Lake Victoria islands Days 3 & 4

Day 3:

And the day begins

View of GGCC orphanage & boarding school

Two team leaders: Paul Osteen & Vince Eaton

Unloading at the village of Kitawi

The dentist worked tirelessly day and night as there is no other dental care available for these patients. Before and after clinic each day, she assisted patients who were brought to the guesthouse for dental consults.

Dressing a foot wound

Day 4:
We traveled to a different island this day with the construction and evangelism teams - another beautiful but significantly impoverished place.

Clinic site on the island of Kibwogi

Setting up the tents for the medical team

I couldn't resist taking a picture of little Barak Obama - actually his name!

Cynthia, me, Brian (translator), & Esther on a short walk at the end of the day

Traditional huts with grass roofs in the foreground

The day wasn't over yet - Dr. Paul did minor surgery back at the guesthouse to remove a large lipoma from this man's back

I marveled each day at how remote we seemed to be - so far from medical care and modern conveniences like running water. It seemed like a different world, and yet we were still in Kenya and only a few hours from Tenwek; my cell phone even worked on the island!

During the travel as well as in the evenings, I really enjoyed hearing people's stories - Naphtaly's as well as some of my teammates from Tenwek and the States. God continues to do mighty works in each of our lives in His timing and for His glory. It's so encouraging to hear of His faithfulness again and again and to remember that we are all a work in process at different points of the journey.

Mfangano Island - Days 1 & 2

Asante sana kabesa for all your prayers for our trip to Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria last week. God truly did answer each of those prayers for His glory. We were blessed beyond all expectations with a wonderful week in a little known, seemingly forgotten corner of Kenya. I'd like to share some of the pictures and stories from the week over the next three blog posts.

Day 1:

Tenwek team ready to depart bright and early Sunday morning: Esther (intern), Fred (clinical officer), Maureen (intern), Matilda (internal medicine consultant), Wesley (pastor), Lando (intern), me [Not pictured: Cynthia (nurse)]

I introduced the Kenyan team to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tortilla chips when we stopped for lunch. Not traditional Kenyan food but they finished everything, so they must have liked it ok! In turn, I was served lots of ugali (corn meal mush), sukumawiki (greens - kale), beans, rice, & chai over the course of the week - I was not always so successful at cleaning my plate, but I did like the fish!

On the boat en route to the island

Gethsemane Garden Christian Center (GGCC) guesthouse - we slept here each night and then embarked by boat in the morning for our various clinic sites on Mfangano and other nearby inhabited islands. In addition to a guesthouse, GGCC also includes a school/orphanage with over 500 students. The team participated in providing physical exams and health screening for each of these students over the course of the week. They discovered quite a few children with significant illness, some of whom were referred for further care.

We primarily worked with the Suba people. Calvary Church (Charlotte, NC) has been working with this people group for over 15 years in supporting the orphanage and school, providing medical clinics, construction projects, community health, & vacation Bible school. Calvary also partnered with Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the Bible into the Suba language. After 19 years of translation work by Naphtaly (who runs the project) and others, the New Testament (pictured above) was finally published in Suba in April of this year.

After arrival on the island, we enjoyed meeting the teams from Calvary and Lakewood Churches (Houston, TX), visiting the orphanage, talking with Naphtaly, and preparing the meds and teams for the clinics ahead.

Day 2:

What a gift to enjoy the sunrise each day over the lake!

Disembarking from the boat after a 1 1/2 hour ride to the other side of the island for clinic in a village called Ugina

Greeters on the shore

Clinic in a cow pasture - Stephanie and I in the pharmacy

Triage (back left) and dental (front right) in the shade

Naphtaly returning from seeing off our emergency patient. So the excitement for the day came suddenly when Dr. Paul Osteen asked me to come along with him and Naphtaly to see a bleeding patient. I hopped behind the two of them on the motorbike (my first motorbike ride!) and we drove off across the cow path to a nearby dispensary where we found a critically ill young mother hemorrhaging after a miscarriage. We attempted to evacuate the clots and tissue manually as best as we could, made sure IV fluids were running in rapidly, and then Naphtaly and I drove back for more supplies while Dr. Paul spoke with the family and the clinical officer. The woman passed out from blood loss in the midst of all this. The family agreed to transfer her to a hospital for a blood transfusion and possible D&C; they carried her down to the water and off she went by motorboat. We heard later that she arrived safely and recovered without complication. Praise the Lord! Now I see more clearly why so many women die here from childbirth, etc. when no medical care is available to them.

A small spectator with a heavy load sees us off at the end of the day

Heading back to the guesthouse

Sunset with local fishing vessel

Mfangano, etc.

We leave bright and early tomorrow to journey to Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria. We're expecting to drive 4-5 hours west of here and then take a boat to the island. Our team includes 8 people from Tenwek including interns, attendings, other health care professionals and a pastor and we'll be meeting up with people from two different U.S. churches on the island. The entire team will be ~50 people and will be involved in construction, VBS, orphanage work, as well as daily medical clinics.

Mfangano Island has a population of ~16,000 people, primarily fishermen and subsistence farmers, who are significantly underserved from a medical as well as a spiritual standpoint. Tenwek joins Calvary (Charlotte, NC) and Lakewood (Houston, TX) churches each year for this medical outreach. We've been busy the last several weeks preparing the medications and supplies to bring with us:



Please pray with us for travel safety for all the teams, for unity as we merge together from different backgrounds for a common purpose, for the gospel to be proclaimed in word and deed to the people of Mfangano Island as well as to ourselves, for encouragement and growth of the three interns coming from Tenwek as this will be a new experience for them, for strength when we are tired and weak, and for all the logistics to be completed smoothly and with patience.

Here's some other recent pics from Tenwek:

Paediatric team with patient B (blogged about here) on the day he went home after completing his meningitis treatment. We are so thankful to God for His miraculous healing of this little boy.

End of the school year picnic celebration

Baby Abraham is an orphan at the Baby Center in Nakuru and was recently admitted to the Tenwek nursery for the second time with bronchiolitis. After he no longer needed oxygen, he spent a couple days being cared for by the Faders before heading back to Nakuru. Abi and I helped feed him after church on Sunday - a special treat as I rarely have time to just feed or hold babies.

Medical student Alliance from Hope Africa University in Burundi visited us for an overnight a couple weeks ago. He and his family fled to Nairobi during the war in Burundi and his parents are still in Kenya, so he came over to Tenwek on a recent visit home. We enjoyed hearing more of his story and his experience at HAU as well as his perspective on the differences between Kenya and Burundi. We're so excited to work with these medical students in the future.

4th of July celebration

Patriotic, even from the other side of the world

Recent house guests - 4 nursing students from the U.S. I really enjoyed their enthusiasm as they experienced clinical medicine for the first time. And we enjoyed good conversation during meals together as well as some fun games of Dutch Blitz!

Olderkesi (Maasai Land)

We enjoyed a peaceful weekend away visiting the Steurys in Maasai Land. Jon Steury grew up at Tenwek as the son of the first missionary doctor to Tenwek (Ernie Steury). Jon and his wife Vera moved out to Maasai land over 20 years ago and have been working with community health and other projects among the Maasai people. We're thankful for the opportunity to experience their much more rural life for a few days, to see the beautiful scenery far from civilization, to learn more about the Maasai people who we care for daily at Tenwek, to share stories, and to learn from the Steurys' wisdom. Our perspectives have changed a bit in the last couple years living in Kenya and preparing to move to rural Burundi, so we noted things that might have gone unnoticed a few years ago. We will have to build our houses in Burundi, so we carefully observed things like solar energy, guesthouse layout, bore hole supplied water, water conservation in washing dishes, electrical generator, satellite internet modem, kerosene lanterns. We even took pictures of the blueprints for the Steurys' house! Don't worry, though; I'll share the more interesting pictures on the blog :)

Pet hedgehog found nearbyMaggie and me with the hedgehog, just before he poked us both with his sharp spines

Elise and Micah with the hedgehog

Jon Steury speaking the Maasai language with the father of one of John Cropsey's ophthalmology patients

The Maasai man gave beautiful beaded gifts to the Cropseys as thanks for caring for his son

Watering hole

River, evidently with more water than usual

Elise and I after hiking to the river

Washing clothes

A young shepherd

Did you know goats could climb trees?

Another young shepherd boy. Remember David? "But David said to Saul, 'Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it...The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.'" 1 Samuel 17:34-37

We enjoyed lots of delicious meals together and even heard stories of lions in the Steurys' yard, a hyena kill just outside their house, and their son being knocked down by a baboon (but thankfully not seriously hurt) while running down to the river.

Just as we've discovered through getting to know the missionaries at Tenwek, it's so valuable for us to learn from the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before. We're grateful for them being willing to share with us their mistakes and trials in addition to their successes.

After two nights of rain, our trip back to Tenwek in the rear wheel drive 11 passenger van was adventurous, to say the least. We're thankful for God bringing us home safely and for the impressive mud driving skills of John Cropsey. After we passed the worst of the mud, Rachel requested a pit stop in order to feed Baby Ben. Eric replied, "Let's just drive 10 more minutes and stop when we see giraffes." And so we did.

Wide open spaces indeed

"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:11-12

We Treat; Jesus Heals

Some of you may remember this boy from a previous blog. On admission at the end of December, he had been critically ill with meningitis and seizures for three weeks. He initially had 280 white blood cells in his cerebrospinal fluid. We began treatment for both bacterial and tuberculous meningitis. After 10 days, he had made no significant improvement and was essentially unconscious, so we repeated the lumbar puncture. Despite 10 days of appropriately dosed ceftriaxone, TB meds, and steroids, he still had 240 WBCs in his CSF. We changed his antibiotics to ampicillin and chloramphenicol suspecting resistance to ceftriaxone. He began improving slowly and was able to walk and talk and eat prior to discharge. A month after admission, we discharged L home. But unfortunately, he was blind. Our ophthalmologist Dr. Cropsey diagnosed cortical blindness due to the meningitis and did not expect L would ever regain his sight.
He was quite happily proven wrong, however, as God miraculously brought healing and restoration of vision to L. L's parents enthusiastically greeted me in clinic last week and were so happy to demonstrate L's complete healing. He is attending school and his vision is now 20/20 in both eyes. Dr. Cropsey examined him and noted L still has pallor of the optic discs, but we praise the Lord that he is seeing just fine. The family is also so thankful to God for L's healing.
This second patient had a similar illness to L, but this one was much sicker on admission. He is 8 years old and when he came in, he was seizing continuously even after multiple doses of seizure meds. His back was arched, his neck was rigid, and his temperature was persistently greater than 104F despite frequent Tylenol. A lumbar puncture revealed over 1500 WBCs in his CSF. I truly did not expect him to survive and tried to prepare the mother towards that end. After the first night, he stopped having seizures but remained critically ill and unresponsive. The team decided to transfer him down to the floor as we needed the ICU bed for another patient and we didn't think there was anything else we could do for B. Thankfully, we were wrong. After one week, B still was unresponsive and his CSF culture grew streptococcus pneumoniae. We adjusted his antibiotics based on the culture results (incidentally one of the first cultures I've actually seen grow here). Amazingly, he began to slowly improve. Now he is almost fully recovered. He will still be here a few days to finish his meds but you can see from the below picture that he's miraculously healed. Only through God's healing power!