Well, I'm back in the Seattle. My time in Kijabe is over. Jose is in Kenya now and for a few more weeks, so look for any posts from him! I will miss my time there and hope to go back someday. What an experience! So much of it didn't make it on this blog. I may post a few more of the interesting pathology cases we had later.
For my last post, I thought I would share some more daily life in the hospital and around Kenya. While seeing the sights and adventuring is great, some of the greatest value in these sorts of experiences is just immersing yourself in the everyday life in a place half way around the world...
I'm so grateful for this opportunity to serve the people of Kenya at Kijabe Hospital!
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| Main patient entrance to Kijabe Hospital, also where we enter for work. |
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| The children's hospital |
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| Big cats stalking the parking lot |
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| Medical records. Massive files full of patient charts. This is how it used to be in the U.S. before widespread adoption of electronic medical records. Some hospitals still use paper charts in some capacity in the U.S! As a pathologist, it makes a huge difference to have an electronic medical record to look up patient information quickly. However, the doctors who saw the patients gave much better and more relevant clinical histories on pathology requisition sheets in Kijabe (in general) than in my experience in the U.S. |
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| My patient's chart hadn't been filed yet, so the medical records team and I had to sort through the yet-to-be filed stack. |
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| Home sweet home... |
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| On one of our training hikes. Beautiful Kijabe... |
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| More from walking around. |
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| Gardens |
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| Driveway |
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| Sunset from the Kijabe shopping street |
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| Sunset from our balcony |
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| Out to dinner with other volunteers at Mama Chiku's, one of about 2 local hole in the wall restaurants. Very Kenyan food. |
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| Cooling down chai at our favorite watering hole, Countryman Chai |
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| This is chapati (flatbread) we made at home. This one is sad that I have to leave... |
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| My last day at the lab. We had hospital catered food! |
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| I brought our staff some stroopwafels from Amsterdam. These are waffle caramel sandwich cookies and are a Dutch favorite of mine. |
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| Final pictures. |
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| Everybody gets a soda on the house! Except Rochelle, this Tab came all the way from Seattle. |
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| A favorite storefront of mine down in the Rift Valley near Kijabe. |
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Saturday (market day) in a small, very rural village in the Great Rift Valley on the road from the Masai Mara back to Kijabe, where I will grab my stuff and head to the airport. The poverty is evident. This is rural Africa after all, and compared to this, Kijabe is actually relatively well off due to the economic developments that its hospitals and schools bring. But the richness of color and the vibrancy of daily life are striking. The challenges and disadvantages of getting by with less do not necessarily make people less happy. I think Americans should have more first-hand experiences of how people live in much of the rest of the world.
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| The most Kenyan food on the menu at the Nairobi airport Java House. My last meal before taking off for home. |
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| A peek at a wintry afternoon on Baffin Island with a full moon. |
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