Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Good morning from Kenya! In the past, I usually would write up a recap of my day at the end of the day, before turning in for the night. On this trip, writing in the morning works better, Wi-Fi willing! Here is what our training days are looking like so far. I consistently wake hours before everyone else, using that extra time to prepare for the days lectures until there is enough light that I can safely walk from our camp up to the training center. We are not to walk anywhere alone when it is dark here, because the animals can move through this area at any time and lions and hippos have been known to wander through at their leisure. I load up all of my gear, computer, notebook, phone and camera, put on my rubber boots for the walk (more about the boots in a moment!), and head up to the training center usually at 6:30am. The rest of the team starts to arrive around 7:30am and breakfast is served at 8am. After breakfast, we start lectures from 8:30-10:30am (there are 6 of us trainers, dividing the lectures between us), break until 11am, then hands on training until lunch at 1pm. After lunch, we have more lectures until 4pm, the trainees get a break until dinner while I often spend that time adapting and creating new lectures on Power Point, then dinner is served at 7pm. After dinner, usually by 8:30pm, the trainers have a meeting to discuss the day, progress of the trainees, make any adaptions, talk about the successes of the day, etc... After the first day of training, I offered to make a recap Power Point quiz from that day's lectures, focusing on key points we want to highlight. This is what I am usually working on until late at night and early morning. Before lectures start, I take 15 - 30 minutes to quiz the trainees and clarify any concepts that are more challenging for them. This is our schedule, Monday through Saturday, with Sundays for resting. I love the team of trainers I am working with! They are all so intelligent, gregarious, and collaborative. They all have a wonderful sense of humor, which I greatly appreciate, and even though I had only met one of them before this trip, they have welcomed me like family. I feel so lucky to be working with them!
As part of the hands-on training, we had organized with James to bring us pregnant mothers from neighboring towns, between 6 and 10 a day. As is often the case, the word got out and before James had returned with our 6 volunteer mothers, over a dozen had arrived on their own, totaling 23 for the day! When James arrived, he had to explain to the mothers that we would be here for three weeks and will need mothers 6 days a week and to please stop telling their pregnant friends to come today! Many of them traveled from quite a far distance and once they arrived, we are medically obligated to scan them, so the trainees had a lot more hands-on experience than we expected. Lectures were pushed back, students were divided into 4 stations, and we (the trainers) moved around the stations while they had their first try at using the machines and scanning live patients. ITW has a contract with Philips and uses a portable transducer called a Lumify, which attached to an iPad and uses a specific program designed by Philips for this type of use. After delaying lunch, the trainees were excused and the trainers quickly scanned the remaining patients, while Wilter and Twala (Kenyan Radiographers and part of the training team) wrote up the official medical reports. It made for a very busy, exciting and exhausting day!
Now for the story about the boots! As I may have mentioned, up until yesterday, it has been raining almost non-stop. James offered to drive 1 hour to the nearest shopping center to get the team some rubber boots, what an angel that man is! You have never seen such a happy group once we all had our boots on! I paid for the boots as a gift to the team and gave James my beanie with headlamp as a thank you gift. Now, if you think I am exaggerating the joy that simple rubber boots can bring, try having wet feet for 3 days straight! :) It is now a constant source of amusement for us all, when we put our boots on for the walk back to camp. Even on sunny days, because of prior heavy rains, the ground is wet and muddy. If I were making a gratitude list, these boots would be at the top!
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