Day #3: Friday 11-7-08 "Wife Beaters!"

Hey Susie,

Thanks for your return email! It's so good to hear from people being this far away. I will be in Africa for almost 2 weeks. I return home on 11-19-08. I wasn't sure if I was boring people with this stuff, but wanted to keep everyone that was supporting me on this trip financially and spiritually informed of what was going on. I'm having the time of my life, and it feels so good to be out of the rat race back home and doing something that really matters for people that have absolutely nothing.

The surgeon here was telling us that there are many cases that could be done in the US and done successfully that he has to make decisions about here to just let the patient die because if the cost is too great. For instance, a Mom who was an epileptic and her siezures were uncontrollable (boy did that one hit home). She would have repeated seizures in her home while cooking and burn herself very badly. No, not because she would accidently fall into the microwave, accidentally close the door and hit the "well done" button, but because she would fall into the fire in her one-room mud hut and get 3rd degree burns. On the fifth time at the hospital when they were doing skin grafts on her, Dr. White told the husband that he simply couldn't allow her to cook anymore the husband looked at him and told him not to bother treating her then, because what good is a woman that can't cook, and besides, he had other wives.

Excuse me!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Women are considered mere property here, especially by the non-Christian tribes.

Dr. White said other times he has to consider if he can continue treating a Mother for something that could be treated very successfully in the States, where here if the cost would amount to more than $150, that would mean the entire family of children would have to stop going to school in order to pay the mothers hospital bill.

We are staying at a "guest house" about 5 minutes from the hospital on the hospital compound. When we drove up 3 days ago. There were mobs of people outside the hospital with shacks built in the mud. I don't know why they were all there, I think they were patient's family's, but they are all dirt poor trying to sell you things. One of the men was inside the fence the other night when we were walking back to our rooms and he was trying to sell us "wife beaters" which were round gourds attached to the end of sticks that were used to crush skulls. One of the Dr.'s last night was telling me that there is a spike at the end of the gourd to make the insult even worse.

I've been told (and I'd like to believe) that the main purpose of the "wife beater" is at night, the Maasai warriors bring their cattle into the center of town to keep them from the lions. The men walk around all night long amongst the cattle to protect them. When a lion attacks the cattle, the men beat it to death with the "goard-on-a-stick". I'm hoping to NOT have that experience while I'm here.

It's very interesting to walk onto the hospital grounds here because the patient families are sitting around everywhere and they just stare at us as we walk by. We're very careful to have smiles on our faces and greet them in a very friendly way and they just step back and stare at us as if we're scaring them to death. The other day we stopped in an open area outside the hospital to all talk about something and a little Kenyan girl walked up to us with the biggest sweetest smile on her face and her arm was in a cast. She walked right up to the women in the group and shook each of their hands then shook each of the mens hands and her smile got bigger and bigger and bigger. Then she went back to the first person and shook all of our hands again. By the time she was done I had her giving me high 5's (I'm such a rebel, and felt I needed to leave my mark here in Kenya !).

Tell your family hello and keep writing. I go to the computer each day with great anticipation to hear from all of you.

Blessings!