Now, on with my day...
Waking up in the morning before I even open my eyes, I could swear I'm back home on the farm in Iowa because all you can hear are the cows and sheep. Today was kind of a day off for those of us that arrived in the first wave from Vanderbilt. We've spent the past couple of days organizing and cleaning up the OR's and unpacking all the supplies sent to us from all over the United States and trying to just make sense out of it all. The second wave of Vanderbilt Dr's and nurses and even 2 seniors in high school (Hannah Baldwin from CPA is here for you Nashvillians - her Dad is the Chief Pediatric Cardiologist supporting this effort, although he is not here with us). Those of us here decided to take the day off and wait until the surgeons arrived this afternoon since they would have to confer with the cardiologists who ran the clinic on Monday and evaluated all the patients.
So at 0900 we all took off for church, which is on the hospital grounds. Of course, we make quite a scene wherever we all go, since we're so white. The natives here just crack me up at the way they stare at us. I'd give anything to just hear what they're thinking in their heads. It runs the gamut from terrified, mystified, bewildered, confused, amazed, and amused. I try to go around looking like the most pleasant person on the planet so I don't offend anyone. There are so many cultural differences that I'm never really sure where I stand (and the fact that there are people selling wife-beaters outside the fence of the hospital I just don't want to take the chance of being misread!).
My main objective, besides helping to save lives, is to take as many pictures as I possibly can with my daughter Meghan's totally cool Nikon digital camera (thanks AGAIN Meghan for loaning it to me). The Maasai tribesman do not like to have their pictures taken. They believe if someone takes their picture, they have taken a part of their soul. Well, I'm not willing to have anyone impede my new-found hobby, so now I'm SNEAKY-Mr.-picture-taking-scary-white-guy. This morning before church there were some tribesman and women walking up the dirt road in their colorful clothing, no shoes, with children hanging off of them while they're carrying what appears to be 500 lb bundles on their head. How often do any of us get a photo op like that? So I start zooming in very unexpedly on my unwilling subjects until I realized that the Mother with the child on her back walked behind a tree and never came out. When I put the camera down to see what happened to her, she was standing behind the tree looiing at me, waiting for me to put the camera down, which I did very quickly. Enough morning fun, time to go to church and repent for my terrible ways.
As we entered church, of course we were like a parade of whiteness. All heads were turned as we took our seats. The Chief Surgeon is such a great guy. As we sit down, I realize he is sitting in the front of church playing the piano (we need to bring a piano tuner with our team the next time we come). I'm very impressed at this already incredible individual. Shortly after a few announcements which included each of us standing up and introducing ourselves there were some very nice words from the Chief Surgeon explaining to the congregation that we were all here to do the very first open heart procedure at Tenwek Hospital where we would be stopping the heart, cutting on it, restarting it and waking the patient back up.
Next comes the vocals part of the program. OK, for those of you that don't know this about me, although I have spent much of my youth in instrumental music I can't carry a tune in a bucket. So now I get to sing with everyone looking at me. Not only do they sing in church in Kenya, they DANCE! So as the worhip team assembled at the front of church, there our surgeon goes and picks up a guitar. This guy is incredible. We all get instruction on how to do the white-person dance (OK, I can handle that one) and then the second verse is in Kipsigis (the tribe around Tenwek) and we also learn how to dance in Kipsigis! Don't bother asking, you'll never see it from me. But I have to admit, it was a very uplifting service and very enjoyable despite the singing and dancing.
Here's my favorite part of the day. As we sat down in church there were 4 little girls sitting in front of us and they were turned completely around in there seats staring at us. Most of them were trying to be inconspicuous about the staring, but the youngest girl just couldn't take her eyes off of me. So of course I had to accentuate Mr..Pleasant-est Person on the Planet Guy and all of sudden all the kids get up and go around and sit directly behind us. OK, maybe they didn't like what they saw. Very soon after they moved they started touching me ever so lightly, and poking me very lightly like they had to not only see what these white people looked like, but what was inside them anyway?
After church several children came up to us and were very inquisitive. I asked them (in my very broken Kipsigis) if I could take their picture and they agreed. So I snapped a few pictures and showed them their pictures on the view finder and soon they were all giggling and laughing. My favorite little hand-shaker-girl-in-the-cast from the other day came up and started shaking my hand again, so I got some great shots of her too.
What an absolutely spectacular day in Eastern Africa. I still can't believe I'm here. As soon as we got back to the guest house it started to downpour, and the second set of our group arrived from Nashville so we all have lunch and then about 22 of us had an impromptu cardiology conference in the lunchroom and the cardiologists brought out their ECHO machines and showed all the films of the patient's they saw in clinic on Monday. They discussed the cases with the surgeons and Dr. Bichell and I are doing the first 2 open-heart cases ever here at Tenwek Hospital on Monday (tomorrow) and Tuesday. More clinics to follow in the next several days and more surgical cases after that. Some patients are coming in from Nairobi to be evaluated. Dr. White, the Chief Surgeon at Tenwek was telling us the other night that there have been 8 pediatric cardiac surgical procedures done in the past 12 months in the entire country of Kenya, and we'll do at least half of that the first week we're here. I stayed in surgery until 10:30 pm tonight to make sure I'm all ready for the case tomorrow, so say a prayer for me tonight before you all go to bed. The case will be starting at 0900 in the morning (midnight y'all's time tonight).
Oh yah, update on Elvis the arrow patient. He died this morning. The injuries were too severe even though the arrow didn't hit any major blood vessels. He was shot around 1 am and didn't make it to the hospital until about 10 am that morning, so the infection was so severe, he became septic in the ICU. We were told that the Kipsigis tribe make their arrows in such a way that when they hit their subject the shaft breaks off at the arrow head (inside the body) so they cannot be pulled out. They found out that Elvis was with another man's wife in the other man's home. The husband came home and found them together and shot Elvis with the arrow and he took a machete to his wife. She is in critical condition at a neighboring hospital and will most likely not survive. This kind of thing happens all the time and the surgeon thought that there would be no police follow up. He is keeping the arrow head in case the police request it. If not, he said we could take it home with us.
More tomorrow...
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