Clinic Day 2

Today we were back at Bondini finishing up the health checks for the younger kids and looking over the older kids who were feeling sick.

I still did quite a few HB tests (and they did a lot better, probably since they were older ;)), but I also got to do some other stuff!

(Low quality photos today because they were taken on a camera and then photographed from the viewing screen on a phone lol)

We went to every classroom to give out deworming pills. It's kind of a given that these children have a nearly constant problem with worms, and it's easy to spot in the littler kids who have very distended bellies despite being malnourished. But these pills kill the worms for a time and provide some needed relief. However, they do not taste very good and have to be chewed so, along with giving the medication, we also had to stand there and make sure they would tafuna and meza (chew and swallow).

Some of the kids would palm the tablet, while others would just suck on it, but eventually they were all able to be convinced to take it. It was really funny — the 8th graders tried to palm it most often, the middle elementary kids would just suck on it and hope that you would leave so they could spit it out, and the littlest ones let you put it straight in their mouth and would chew hard and shake their heads vigorously :)

Other new tasks today included strep tests (all of which came back negative), malaria tests, glucose tests (both of which also required a blood sample, so more pokes), and some urine samples.

One of the more fun moments happened when we were waiting for the nutritionists. The kids asked if I knew any magic tricks, so I did the classic "make the item disappear" by palming it in the other hand and apparently they hadn't seen that one before because they were ASTONISHED!!! Screams of shock and lots of jumping around followed and then the item reappeared in my hand!! Whoa! I asked if they wanted to try and it was really funny watching them fully expecting for the pen cap to disappear while it was still in their hand and then having it still be there :)

Another really cute thing was this little boy, probably seven or eight, was speaking in English the entire time he was in triage — and really good English too! But at one point he turned to one of the nutritionists and said, "doctor, I would like to speak in Swahili now." And we told him he could, and he kept insisting that he would like to switch to speaking in Swahili ...in English. I don't think I heard him say anything in Swahili the whole time!

I got to talk with a few of the older girls at the school and learned a bit about their lives and what they love to do which was really nice.

On our way out to the bus, we got swarmed by what felt like the whole school all saying goodbye to us. I bent down to pick something up and they took that as an opportunity to attack!! They were really interested in my strange hair and at one point stole my clip :) and this one piece that always falls in my face did so I blew on it to get it away and that was comedy gold! They all wanted to blow on my hair after that...

Right as I was about to leave, one of the older girls who I saw in triage and spent a longer period of time hanging out with while we were waiting for her strep test to process, gave me a hug and said I love you and will miss you. I told her I would be back on Tuesday and she said that she was glad and "looked forward to meeting again."

And boy do I look forward to meeting them all again in the coming days.

Blessings,

Shawna