This is a continuation of my trip to Kenya with Medical Missions Outreach. If you didn’t read Part 1, you can find that here. But to sum it up, we had traveled from Nairobi up to Nyahururu where we set up our first clinic. My role in the clinic was patient director, so I made sure that everyone went where they were supposed to go throughout the clinic.
We had finished our first day of the medical clinic and had to take everything down at the end of the day before heading back to the hotel. I was exhausted from the day and a little cold because I underestimated the weather. You’d think it would be warm on the equator, but apparently not. Monday morning came, and it was time to head back to the church to set up day 2 of the clinic. It started out strong just like the previous day with a line of people waiting to get into the clinic. I was busy directing patients all day. While I felt like I wasn’t really doing much for the medical clinic, I was told that it was an important position to fill in order to keep everything running smoothly. And I liked how I got to meet everyone that came through the clinic.
One of the most interesting things that happened on this second day was this one lady who brought a chicken to the clinic, trying to get us to buy it from her. She was literally just walking around holding this live chicken by its neck. One girl in our group did end up buying it from her, and the women of the church offered to cook it.
But soon, the sky started to darken as a huge thunder storm approached. The temperature quickly started dropping, and soon we were all getting drenched by this storm. We were all crowded under these tents, trying to stay dry, and we literally had no room as we were all packed in as tightly as possible. Leaks started appearing in the tents, and several men would shove their way over to them to patch them up. This was honestly one of the coldest days I can remember from traveling. The only thing that I can compare it to is when I got stuck on the Amazon River in a similar storm. Except here in Kenya it started hailing.
After the storm passed we headed back to the hotel to warm up and prepare for the following day. The next day was Tuesday, election day, and because Kenya take its elections so seriously, much of the country shuts down completely so everyone has an opportunity to vote. We decided to delay the starting time of our clinic to follow the culture. It was much cooler this day because of the storm that passed through on Monday afternoon. Those of us that wanted to, headed down the road from the hotel to the Hippo Pools. We hiked into this wide open field where there was a body of water that had hippos in it. While it’s known locally as the Hippo Pools, it’s not much of a tourist attraction as there was literally no one around. We were able to see some hippos sticking their heads out of the water in the distance, and Bradley, our team leader flew a drone over the pools to get a better view.
After that, we headed over to Thompson Falls, just behind our hotel. There’s a whole souvenir market area that we passed through on our way to the overlook for the falls, and there was a camel standing over to the side where someone offers camel rides to visitors. A large group of us went over to the camel and started taking pictures of it. Then I was an idiot and decided I needed a selfie with the camel. I got right up next to it and got the perfect angle where it was looking at me. But then I noticed its head kept getting closer and closer until I realized it wasn’t trying to get in my picture… It opened its mouth wide and basically swallowed my arm, chomping down with its teeth as hard as possible. It took all my strength to pull my arm out of its mouth, and it was really embarrassing because this happened in front of the whole group. Everyone was laughing at me, but now I respect camels’ personal space more than I used to.
We then found out that, like the rest of the country, the falls were technically closed so all the employees could vote. We walked down as far as we could until we reached the locked gate down to the actual overlook. We could see the top of the falls, and some of us wanted to get a better view. So we looked around and saw a tree nearby. I climbed the tree to get a picture of as much of the falls as I could, but then there was another problem… I saw several police officers walking by making sure no one was jumping the fence. I had no idea if it was legal for me to be in this tree, so I had to hide up there until they passed by.
We then headed over to that souvenir market area we had passed through earlier, and many of the shop owners were there. They literally pulled us into their shops as we passed by. Each one was very persistent and wouldn’t stop until they got us to buy something from them. One very smart strategy I noticed them using went like this: I bought a souvenir from one lady and paid her in Kenyan shillings. She “didn’t have change” so led me into her friend’s shop to get change. Her friend would then convince me to buy something in her shop and then after I pay for it, she would offer to wrap it for me. After I agreed, she would lead me to another friend’s shop to get wrapping paper (old newspaper) to wrap it in before that friend would convince me to buy something from her shop. Once I finally broke free from this aggressive strategy, I would walk out of the shop only for another shop owner to grab me and pull me into their shop to start this process all over again. It was kinda funny, and I ended up buying souvenirs for my entire family while I was here.
We finally had a chance to head back to the hotel and prepare for our third day of clinic. We were greeted at the church by kids waiving political flags, reminding everyone that came that it was election day. This was another busy day at the clinic, and after a quick stop for lunch, I started to have stomach issues, and I urgently needed to find a restroom. I was concerned because I had heard rumors about the restroom and hoped I wouldn’t have to experience it, but this was completely unavoidable. There was an outhouse-looking restroom in the corner of the church’s property. It was a wooden frame with a tarp draped over it. One was labeled men and the other was women. Because I couldn’t read Swahili, I had to wait until I saw someone walk out of one of them. This was no toilet like we know in the US: all I saw was a muddy hole in the ground. (At least, I’m telling myself it’s mud). I won’t go into too much detail about this experience, but it was definitely a bit of culture shock for someone who had never seen this before.
As the day came to an end, everyone was anxiously watching as the election results came in. Kenyatta was announced to be the winner, but something didn’t seem right about it. It started to look more and more like there was some election fraud going on. Many precincts were acting unusual about the whole situation, and some were not following guidelines. This led to immediate reactions from those that supported Odinga. Overnight, violent riots popped up all over the country and many were killed because of the belief that the election was rigged. Fortunately the area I was in supported Kenyatta, so there were no riots there, but that didn’t help my family feel any better as they saw the headlines back home. We continued on with days 4 and 5 of the clinic.
Political tensions remained high causing us to lay low as much as possible, and each day ended with a huge thunder storm like we had seen on Monday. We just got used to the fact that we would have to crowd under the tents at the end of each clinic to stay dry and actually started telling the time by looking at how dark the clouds were. These storms kept getting stronger, and of course, I kept singing “I bless the rains down in Africa” in my head.
The plan for day 6 was to head to a small village outside the city where the population is extremely poor. All I knew about this village is that there was extreme poverty and that the houses were made of mud and elephant dung. But unfortunately these storms that came through completely washed out the roads leading to the village, making it impossible for us to reach it. We set up our clinic at the church in Nyahururu for our final day, a little upset that we couldn’t make it to the village instead. We ended this last day of clinic early so we could head to our next hotel several hours away where we would take a safari. Because of all the stories I have on that last day, I’ll tell all those in one last post about Kenya next week. Thanks for reading!
Tyler's Travels 