Another owl

"Tusker Island"

Nearby "Tusker Island" where we celebrated my 50th birthday with sundowners... a few years ago.

Outside our tent

See the owl? Right in the middle.

Group photo

Here's a group photo taken this morning. From left to right, David, Bharat, Diana, Bruce, Kathi, Kyle, Susan, and Aria.

David starts his journey home this afternoon while the rest of us go on our getaway.

Lake Baringo, part 2

Lake Baringo is only fifty-some miles away but a good 3+ hour drive. We will go past the High Altitude Training Center where marathon runners train, and then we will descend into the Great Rift Valley.

If the Hart girls are reading this, I encourage them to read about the Great Rift Valley. It will make for a good geography lesson!

Off to Lake Baringo

It's Friday night in the US but it's Saturday morning in Africa. Today, after the docs round on their patients, we will head to Lake Baringo for the weekend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baringo

We will stay at Island Camp, http://www.islandcamp.com, a tented "resort", where we've stayed many times before. Here's a picture of a guest tent, taken from a boat, from our last visit.

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Avacados

Avacados are huge here. I think the seed is as big as an avocado in the US. I took pictures with different reference points: spoon, coffee cup, and Diana's head.

Fire Alarm!

False alarm. Ok, the gang worked late in the operating theatre Tuesday night as mentioned before. Well, most lighting during the day comes from all the windows and abundant sunshine. So as the sun was going down, it was getting dark in the hallway outside the operating rooms where Diana and Kathi have their command center table set up with paperwork, supplies, etc. Diana wanted to turn the lights on and started trying all the wall stitches she could find. As you can already guess, this switch, although it looks EXACTLY like every other light switch in Kenya, is for the for the fire alarm. Once upon a time, it was labeled as such with a red marker. But it has faded over time. Maybe Diana could have noticed the writing IF IT WEREN'T DARK. What happens when the alarm goes off? Just the sound of an alarm. No automatic dispatch of a fire Department or anything. You just turn the switch back off. Kathi got out a red Sharpie and re-labeled it to prevent a future false alarm.

Snowflakes

Susan still puts the snowflakes up every year...

Late night Wednesday

Here's the gang after devouring pizzas delivered to IU House Wednesday  night. They finished operating after 9:30pm! They purposely did some big cases on Wednesday so that there's plenty of time to deal with any post-op issues that might arise.

Paint wars

All metal fences seem to get painted with advertisements for... Paint!

Most are either Duracoat or Crown. I've always liked Crown's catch phrase, "If you like it, crown it!l

More changes

Last trip, this fence in front of the nearby elementary school was new (bottom). Now it's been painted. And there are also new, larger electric poles.

What's next? Starbucks?

Accommodations at Indiana House

Here are some photos of our accommodations. There are 4 main units for short term visitors in the complex. Each unit has common space downstairs and 4 bedrooms upstairs. One of the bedrooms is larger and has its own bathroom. The other three bedrooms have two or three smaller beds each and share two bathrooms. As a married couple, we've been assigned one of the big rooms every time starting with our second year. There's no hot water, but we get hot showers because the shower heads have integrated electric water heaters. Just don't turn the pressure up too high or you'll overwhelm the heater and get a tepid shower.

There's also no heat or air conditioning. Although we are very near the equator, we are at high elevation (nearly 7,000'), and the temps are very mild. Throughout the year, average highs are in the 70's with lows around 50.

Thyroid surgery

Drs. Nono (Henry) and Campbell performing a thyroidectomy, removing a large goiter.

"Operating Theatre"

Drs. Chan and Jafari performing endoscopic sinus surgery. Well, Dr. Chan is performing and Dr. Jafari is doing the surgery. ;-)

Diana hauled new sinus surgery equipment with her including a high def display, which is a huge upgrade over the equipment we first brought around nine years ago. Before that, they did not do sinus surgery here.

Tallest building outside Nairobi

This building was under construction during our last trip (bottom pic). My friends tell me, at 28 floors, it is the tallest building in Kenya outside Nairobi. Space is available for lease. It was built and is owned by the "Moi University Pension Scheme". The term "scheme" does not have a negative connotation here.

Storage shelves

Years ago, We were asked to help get shelves for the storage room outside the operating rooms. The carpentry group on campus gave us a quote that was quite expensive. Materials like plywood are very expensive here. So after the trip, back in Indy where we lived at the time, I bought two of these kits at Lowe's. We took them to the storage facility near the IU Medical Center to get on the next shipping container from IU to Eldoret. In the mean time, the Kenyan government started charging taxes on donations entering the country. Go figure. IU protested and has never sent another container since.

Last year Diana somehow connected with a Christian based org that was sending a container to Africa and had some space available. For not a lot of money, we were able to ship a bunch of the ENT stuff that had been in storage for years. That shipment included these long forgotten shelves. I put them together this afternoon. They will soon be buried in supplies.

Hospital laundry

Dirty linens overflowing outside the hospital laundry.

Many hands make light work

Clinic was over by 6:30pm, so not too bad. But there were some patients who were asked to come back tomorrow instead of waiting...

HIV prevention

I noticed a government HIV prevention program in the men's room at the hospital.

Safaricom

I spent 2 hours at a Safaricom store today, getting SIM cards and registering our phones for service. It's fairly important we each have Kenyan phone service so we can call and text each other, especially after today as people disperse to different operating rooms, etc.

The process was pretty painful at Safaricom. It's very similar to the DMV in the US. First, stop by the screener and get a number. Then wait. They must have had more than 50 chairs, and some were squeezing two in a chair. I probably waited 30 minutes for my number. The remainder of the time was getting the new service registered. A few years ago, all the cell companies gave away SIM cards on the street, trying to get people to buy minutes on their pre-paid service. But due to crimes being committed that involved pre-paid cell phones that couldn't be tracked to a person, laws were passed that force each line to be registered to a person with identification. So I use my passport and the IU House address for registering.

Why do this each year? Each line expires and is disconnected after 90 days of non-use. Ugh. I may try to keeps the lines alive for next year by adding 50 cents to each line every 90 days. Doing so would keep the lines active.

Random clinic photo

Dr. Henry Nono reviewing a scan with Bruce and a patient's dad.

Who's who, part 3

David Chan, lower left, is an IU ENT. He arrived in Eldoret this morning and is already reviewing patients in the clinic.

Waiting area outside ENT clinic

The Kenyan ENT docs screen patients throughout the year, and those they want our team to help with, for whatever reason, come to clinic today to be reviewed by our team and possibly scheduled for surgery over the next two weeks.

Here's a photo of part of the hall outside the clinic area. There are three areas like this so the number of people waiting is overwhelming. I think over 130 have come. It's this way every year. They don't have a set appointment time; they are simply told to come this day. They patiently wait their turn without complaint.

Who's who, part 2

Bharat Panuganti is another UCSD ENT resident. This is his first trip with us and he will mostly be working with Aria.

Susan started this trip while on faculty at IU. Our first trip was 10 years ago. She continues to lead this effort after moving to California nearly 4 years ago.

Diana Sullivan teaches nursing part time at IU. She started coming with us 9 years ago. She's such an important foundation piece of our team!

Who's who, part 1

It's Monday morning here, while its Sunday night in the US. We are at breakfast in the dining room at "Indiana House". Left to right, Bruce and Kathi Campbell, and Aria Jafari.

Bruce is an ENT at Medical college of Wisconsin and Kathi is a nurse. They've been coming with us for years now. We can't imagine the trip without them!

Aria is an ENT resident at the University of California at San Diego. This is his third trip with us, which is absolutely incredible for a resident. He focuses on research projects while also performing patient care functions.

Eldoret keeps growing

After getting the supplies to the hospital, we walked on to town to have lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant, Siam. On the way, most of Eldoret looks the same - but clearly growing, too.

Medical supplies

Not the best picture, but this is the van full of our checked bags of medical supplies that was driven from Nairobi Sunday, arriving early afternoon. It's all now safely in storage at the hospital. This is an important milestone each trip - each participant packs at least 2 bags of 50 pounds of supplies and/or equipment .

Proof of arrival

Now boarding for Eldoret

SIM cards

Hmmm. I wonder what time the Safaricom duka (small shop) opens at the airport on Sunday. I'd love to get SIM cards for our Kenya phones before our flight.

Nairobi

We are now in Nairobi. It's 6:30am Sunday here. We landed around 4:20am. We've made it through immigration and customs, collected our luggage, and been transferred to our outgoing terminal for a 10:00am flight. There will be eight of us total. Six of us met up in Istanbul. Diana landed in Nairobi late last night and will join us soon. David comes tomorrow. I'll do a who's who later. Our luggage will travel to Eldoret by road while we go by air.