Community Medical Camps

Community Medical Camps are great to be involved in. As a group of volunteers and trained community health workers (aka the local women that normally work as tailors), we organize to visit communities in the region that don't have access to medical assistance. The reason  behind the no access is not simply because there is no clinics or hospitals in the region, but because families either have no money to treat the sick and injured, or more regularly, they purposely don't seek assistance. May be a cultural or religious thing, especially out near the missionaries, but in two months I have witnessed thousands of children and adults who don't receive the simplest of medical treatment.

Last week we traveled to Nybeda, a small community about 15 minutes off the main highway. Despite the proximity to free health care up the road on the main highway, sadly the vast majority of school children we treated were suffering from various sources of worms other diseases. A poignant sign of a child who is infested with ringworm is white flakey patches on their skull. Some kids only have little patches on their heads, whereas other childens heads are completely covered in flakey white skin. Needless to say that on the kids shaved heads, the ringworm is easily identified. Treatment is super simple, we gave de-worming tablets to all the children from Nursery (4 year olds) to Class 5 (Grade) 5, plus any other child that was infested. All up we de-wormed about 300 kids, which was cool. Handing out the medication involved a class procession - taking names, giving 3 tablets, telling them to eat (chum) and swallow (meza), followed by handing out lollies at the end.
It was actually really easy due to the fact that the majority of kids had never been in contact with a white person so they were more then happy to down the medication. Afterwards the kids that have head infestations get treated with detol and anti fungal cream. After two treatments the kids
are ringworm free, very exciting.

Another problem affecting the community..possibly the saddest and grossest thing I've ever
seen is hookworm of the feet and hands..commonly known an Jiggers. Jiggers are parasites
that live in the dirt and enter the feet and hands through the nails and any cuts or
abrasions present. As about 5% of the kids actually wear shoes, which protect their feet
from the parasite, they are highly susceptible to catching it. Once the Jiggers enter the
feet, they feed off the skin and bury themselves into the flesh until it rots and dies.
As the kids walk around all day without shoes and have extremely poor hygiene and don't wash
their feet each night, the Jiggers eat their way through the kids feet and hands until the
point that their nails drop off and their feet are covered in huge welts and black wart like
bumps of dead skin. If untreated, the condition worsens to a point where the suffer cannot
walk or even move in extreme circumstances. We visited a blind man who hadn't been treated
for two years, remaining souly in his chair in his house (if you could call it that),
unable to move even to outside. It was heart breaking to treat these people who were in so
much pain but could have so easily accessed free medical treatment. The treatment is simply washing the feet and regularly applying betadine to kill the Jiggers.

I treated a gorgeous girl, she was about 7 years old. As I washed her feet, I looked at the under side of her toes. They were so badly infested that they had rotted away to a point she had huge gouges of flesh missing. She was in a huge amount of pain, the poor little darling. She also had multiple infected open wounds up her leg from exposed mossy bites, as well as a huge sore that had skin hanging off it. I patched her up as best I could and she cheered up a bit when we gave her some colouring books to take home, but I only hope that she comes back for her second dose of treatment so we can measure her progress.

We also treated some horrific burns and infections. One girl was presented to me and at first I couldn't tell what was wrong with her, until she turned around I saw that half her head was white, flakey and had rotted down towards her skull by over 1cm. Poor poor girl.

Overall we treated 450 people from the school and community. Next week we will go back to check
on the progress of the ringworm and Jiggers and provide more treatment. The treatment is perfect,
although it's really just a Band-Aid for a bullet hole. Without shoes and proper hygiene Jiggers will be a lifelong problem for the people of many communities including this one we went to. Even
with access to free medical assistance, families refuse to access the resources for themselves and
their children. Some of the kids out here stand no chance, which is appalling. Hopefully with
ongoing treatment and some health education, they can begin to watch for signs and overcome the
huge problems they face.

Although this sounds uber depressing, the teachers and some families were incredibly welcoming
and grateful. It was so cool to get involved in a day that helped so many people and it should be
interesting to do the follow up next week. All day I had this over whelming feeling of gratefulness
that I was born into a country that doesn't have to face these issues at all.

Anyway hope you've enjoyed hearing some more. Go the dees, fingers crossed they'll smash
out their first win soon!

Lots of love, Lucy xxx.
   

SIRIWO BUILDING PROJECT

I visited Siriwo Primary a few weeks back on one of my health talks with a fellow volunteer.
The school was SO far away...I spoke a little about it in a previous blog, so apologies
if you have heard this part before. I live on the main highway, the link between Kisumu
(closest city = 1.5 hrs) and Uganda (where I live is very, very rural already). This school
is half an hour by motor bike OFF the main highway, winding through various villages until
you reach the end of the path where the school is found. The kids here have access to very
little, aside from school and home. At home families are sustenance farmers - they grow to
eat, maybe make a little money if they are lucky enough to own a large enough amount of land.
My drift - the kids have access to jack all in terms of resources.

The schools surroundings are absolutely beautiful. It is set up high on a hill and looks
over a green valley dotted with houses. There is an old roof less grey church that sits at
the bottom of the schools property that creates a scene like the old buildings in Scotland or
somewhere far, far away from Kenya. It' pretty cool.

There are supposed to be 9 classrooms at the school, but they only have 8. Until this year,
the baby kids (pre school and nursery, 4-5 year olds) have been learning in old,
dilapidated mud huts. The floors are soft red dirt, the blackboards are chipped..Horrendous!
I have uploaded some pictures, check them out, I couldn't believe it when I first saw it!
Because the babies moved into a classroom, it forced all the kids to move up one. This meant
the class 1 (grade 1, 6 yr olds) moved into the unsealed, wall-less classroom. The ground
was a collection of uneven dirt, some soft, some hard. There were rocks everywhere and the
divide between classrooms 1 and 2 was broken cement. Above the divide there were huge
unstable bricks sitting precariously on a thin rod of concrete. SO dangerous! How on earth
kids learn here, no idea. So I decided to spend a fair chunk of the fundraising money I
raised on sealing the floor and improving the safety of the rooms.

I hired a contractor (who decided not to show up for work on multiple days, lucky his
workers did, good on you Kenya) to get workers to complete the job. He provided about 3
workers, I had 6 volunteers working and we hired random people from the community who heard
there was work going near by. The work began Monday morning. "Be there at 6:30" - head guy
did not show until 12. Luckily we are fairly resourceful and got the kids to run home and
get us shovels and jembas (local tools) so we could start smashing up the floor. This was
awesome - literally smashing apart the floor..we had to get down about 40cm so it was so
tiring but very rewarding once we finished. The floor was made of an assortment of dirt,
mud, gravel, stones and boulders (removed about a 60kg one at one point). Lucky we didn't have
any asthmatics or they would have been in serious trouble..the colour coming from our noses
at the end of the day was horrendous lol. That was day 1. Day 2 comprised of laying concrete
mixed with stones. The boys were mixing the concrete by hand, so heavy, so us girls decided
to gracefully bow out and enjoy a day of painting. I bought a huge tin of blackboard paint
and we did 9 boards in the school..they looked brand new. Think I should invest in some for
back home. The final day was the top 2 layers of concrete. Once again I was on painting duty,
including the 'S' in the word SCHOOL at the entrance to the school. Yes, yes, the school sign
did once read SIRIWO CHOOL. Sad. At least now it reads school! After the final layer was
complete, the classroom looked so good. Where there used to be the chipped divide, there
was a perfect step. There is a stone pathway leading to the door so kids don't drag
much mud into the room when it rains and there is a freshly painted blackboard. I can't
wait until Monday when I get to see the kids in their new classroom.
It's interesting comparing the gratitude we receive from the various places we work in. At
the baby orphanage, there are always volunteers from around the world helping out and chipping
in ad it has come to the point where it is almost expected that volunteers give things.
There is practically no gratitude there. At Siriwo the teachers practically cried when I
offered to repair their classroom. The headmaster was beside himself when he returned on
day 3 of work from holidays - he was so grateful. Pretty cool, he informed me that we were
the first foreigners to ever assist the school in any way :)

Anyway, Mondays the big day where I get to see the kids inside their new classroom. The
kids that saw the work were pretty excited on Wed so it should be good to see them learning
in their. A sealed floor also has really good health benefits..there are these parasites
called Jiggers that get into the kids feet and eat into their flesh. They cause the kids
great pain and itchyness. As the jiggers live in the dirt, the now sealed classroom will
be free from Jiggers so they will be less likely to be affected by them.

Just before I end I wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to everyone that donated money.
Without your support, this would NOT have happened, this school would not have a new
floor and these kids would still be learning in dirt. So thank you :)

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the cooler months in Aus. Lots of love from Kenya, xxxx.