Thursday night

Well, it's going on 11:00pm Thursday night and no sign of Susan. She was in clinic into the evening and when finished, went to the OR to help her colleagues. No word from her. It's been a tough day for the surgeons and nurses. I know that Susan saw some difficult patients in clinic and the others had difficult surgeries to do. At least one was a major cancer surgery that was expected to take all day. I think they again used the sinus equipment that Stryker donated via Susan. I hope to blog more about that tomorrow after I hear from Susan. But it was a tough day for the medical people.

I, on the other hand, went to my friend Mark's house for dinner. Mark and two other engineers visited Indiana this summer and spent a lot of time with us. Mark and his family live in an "estate", which we would call a subdivision. He normally takes a matatu to and from work, but since there was the two of us plus another friend, Maisz, we took a cab. Have I mentioned that most of the cabs have virtually no suspension parts working any longer? We drove a couple miles on paved roads and then turned onto a wide, pot-holed dirt road. We drove a couple more miles but it was so rough that it seemed a lot longer. The subdivision was quite large with it's own area of dukas (shops) on a couple roads.

The photos uploaded in a somewhat random order. Sorry if confusing. These subdivisions are essentially walled along the road to keep intruders out. The owner of the property builds the wall along the road. You also build walls to separate your next-door neighbors. If one neighbor builds the wall (concrete block) then the other is responsible for repairs.

Mark built a "double" and rents out the other half. He and his wife live in their half. As typical in Kenya, the kids live in a sort of "lean-to" in the back of the property, separate from the main house. This structure houses a couple sets of bunk beds and a table. It has plywood walls and a corrugated metal roof. Their three kids sleep there as does his wife's sister who lives there while going to college and helping to care for the house and kids.

At the back of the house is a built-in wash basin for washing clothes. Another picture shows the clothes line.

The interior of the house is very small. You walk into a little room with a table where the boys can do homework and I think maybe they eat there when not entertaining. On one side of this room is a tiny kitchen which includes a sink, a charcoal burning open oven (with a chimney vent), and a propane range top. On the opposite side of the first room is the bathroom. It has a little sink just inside the door. At the other end is the toilet. Not "western". Just the ceramic hole in the floor. Then in the ceiling is a shower head. So the whole room serves as a shower and the toilet is the drain. This is typical here. Behind the first room is a little family room. They have some comfortable chairs packed in around a table in front of an entertainment center with a little TV in the middle. Oh, and there is a small refrigerator in this room. I did not see the bedroom. Lillian served dinner at the table in the family room. There was way too much food... beef stew, chapatis (sort of like tortillas), chicken, spaghetti, and rice. (We didn't touch the spaghetti or rice -- too much food.)

Mark's wife is Lillian. They have three boys, Kevin, Silas, and Tony. Silas is away at boarding school (nearby). Kevin and Tony were at the house. Kevin is in 8th grade and Tony is in 2nd grade. Some neighbors stopped by to meet Mark's friend from America. They were all very nice. They included Emanuel and Beatrice, the couple renting the other half of the double. He works for the local power company and she is a pre-school teacher.

Here's how one typically builds a house in Kenya. Step one: Take out an 8 year loan to buy a lot. Pay down the loan. Step two: Take out an 8 year loan and start building a house. Hopefully you can live in it soon. Step three: Take out another 8 year loan and finish your house. In Mark's case, after he had paid down the loan for the property, he started building the house himself - doing much himself plus hiring relatives from his home village to help. (Which makes sense because he is expected to help support his relatives back in the village since he has a job.) So now his house is complete after a much shorter time period than usual. His master plan, which is typical for his subdivision, is to build a bigger house on the vacant part of the property, and then he can rent out both of the double units or house his kids there and/or servants if he had servants other than his sister-in-law college student.

So another typical thing about building your own house and having these loans is that you want to start living there ASAP so you're not paying the loan and paying rent somewhere else. So once you can inhabit your partially completed house, you do. I think Mark and family lived there without electricity for two or three years. We think of electricity as a necessity, but not so! Most villages don't have any electricity. They would have an oil lamp and actually talk to each other for evening entertainment! Back to Mark's house... when you pay for an electric hookup, you then may wait for three months before an inspector comes to check your wiring. If there's a problem, you'll wait again after your repairs. It was a glorious day of celebration when he had his electricity hooked up. Family members came to celebrate. His father likes to come and watch TV. Anyway, they are very happy to have electricity, allowing them to have electric lights, TV, DVD player, and refrigerator.