Hello again! Another exciting couple of weeks have passed for me here in Nairobi. I feel like time is passing so quickly; sometimes it’s hard to believe that I have been here for nearly 4 months already!
On Friday of this past week, I had a slight break from the routine of the clinic and helped run health screenings for students at a local school. With the help of a community health specialist, some of the clinic staff and I did medical, dental, and vision checks on nearly 70 4–10-year-old students. I worked in our “triage” taking vitals and collecting basic information, like age, weight, and any medical complaints they may have had, on the students. This task certainly tested my ability to speak basic Swahili because a lot of the students, particularly the younger ones, were not fluent in English. Even though I was having the same basic conversation with all of them, asking questions pertaining to their name, age, and complaints, it was still a test of the Swahili medical and anatomical terminology I have picked up while being here. For example, remembering that if a kid said they had pain in their “tumbo” they meant their stomach or in their “kichwa” they were speaking of having a headache. Even though it was a challenge, I was grateful for it because I have had very few opportunities to practice my language acquisition over the past few months as, most adults know English and will switch to English when speaking directly to me. After going through triage with me, the kids were sent to the dentist for a basic dental exam, then the optometrist for a vision test, and finally to the doctor for a physical exam and to receive any vitamins or medication they may have needed. All in all, it took us around 4 hours to see all of the students and afterwards we shared a wonderful lunch of ugali and chicken prepared by the school cooks.
Otherwise, I also had the opportunity recently to visit a UCESCO project that I had never been to before, a cosmetology and technical school for young women in the community. The school teaches both the trade and business skills to empower these women to start their own small businesses after completion of the program. I got to visit on a day when they were learning how to crochet and knit and sat in on their lesson with them. I even got to join in on the lesson and flex my minimal crochet skills I picked up from my grandmother throughout my childhood. This was a good break from the routine, and I hope to visit the school again in my remaining time here.
While my free time activities have been a little limited over the past couple of weeks due to my first (and hopefully only, knock-on-wood) bout of illness, I have continued to explore both familiar and new parts of the city. In recent weeks, I went to a standup comedy show, took an official walking tour of the downtown business/government district, and went to Kenya’s railway museum. While the CBD (central business district) has become quite familiar to me and I have taken advantage of the cross-country rail system, I enjoyed learning about the history of each, particularly how colonization influenced the fairly recent development of Kenya’s government and the creation of Kenyan rail.
I am looking forward to much more excitement to come!

Triage at the school health screening day

Old trains at the Railway Museum

View of Nairobi from an observation deck in the CBD































