The Faces of Tenwek

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On November 5th, 2008 a team of pediatric cardiac surgical personnel from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN embarked on a mission’s trip to the other side of the world for 15 days. This trip was a vision of many people over many years with the common goal of helping the underprivileged natives of the dark continent of Africa. We traveled almost 9,000 miles to a location in Eastern Africa 30 miles south of the equator and 120 miles east of Lake Victoria to perform the first open heart procedures at a place known as Tenwek Hospital.

Although our team (Team Tenwek) had been talking about and preparing for this mission for the better part of a year, and the trip itself was the culmination of efforts of surgical teams and religious organizations over several years, I don’t believe any of us were prepared for what we would encounter at Tenwek Hospital in the Rift Valley of Eastern Africa. Although the objective in most of our minds was to help the patient’s we had previously identified with cardiac disease half-way around the world; in the end it was those very patients that helped us to see ourselves in ways we never could have imagined.

The English language falls far short of being able to describe the experiences we had at Tenwek Hospital and the far reaches of Kenya that we traveled to. The sights, sounds, smells and most of all the people that we encountered in Kenya touched us in so many unexpected ways. Each day of our trip contained moments that were completely unexpected, situations that seemed inhumanly barbaric in ways I’ve never imagined, yet that was the daily routine and life in this continent that I really knew nothing about. I was continually fascinated and intrigued by the cultural, domestic and professional differences between my daily life and theirs.

My reasons for wanting to document this trip began as purely selfish in nature. I was going on my first mission’s trip to a place I never dreamed I would have the opportunity of visiting and I simply wanted to remember every moment and every experience. What I never expected, was that these people and these places were about to make me look at myself and at my life in ways I would never have been able to before.

From a professional standpoint, I have chosen to specialize in pediatric perfusion because it allows me to work with and help children on a daily basis. Children have always held a special place in my heart, and it was the children of Africa, like little Kip that had the most profound impact on me personally. For me, this trip put a “face” on our distant destination of Eastern Africa.

Although some of the tribes of the Rift Valley Province are literally a generation or two away from the stone ages, they live in huts constructed of manure and thatch, walk miles and miles daily without shoes for comforts we all take completely for granted, live in extreme conditions, fight off lions with their bare hands to protect their families and livestock, and have literally no material possessions to speak of. These people have so little yet, they repeatedly witnessed their strong faith in God to us on a daily basis in such shocking and surprisingly unexpected ways. We came to Tenwek to help the people of the Rift Valley Province from a medical standpoint, and in the end, the patients and medical staff at Tenwek Hospital showed me that there is so much more to life than the daily comforts and possessions that we often feel are so “necessary” to our daily existence. The Kenyans we were helping had nothing but the smiles on their faces and the clothes on their backs and the faith in their hearts, and yet that is more than a lot of people here have or even pay attention to. Traveling through Kenya allowed me to look inside myself at what’s important in life. It was as if I had never been able to look at myself in that way because I was too preoccupied with the daily “stuff” in my life; the pagers, and cell phones, and surgery schedules, and administrative and staffing issues, and appointments and meetings, and bureaucracy and hidden agendas of people we have to deal with on a daily basis. Being at a location half-way around the world with all of that stuff stripped away doing what really matters to us for people that are so genuine, sincere and thankful for our help spoke profoundly to each of us on Team Tenwek.

The humility, happiness, and unencumbered way of life and strong faith in the Lord of the Kenyans personified this foreign place that we found ourselves in. In the end, that is what I took away from my time in Kenya, and that is what I would like to share with you as you read of our experiences there.

This is the story of Team Tenwek and the Tenwek Phenomenon.