It’s laaate Friday night, and everyone’s gone for fall break except me and a few others in Wannamaker.  Parents are coming down tomorrow for the VT @ Duke game so they can rub it in my face a little bit, and then the gang is driving back up to the house for a weekend of mayhem.

After purchasing McDonalds for the fourth time this week (McFlurries are DAMN good) I trekked on over to Edens to hang out with Zuri, and old friend from Aycock.  Speaking of Aycock, there’s been this movement to rename the dorm itself because apparently Aycock was a raging racist (his Wikipedia page is categorized under “A History of Racism” to give you an idea of how bad this might have been).  Yikes.  Anyhow, Zuri and I chilled and shot the shit for a bit, then we watched a movie after being joined by Jeff and a couple of subs from Jimmy Johns.

There is a real mouse in Zuri’s room, which she confides has kept her awake many nights.  Her main concern is the mouse pooping in her eyes as she sleeps, thus potentially giving her pink eye, which admittedly would be bad, though not as bad as the rabies that might be contracted if the mouse nests in her fro hair.  I introduced her to 30 Rock, and then she told me about a friend of hers who had tendencies of a psychopath.  Apparently, this girl is terrified beyond words of dogs, and this girl has admitted to stabbing a dog with a pencil on the way home from school out of terror.

Inspired, Zuri sleeps with a pencil under her pillow in case she wakes up in the middle of the night to the sight of a mouse having a bowel movement over her face.

In other news, Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, is a complete bust – I’m not going to ruin it for anyone, but let’s just say that the “lost symbol” is actually the bible and the whole secret for the whole book is that the freemasons randomly “discovered” that the bible can be interpreted to something deeper than its face value (shocking, right?) and that prayer and thoughts and stuff actually make a physical difference in the world, and the weirdo tattooed guy is actually Peter Solomon’s son Zachary who never died in the first place but instead murdered someone else in the Turkish prison and escaped to Greece, I think, where he became a sex fiend and then later became a tattooed freak of nature who dedicated his life to resolving his daddy issues by becoming an operative for the devil or something.  He dies in the end.  Langdon and the chick never make it to a bed.  Spoiler Alert!

I’ve resolved to become more cultured – I recently realized that most of the quotes that I throw out in my speech come from The Office, 30 Rock, or House, so I figured I’d educate myself in a non-graded, uncompetitive manner and read some great American short stories.  I just finished a couple by Hawthorn, no big deal.  You know.  Just reading my classics, like normal, cause I’m that intelligent.

My phone recently got rained on during the violent torrential downpour, and it reset and now thinks it’s the 6th of January in 1980.  Also, it doesn’t get signal anymore and the camera refuses to start.  I had to reactivate my old phone, the Samsung one, which is the size of a stick of gum and requires pinpoint sharpening of my thumbnail to be able to selectively push buttons on the surface.  The red paper on the battery of my old phone turned bright red, so as of now I won’t be allowed to replace it, but I’m going to rip the red paper off of the back and glue my own stuff on it to make it look okay.  It’s not like the guys who work at the Verizon store are going to know the difference.

I was supposed to make a website today, but instead I watched television online and did seven loads of laundry.  Duke Diya is going to murder me.  I’m already on their shitlist for not going to any of their required events.  I’m sorry I don’t want to go to a Triangle Garba mixer.  I don’t think I know how to Garba.  I know it involves sticks and banging them together (or is that Raas?) but if there’s some kind of prewritten organization to the deal, then I’m out.  Rather than making a fool out of myself there, I figured my time would be better spent by me studying for my Orgo midterm, which turned out to be futile anyway because I got a massive case of overpreparitis and hyperanalyzed everything.

Also my door vibrates at it’s really weird – it sounds like there’s a stampede constantly happening outside my room.

I’m exhausted I’m going to sleep.

…since I’ve gone to class.  My current excuse is that I’ve been staying up so late trying to catch up on the reading that I’ve had to sleep through the next morning’s class to fulfill my “at least eight hours of sleep a night” quota.

It’s also been a while since I’ve posted on this blog, which I promised I’d maintain until my dying day.  My bad.  Since my last post, I’ve come back from Kenya, gone to PWaves, gone back to Duke, started classes, and am now in the process of trying to manage all of that plus an independent study I’m doing plus helping to run our collegiate Crisis Simulation, DISC.

It’s all going pretty well, I guess.  Oh yea – I got the flu earlier this week, which blew.  I hate being sick more than most people.  I get highly irritable, and for anyone who knows me, that’s pretty dangerous.  Luckily it wasn’t the swine, or I would have been quarantined and had to have food delivered to me because the university is paranoid about transmission (which I guess is a good thing).  Anyway, I’ve had no GI problems, so no swine.

JUST ONE MORE WEEK LEFT!!!  Not that I haven’t had a blast, but I really need to get home.  I’m not sure how I will react when I touch ground in the good-old USA.  It might go something like this – I step off the plane, and epic music begins playing in the background.  I rush through that tunnel thing to the gate, and when I step onto the carpeted, clean, AMERICAN ground, I fall to my knees, start crying, and kiss the floor as I sing “God bless America, land that I love…”  I will then rush to a restaurant, order boneless, marinated chicken, and just stare at it.  A lingering question – will I be able to use a toilet?  I’ll probably forget to flush, seeing as how I haven’t been able to for the last nine weeks.

I’m going to use the next week to start scripting answers to some of the common questions I will be asked when I get back.  “How was Africa!?”  How do I begin answering this question?  How was Africa, indeed?  How do you sum this experience up into a cocktail-party answer?  I think my response will be “arjuninkakamega.wordpress.com.”  I feel like that pretty much sums it up.  If anyone out there has any especially applicable adjectives, I’d love to hear them.

I have to go, because I have to do a lot of stuff by Wednesday.  What is the likelihood that I will do it all on Tuesday night?  Pretty high.  Hell, if Jack Bauer can save the world in 24 hours, I can write a textbook, right?  I make this comparison because I just bought a copy of 24 Season 8 today and I’m about to watch it.

Incidentally, Season 8 is actually Season 7.  How did I figure this out?  On the cover, there’s a character who I am certain died in Season 7 (Larry Moss, head of FBI Washington).  I tell this to the DVD man.  He responds “Oh, I know.”  “Um, why does it say Season 8 then?”  “Oh, because it’s Season 7 with some bonus materials.”  I stop complaining, mainly because every DVD he’s sold me so far has actually worked and borne some resemblance to the show/movie advertised on the cover, which is an impressive feat.  Anyway.   I have to get to my Season-7-with-bonus-materials.  It isn’t going to watch itself.

Guillaume started another blog called fmlkenya.wordpress.com.  I’d like to think it’s pretty funny, mostly because I posted on it.

Today I was forced to transfer matatus in the rain into a matatu that was already packed beyond capacity.  At first, I began to ask the conductor where I was going to sit.  He didn’t seem to think there was a problem.  I heaved a deep sigh and remembered that I was in Kenya, where there is always room for one more.  I handed my giant roll of foam (don’t ask) to random guy number 1, my backpack to random guy number 2, crawled into the front seat, and laid down on five people (who were all sitting in a row of seats designed for three people, incidentally).  I then looked back down the length of the matatu and was amazed.  The kind of confinement that these people were in I have not experienced since my time in the womb.  For me, this permanently re-defined the concept of a “high-occupancy vehicle.”  The left lane on I-66 (I hate that highway.  It has caused me so much anguish in my life) is HOV-2.  Two!???  What a joke!  What would an HOV lane in Kenya be?  HOV-23.  In Kenya, you’re not really trying unless you fit 23 people into a matatu.  And even then, you’re wasting space, because you could fit a couple of chickens between your legs with no problem.  So really, it should be HOV-23/ChickenCount-10.

Funniest thing is that in the seat right behind me was a muzungu woman who had obviously not been here for long because she wore a look of shock and awe at the kind of population density she was experiencing.  I said hello, and she judged me hard.  I laughed to myself.  Give it a couple weeks, lady.  One day, you’ll be holding another person’s chicken while they are lying in your lap, and you’ll understand.

In other news, the shit is hitting the fan right now.  We have T-minus 16 days left in country, and there’s a lot to be done.  Luckily, the carpenter I’m working with is really good, and I’ve offered him a minor bonus if he gets everything done on time and with good quality.  I think that’s a huge motivating factor for him.  This might explain why he has stopped work on his other projects completely and is dedicating himself full-time to making these stretcher things.  Do I feel bad for his other clients?  Absolutely not.  This is game time.

After I finish this, I have to write up a detailed budget for the $1,100 dollars that the project is getting thanks to online fundraising from generous donors like you!  Thanks a ton!  I’ll be sure to let you know how the project is going.  I would post pictures, but Safaricom has died again, so that’s out of the question.

I couldn’t blog this weekend because the group went to Hell’s Gate national park for our mid-term retreat.  Actually it was more of a 2/3 retreat.  In any case, I think we all badly needed that trip.  It was great to get away from Kakamega and our work and just have fun – live it up as tourists.  I finally spotted animals that weren’t creepy.  Giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, monkeys, ostriches – it was pretty awesome.  I’ll try to post the pictures here, but I make no promises about the internet connection right now.  I also rock climbed a real mountain for the first time in my life.  Needless to say, I was terrified beyond words, mostly because I’ve never done it before, and also because I am extremely top-heavy (muscle, not fat, obviously).  I successfully climbed to the top, though, thanks to Simon (my anchor) and his coaching.  Simon, if you’re reading this, I know you laughed at me.  But I prevailed.

Also, because my group was talking about movies through our hike, we decided to make a movie called “Into Africa:  Episode 1 – the Gorge” once in the Gorge.  It’s pretty epic.  I spent most of yesterday editing it in Windows Movie Maker and re-learned why Windows suck at media management.  It crashed a thousand times.  I finally got it together, though.  Unfortunately, uploading it onto YouTube is laughable, given my pathetic internet connection, so you’re going to have to either take my word for the fact that it’s awesome or wait until that glorious hour in which I am re-united with my Cox Cable Internet Connection (I LOVE YOU, ~10 MBPS!  WE’LL BE TOGETHER AGAIN SOON!)

I wrote a novel on my other blog today.  It is about a discussion with Angie, our project coordinator who has been here for two years and has done a lot of development work around the world, about development and her ideas for Kenya and Kakamega.  I’m not going to reproduce it here, but if you’re interested you should check it out.

My online fundraising campaign is over – thanks a LOT to all of the generous donors who gave to the cause!  While final counts have yet to be compiled, it looks as though I have met my $1000 goal, which means Iguhu will soon be equipped with the equipment and the know-how to be able to handle a lot of emergency situations.  Again, thanks a lot to all who donated!  I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated about what goes on.

Today I woke up and decided to give a final, 3-week push to finish this internship strong.  There’s a lot left to be done, including a possible Microsoft Access database (if I figure out how to use it), CCC data organization, convincing the powers that be to let the CCC use a motorbike, writing up the patient wait time survey, taking a patient satisfaction survey, and finishing training.  Wow.  Writing it all up, I want to kill myself.

In any case, I promised myself I would stay positive, stay motivated, and finish it all.  We’ll see how it goes.  It is raining like hell right now.  I am trapped in the hospital, and the house might have floated away by the time I get back.  You know how in movies they turn on sprinklers during rain scenes and you think to yourself “rain does not pour that hard?”  False.  Come to Kenya.  Come visit where I am right now at this very moment.  It is crazy.  Thought you should know.

I’m headed to Kakamega tomorrow with Bayete and a hospital vehicle to buy materials for and construct some backboards for emergency situations.  It will be good to get some work done.  What I’m upset about is the fact that he’s telling me that it will take 1000 shillings to pay for gas and lunch.  Either this vehicle uses gold for gasoline, Bayete eats like a fatass, or he’s BS-ing me.  The latter seems most likely, which ticks me off, frankly.  There’s nothing I can do about it, either.

I had a conversation about this with Mama Joyce the other day – about how everywhere I go, I am repeatedly asked for a bit more than I should be, and no one’s joking – I’m legitimately expected to pay more because I look different.  The thing is, the 20-70 shilling difference isn’t making anyone rich.  The only thing it’s doing is making me angry, which is why I plan on surprising Bayete tomorrow by denying him the 1000 shillings, keeping track of how much fuel we use, noting the bill for lunch, and paying him exactly 200 shillings beyond that for his trouble.  Do you think I’m going to pay the hospital a lot for the chance to go into town and buy equipment for them?  Hell, they should be paying me!  If I want to give a monetary donation, I will.  What I will NOT do, however, is be lied to and robbed.

You’d be surprised how little I now care about people’s feelings with 3 weeks to go.  Like today, I was sitting at the registration desk working, and a bunch of people piled up at the desk and no one was there to register them.  Where is the clerk?  No one knows.  She’s off doing something random.  I told the patients explicitly to yell at her when she got back for being gone.  It’s what I would do!  Honestly, I told them, she’s not doing you a favor by being there to register you.  This is her job!  Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone there spoke English, but nevertheless it felt good to get those feelings out there.

I’m not being negative, I’m being assertive.  I’m looking forward to these next three weeks.  It will be a time when my nice façade comes off and I let Iguhu know what I think should be done.

IT FINALLY HAPPENED!!!  The patients are currently in a revolt against the clinical officers AS I SPEAK outside this registration room because they have been waiting for about three hours.  Lots of angry yelling is happening.  The hospital administrator looks troubled.  Will I intervene to stop the violence?  Absolutely not.  Maybe now the administration will deem it necessary to ask their doctors to start coming in on time instead of around 2:30 pm.  Is it weird that I’m really happy about this?  Also, people might now actually read my patient waiting time survey report instead of burn it as paraffin in their houses.

I’ve been typing all of my blogs in a giant Word document.  It is now 51 pages and over 30,000 words.  Yikes.

Me in the Gorge, the site of our epic film.

A confused water buffalo

Check out my other blog for more pictures.

Online fundraising ends on the 29th!  Donate here!

Eff my life.  I find out today – today! more than halfway through the internship – that the hospital was delivered four computers (bringing their total up to five).  One of the ministry requirements is to computerize patient data.  A winning combination, right?  Wrong.  No one at Iguhu knows how to use a computer.  Today, for example, the computer in the pharmacy was used solely for solitare.  The computer in the lab played Chris Brown over and over.  The nurse’s station computer played Rihanna and Neyo.  The CCC, which wants a computer for real patient stuff, didn’t get one.  Woohoo!  Chalk one up for Kenyan healthcare.

So, I figure I can go on a rampage and force everyone to use computers for real hospital things.  I want to make a computer network and then set up a database system using Microsoft Access for patient records.  Only problem is, when I launched Microsoft Access from my computer, I was greeted by a little talking paper clip who asked me to register my “brand-new copy of Microsoft Access.”  I’ve never opened this program in my life.  I don’t know how to use it.  The extent of my knowledge about it is the description that appears when you hover over it that says something about “databases.”

So now, I go quickly from being completely bored at work to trying to figure out arguably the most complicated program in Microsoft Office to a degree that is usable and helpful to people who have never seen a computer before (most think my laptop is a television.  Yeah.  We’ve got a long way to go.).  I also need to connect all five computers in the building and figure out how to run the program on all of them at the same time.  Doable?  I hope so.  If anyone has any experience using Access or can point me in the right direction, please let me know.

Tomorrow, we head off to Hell’s Gate at 12:00 pm.  God, I need this vacation.  I mean, what does a man have to do to spot an exotic animal here?  For anyone considering coming to Africa for anything at all related to animals, I say this – there are none.  The animals are all gone.  Go to the zoo.  I walked into the Green Garden the other day (one of the best days!) and saw elephants and tigers painted on the walls.  I yelled at the waiter for lying to me.  There are no such animals here.  Sure, if you want cockroaches, lizards, insane dogs, pervert cats, or bees the size of fists, come on over.  Have a ball.  But the only elephants left are in India (you have to pay 50 rupees to ride one and it’s decorated and people sometimes play trumpets and things obnoxiously in your ear) or at your local zoo.  Bubble – burst.  Thank you, Kenya.

Back to frantically reading Microsoft Office Access Offline Help.

Also, check this out – http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html.  wtf

I figured I’d post my grant text in full and then post the letter that FSD sent me in response.  The grant can be downloaded here:  Khanna_Grant.

This is what FSD said:

June 19, 2009

Dear Arjun,

Thank you for submitting your grant proposal titled Iguhu District Hospital to the Foundation for Sustainable Development.  The FSD Grant Fund receives many proposals for great projects like yours from Latin America, East Africa and India each year, and due to our limited resources we are only able to fund a portion of the proposals we receive.  Unfortunately, at this time your project has not been chosen to receive funding.

Your proposal was well written, and the evaluators felt that your project has a lot of potential.  But we want to offer some suggestions on how the proposal could have been strengthened:

• Providing a Government Service: FSD is careful to avoid providing services that the government should be covering.  While we understand that it’s frustrating when the government does not provide the necessary services, it’s important not to set up a parallel system and thereby free the government from their responsibility to their citizens.  While we felt the overall project concept was good, we would have liked to see a stronger advocacy component.

I hope that you will choose to submit your proposal to other funders, pursue independent fundraising, and/or explore creative ways to achieve your project’s goal with available resources.  Your grant packet includes a list of international grant making organizations; also, many of our interns have had success with sending project proposals to their friends, family and colleagues back home.  Your site team can provide you with more information on the process of receiving donations from friends and family for your project work via FSD.

Within one week, you will receive a detailed evaluation of your grant proposal.  We hope that the feedback provided in the evaluation will help you to hone your grantwriting skills, and will aid you and your host organization in developing and writing future proposals.

We wish you the best of luck with your project.

Sincerely,

Caitlin Drewes

International Programs Officer

Foundation for Sustainable Development

A fair point, though I thought I made it clear enough in the grant that the point wasn’t to equip the hospital (since buying one of everything wouldn’t equip the hospital in any sense of the word); instead, it was to train people to be ready to use the equipment on that future day when the equipment was actually supplied to the hospital.

Whatever.  What frustrates me is that you have to write these grants as if the people reading them are morons who won’t understand something unless you repeat it several different times in different words in every single section of the grant.  I mean, I wrote that the point of the funds and the equipment was to train the hospital, not to equip the it in the “sustainability” section and the executive summary, which was evidently a mistake – I apparently should have plastered this all over the grant – maybe even made it the title of the project (and a little bold never hurts).  The concept of “making something clear” doesn’t mean saying it clearly, it means saying it a hundred times.  To be noted for future grants!  Cool.

I also shared what I thought about FSD to Kirsten and Erin today when they came to deliver my seed grant (during week 5) and talk about the grant.

I’m thrilled, on the other hand, about the support that the online fundraising is getting.  Given the grant decision, the fundraising has become even more important.  Donate here!

I’m getting kind of bored at work these days, since the morning training session ends at about 9:30 am and I kind of have nothing else to do.  I might decide to work for the CCC a little bit, I don’t know.  Bleh.

Mid-trip retreat this weekend…

My grant didn’t get funded (eff.) so it has now suddenly become increasingly important to meet my fundraising goal of $1000 by June 29.  Donate here!

I’ll post exactly what FSD said about my grant, complete with a blow-by-blow commentary of what I think about them tomorrow evening when I meet with Angie to talk about it.

I went to Kisumu this weekend, which was a ton of fun.  The Green Garden is the best place in the world.  After weeks of ugali and other corn-related things, chicken a la kiev (boneless!) with an apple pancake and banana fritters with ice cream was pretty fantastic.

On the way to Kisumu, we decided that one of the words of the trip is “random.”  It’s true – Kenya is one of the most random places in the world.  A good – nay, a great – sense of humor is essential for survival here.  When you are in a matatu and someone hands you their small child to hold for the trip, you just have to go with it.  Why can’t they hold their own offspring?  Oh, because their hands are busy holding a live chicken, which is clearly not enjoying his matatu ride.  Just don’t ask questions.  Everyone else on the matatu hasn’t flinched.

In line at Yakos, something catches everyone’s eyes.  There is a brand of gum called “pussycat gum,” but on the wrappers, they have wonderfully abbreviated it by axing the “cat.”  How do you respond to something like that?  Right beside this gum is another gum with Obama’s face on it.  I understand that you think he’s your cousin, but Obama gum?  Is that really necessary?

On the drive to Kisumu, which should be a straight shot down the highway, our matatu suddenly violently swerves off of the highway into a cornfield.  We are now flying down an incredibly bumpy dirt path, incredulous villagers’ faces whizzing by, and all of us are freaking out.  No one on the matatu is concerned by the fact that we have suddenly taken a detour through a veritable forest.  We demand to know what is going on, and someone tells us that we are “fleeing the police” (that’s another thing – people here say the strangest English phrases that you can tell have been memorized from an English textbook written in the 70s).  Why are we fleeing from the police?  Because we might be arrested and fined because no one has their seatbelt on.  Oh, that makes sense.  Instead of asking everyone to put their seatbelts on and staying on a paved road, we would rather devastate this vehicle’s suspension and plow through kilometers of farmland.  Random.

There are also weird things often inscribed on matatus.  I think it’s some kind of advertising scheme that goes like this – if white people read an English word, they will be so excited that they will immediately jump on the matatu and go wherever it is going.  Okay, what word should we use?  Oh, it doesn’t matter.  Just use “mustard seed.”  “Jet Li.”  “NBA.”  “Agape I’m.”  (All these inscriptions have been spotted on real matatus.)  You can basically throw together any combination of English words and it will work.  Good plan.

Anyhow.  Today, I got some pictures of Patricia and Rey, Mama Joyce’s niece and nephew, posted below.  I also got a picture of the crazy dog.  When I let him out of his cage this afternoon, he just ran away.  He headed straight for the gate and left.  He returned after an hour or so; I’m pretty sure he’s the animal terrorist of this community.

I posted an interesting piece on my other blog.  Be sure to head on over there.

My favorite demon-dog

Patricia is the daughter in a family of P's - dad Patrick, mom Patropa, sister Patience.

Patricia and Rey

Mama Joyce

Rey. Or is it Ray?

Sorry for not posting yesterday – I was really tired.

Yesterday was a pretty cool day, though.  I wake up really early, work out, and go to work.  I’m in the process of printing out some materials for training that day when I get a phone call, and this is 8:00 am.  These days, I get really excited when my phone rings, because I always think it’s Angie calling about my grant.  Turns out it’s Liz telling me two things – one, that she just successfully ran 4 miles on the track, and two, that she just saw the  male counterpart to “bag lady.”

Let me introduce you to bag lady.  A while back, Liz and I had trekked into town to get index cards for Angie during orientation week.  For those who remember, this was the day that Liz got hit by a car and was still in freak-out mode.  I was trying to be cool and calm about everything – by “everything,” I mean the fact that cars don’t really care about killing pedestrians, how everyone literally drops everything to stare and point as you walk past, how street kids high on glue follow you everywhere, you know, the usual – when I come upon a pile of trash.

A simple pile of trash is not a strange site in Kakamega.  The concept of a trash can is pretty foreign here; I think I’ve seen three, or maybe the last one was a toilet – anyway, there are few trash cans and people tend to throw things randomly around.  So when I see this pile of trash, I think nothing of it and continue my conversation with Liz.  My conversation with Liz consists of “Liz, I know you got hit by a car, I was right behind you” over and over again.

Then, this pile of trash begins to move, and I let out an audible scream.  I mean, it’s a moving pile of trash!  My walking speed triples.  Liz is beside herself.  As it turns out, my “pile of trash” was actually a woman dressed in bags; hence, “bag lady.”

Liz has called me this morning to inform me that bag lady has a husband called bag man and that she saw him.  I’m glad, because I felt really bad for bag lady for being crazy and poor, and I’m happy to know she has a companion in her life.

The training session begins and ends, and I stand on the highway to get picked up to go to Kisumu.  I can’t explain to you how happy I felt to be able to ride in a car without a baby and a chicken in my face.  Emily and I begin talking, and just like most of our conversations, we end up discussing how amazing we are.  It’s a fact.

When we get to Kisumu, we realize that neither of us knows where anything is.  We ask our driver to “drive around” to find a random textile factory for Emily, which did not work well.  We asked hundreds of people on the street that had no idea what we were talking about.  Other foreign concepts:  maps, street names, organization.  We eventually parked at a large pink hotel and demanded that someone come get us.  They did, led us the five steps it took to get to the shop, and bought materials for Emily’s project.

When I asked where my store would be, I figured out how Kisumu works.  As it turns out, every single shop is owned by an Indian, and following Theorem 1 about NRIs – all Indians know all other Indians somehow – this means that all the shop owners know each other and have each other’s cell phone numbers.  No, the shop owner doesn’t know where this shop is.  But he does know the owner, the owner’s second cousin, the owner’s wife, the owner’s children’s names, their native village in India, and the owner’s cell phone number.  So we can figure it out.  Ten seconds and four languages later (English, Kiswhili, Kiluya, Gujrati), we have our answer.  Go in “that” direction, he says to me, pointing.  Um, okay.  Are you talking about a road?  Are we supposed to take a compass bearing?  To simplify things, he just tells one of his store workers to hop in the car with us and tell us where to go.  I don’t understand this place.

When we reach my destination (Buyimpex Agengies), I ask for the prices and then I ask how to get to another medical supply store in Kisumu (cleverly, I let them know that I am scoping out their competition).  They say, “go to the first roundabout, then go to the second roundabout, turn and you are there.”  I can follow you to the second roundabout, but I need details about this “turn.”  Is it a left or a right turn?  Is it a turn off of the roundabout?  If so, where is the turn?  The response to my questions – “you just turn.”  Fine.  It’s really hot and I’m starving and I just want to go.  I tell the driver “go to the second roundabout and turn,” fully expecting a query about the turn, and miraculously, he knows exactly what that means.  We go straight there.

I tell this place – Harley’s Chemist – about the other prices and ask them how much the same stuff costs here.  Strangely enough, everything at Harley’s is cheaper!  I’m onto their game now.  They expect customers to settle for higher prices because the effort required to find and go to the competing store is too high.  False.  Too bad I’m an Econ minor and know that since my driver is a fixed cost, my marginal transaction cost is zero and it is economically rational for me to force these stores into perfect competition by travelling back and forth as many times as it takes for the price to exactly equal the marginal cost of the product.

Emily puts her foot down.  She is hungry and feels faint.  We need to get some food.  I make one last trip to Buyimpex and get everything I need for less than at Harleys, and we’re off to the Green Gardens for lunch.

I’m going to hold off on describing the food here, because I might start crying.  Pizza, boneless chicken in gravy, mashed potatoes, cheese – we took pictures.  Feeling stuffed and satisfied, we head back to Kakamega.

Upon arrival, we meet up with Liz and Guillaume to hang out.  Guillaume and I get haircuts at 30 shillings apiece = less than 50 cents.  Speaking of 50 cents, there was a huge, obnoxious poster of 50 cent in the barber shop.  Anyhow, Liz and I then head over to the bookstore to get some publication materials for my project.  When we leave, it starts pouring, so I leave and get home.  I fall into a deep and restful sleep.

…only to be woken up at two in the morning by – I try to figure it out.  There doesn’t seem to be any sound coming from outside; the roosters aren’t up yet, and the dogs are always barking, so that couldn’t have been it.  As I ponder, it happens again.  A tingling on my arm, tickling across my neck – something is crawling all over me.  AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

I flip out, start slapping all over my body, and can’t sleep for the rest of the night.  Today, I cleaned out my whole room, killed a huge bug, found a dead cockroach in my bed (karma rocks, cockroach), and moved my bed away from the walls.  Let’s hope I fall asleep tonight.

Today, I finally got the news that my online fundraising campaign has been approved and is now on the FSD website.  I have a goal of raising $500 by June 28, so get donating!  The link is here, and you can read more about the project here (though you can probably learn more about it by reading this and my other blog).  Family – you are absolved from buying me a birthday present this year if you donate.  Friends – please donate!  This project is the real deal.  Others – check out what I’m planning on doing, and I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a project worth donating to.

Here’s a little excerpt from my other blog about why you should donate:

The most important reason I think you should donate is that this project focuses heavily on the concept of sustainability and skills development rather than just aid.  This idea is the cornerstone of FSD and is one that is exemplified by this project.  It focuses intently on training the staff on emergency medical practices and much less on donating anything.

The training has actually started, and it’s off to a fantastic start.  We’re getting great turnout, and trainees are really excited about what they’re learning.  Keep in mind that the training incorporates not only doctors and nurses but also non-medical personnel such as registration desk attendants, drivers, and security staff.  Given the limited human resources that the hospital has, it is extremely important for everyone to know how to respond if an emergency does arise.

This opportunity to donate should also excite you because you know exactly where your money is going and what it will be doing.  Have you ever wanted to do something for a developing community but hesitated to donate to a huge NGO for fear of your money getting lost in the bureaucracy?  Do you want the satisfaction of having hard evidence – pictures, personal interviews, and more – that your donated money actually made a difference?  If you donate to my project, I will make absolutely sure that I follow up with you personally and tell you exactly what your money is doing and how it is positively affecting the community here in Iguhu.

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about the project or what your donation will do, please don’t hesitate to ask me by commenting on this or any blog post.  I don’t want anyone to blindly donate anything; please take the time to scrutinize the project before you decide to give.  I’m confident that you’ll end up feeling the same way I do about what Iguhu needs and how to empower the community itself to satisfy that need.

Cool.  Again, that link is here, and more details about the project are here.  Thanks a lot!

FSD had yet to post our online fundraising or release our grant decisions.

I sprinted to training early this morning at 8:00 am after waking up at 7:30, throwing on some clothes and packing a bag. Sounds of Dr. Bomji’s voice explaining how this was a commitment on my behalf and from the hospital’s ends rang in my ears. Would I be late for the first day of this “commitment?”

No. I arrived at Iguhu ludicrously sweaty and looking wildly around for my trainees. There were none. This, on top of the fact of my feeling a little under the weather lately, made me very upset. I pouted for a bit in the patient waiting area, and at 8:15 I was informed by the hospital matron that everyone was ready. It turns out they were filing in behind me as I stared into space. I happily trotted over and began training. Airway and breathing, today; circulation later this week.
After training, I was feeling lethargic and sick, so I decided to go home until after lunch. I walked home and took a nap. I awoke feeling great; I worked out and was about to take a shower when Peter knocks on my door asking me what is going on. As it turns out, it’s difficult to explain what had happened today while naked on the other side of a closed door. Try it – no matter how innocent you are, you always end up sounding defensive.
Anyhow, I rush through my bath and out to the sitting area where Kirsten, Peter, and a girl whose name I can’t remember (maybe Katie) are waiting for me. They have just been to Iguhu and learned of my absence; they were there to check on me to make sure I was okay. I am, at this point, and we begin talking about my projects. This is the first time I have spoken to Kirsten and Katie (?) about my project, so they are duly excited about it and keep complementing me. No big deal; I’m amazing.
I have lunch and go back to work, where I have nothing to do. I talk to Charles of the CCC (see arjuninkakamega.wordpress.com), discuss a future project with him, and then finish up the patient waiting time survey. I have posted the average results for the whole hospital up, and it is generating quite a bit of interest.
Nothing else really to report. I’m off to Kisumu tomorrow to buy some medical equipment for the project. I have no idea where the store is. We’ll see how this goes.