A glimps of Marsabit!

Good morning!

Yesterday- Kathryn and I were facing another day of working in the FH office. We were feeling a bit trapped as we have only seen the FH grounds here and we are unable to go out exploring the town and villages ourselves. So we were going a bit stir crazy! In the morning we were going around talking to a few of the workers here, one that is the head supervisor over the livestock and agriculture. Another who is over the health and nutritional needs. This department monitors children’s growth and weight in effort to keep children from facing malnutrition. Here malnutrition is looked at no serious then a common cold. FH is trying to educate that it is very critical to ones health and if not treated and prevented it can cause poor growth physically and mentally. This is a big job there in trying to reach and keep up worth all the communities around here.

The third lady we talked to is Clara- she is the supervisor over the HIV/Aids division here in Marsabit. She is nurse and social worker by tread and has now been working for FH for 6 years. This beautiful 33 year old lady is well respected around here and does very well in the communities around here. She invited Kathryn and I to go on clinic with here out in the field. Us being desperate to get out and see the country was excited and more the eager to except!

Three young men picked up the tiny Suzuki car and we zoomed off to a village about half an hour a way. This car is about the same size as my Kia and we were going up and down super steep inclines and bouncing over rocks and large as watermelons all the while listening to Beyouce on the fancy stereo!

It is incredibly dry here- the worst drought in twenty eight years. So we had to drive with the windows up to keep the dust out. It got very hot in eh car so several time we would pull over and to get out and cool off in the nice breeze. A couple times the car wouldn’t start again so we would have to get out and push the car until it would start again!

When we got to the first community- we watched the nurse that was with us test some of the people in that community. They take a drop of blood on a test strip, wait a few minutes and then get results. They will go back to this community in three months for retesting to get better (more accurate) results. The HIV/Aids team has been working in this community for a little while on education and counseling before the testing so that the people understand and know how to handle positive results. They will also offer support and treatment/comfort care to those who are affected and effected. They tested about 40 people there and about 80 percent of the results that day came back negative. So that is good that the Virus is not running to high there but is still sad that there is a few that have the disease and will have to face the road ahead with it.

The children in this community are not as good of health as the ones in Karburui. They looked weaker; many I could tell had untreated worms and were very malnourished. Hard for me to see but they were none the less sweet and cheerful and the others I have met.

One of the Volunteers of FH took us on a tour of the little community. There are a lot of orphans there and FH builds houses for them and well as a type of group home for them. They also have some of the most amazing gardens there I have seen here. Beautiful flowers and Fruit trees!

One man and his family that we stop by to see with there many children had an nice kitchen garden that he lived showing us! He was so please to meet us and excited that we stopped by to see his home that he wanted to give us some of his cail (lattice type stuff)! We were pretty touched by his gift…we know that times are tough here and that most people here view us as rich...but this man just wanted to share what he had with us! Neat to make that kind of connection with some in a community.

We then headed to a community were they were having youth camp of the week. We also did HIV/Aids testing there and got to tour the village! Also a pleasant visit!

Today Kathryn and I are hanging around the office working on our stories. We have a lot to do since we got to ‘take the day off’ yesterday!