. We were given keys to 2 doors, but nobody knew where the other key was. One day Ashley went through a pile of extra keys in the house and found 2 keys to the door. Then at the hospital the other week Ashley needed a piece of equipment in the hospital. He had to go to the nursing office and find the nurse in charge that weekend who found the nurse in charge of the keys. She then had a pile of what appeared to be over 100 keys. Fortunately, we were able to find the right one.

The second example is about water. Tenwek is blessed with having filtered, running water. However, most still do not find the water suitable for drinking. It also has chemical in it used for filtering. Some gets left behind and it is not harmful, but “gunks” up your hair. For drinking water we use rain water. It is collected in big containers from off the roofs. Almost every day we gather a container of water which we boil for about 20 minutes. We then cool it and place it in a filter tank. We then place our filtered water in a big cooler that we keep, ready for drinking.

Thank you for your prayer and continue to pray for us. Sarah in 9 weeks today. Praise the Lord!