Following my five weeks in South Sudan, I headed to Nairobi for the East Africa Regional Conference. I don’t have much to report on the conference (really important professionally, but really not terribly interesting otherwise), other than that it gave me a chance to stay at my friend Dina’s lovely cottage in Nairobi, with it’s lovely garden…
And it’s adorable kitten, Crumble, my new BFF. I don’t even like cats, but Crumble is awesome. Let’s just say, a special request for a sparkly kitten collar will be granted upon my return to the US (strangely, sparkly kitten collars are not something that appears to be available in Nairobi.)
Following the conference, two of my colleagues and I headed to the east cost of Kenya to do some site visits. Conveniently, the conference ended on a Friday and no site visits could be done until Monday. What to do with a weekend, what to do with a weekend. How about the White Sands Resort just north of Mombasa? Yes, please!
It was lovely, and after weeks of working basically non-stop, a nice break.
I rode a camel.
The world looks different from the back of a camel.
I hung out with a sand sculptor on the beach.
Listened to some of the most awesome karyoke (um, not) I’ve ever heard. I was laughing so hard I cried at one point. I also met two people NAMED Karyoke while I was in Kenya.
I went to see Owen, a pygmy hippopotamus who was orphaned in the tsunami in 2004 (though less remembered and less substantial, it did damage on Africa’s east cost). He was taken to the Haller Animal Reserve, but no one knew if he would be able to connect with the hippos already living there and survive. Fortunately, 100+ year old notoriously grumpy giant tortoise named Mzee took Owen under his wing and taught him the skills he needed to survive. It’s a great story.
We also saw a lot of monkeys…
And a giant tortoise (maybe Mzee, maybe not).
Oh, and the crocodiles. Having dinner. Crocodiles scare me, FYI.
The crocodiles ended up being good practice for one of the field visits later in the week to the Tana River District. The Tana River has a reputation as absolutely swarming with crocodiles, which my casual viewing from the bridge as we drove over it (me silently praying, please don’t let us fall through, please don’t let us drive off, please don’t let us fall through, and so on), where I got a visual on at least 5 crocodiles, doubtless hungry. Probably for human.
Got up early the last morning in Mombasa to see the sunrise. The monkeys ended up taking center stage, though.
Anyway, in Mombasa, we visited one of Kenya’s largest and highest-security prisons. Interestingly, this is the prison where the most notorious of the Somali pirates are being held. We run a tuberculosis outreach program in prisons all through the coastal region, as prisons are notorious for high rates of TB. The prison was very crowded and basic, but better than I had been expecting. The prisoners have chances to go to school, sing in choirs or work in one of several workshops and community gardens. I don’t have any pictures of inside because we weren’t allowed to take anything valuable in, since we were going into the cells to speak with prisoners, but this is the outside.
After the prison, we headed to a health facility that serves the prison and the community, especially through a community health worker outreach program we support. We gave a group of newly-trained TB-focused CHWs messenger bags to carry their stuff around it, which they were pretty excited to receive.
Then we headed north to Malindi for the night, where we stayed at the gorgeous Eden Roc Hotel. I’m just going to say that floating in a warm pool surrounded by lights on a string, staring up at the moon and the stars spread across the giant African sky must be one of the greatest pleasures in life. Even if it is a bit difficult to wrap your head around, given that you spent the better part of your day in a prison.
We were up early the next morning to head further north and inland to the Tana River (aka Crocodile) District. This is a remote and extremely dry region, dramatically different than the lush coastal region. Many of its residents are nomadic herders, who are extremely susceptible to drought conditions since they have to go further and further to find less and less water, which sparks tribal conflicts and takes animal protein and milk away from the women and children (who traditionally stay put while the men herd the animals to water), leading to severe malnutrition. We run a number of nutrition programs in the district, intended to identify malnutrition early on and treat it before a child or a pregnant or lactating woman becomes extremely ill. Looking out across the landscape, it’s not hard to see how easily malnutrition can occur, what even slight imbalances in the rains can have.
The following morning, we turned around and hightailed it back to Mombasa, as much as you can hightail it on narrow, bumpy dirt roads that don’t let you go more than 10 or 20 kilometers an hour on. We also got stuck in a terrible traffic…er, cow…jam for half an hour.
We made it back to Mombasa in time to have dinner at a beautiful restaurant across an inlet from downtown Mombasa. Again, a luxury a bit difficult to wrap your head around when you know that just a few hours north of you there is tremendous food insecurity. The views were gorgeous.
Then back to Nairobi for the night and then onward back to the good ole’ USA, just in time for me to take the NCLEX…
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