December 29th

So, I discovered today what has been making me feel so bad
in the mornings. Evidently coffee (aka the caffeine within it)
is causing the stomach problems I’ve been having. I skipped
coffee with breakfast this morning and I felt significantly
better than I have for the last two weeks. I don’t know why
it has started bothering me like it has; I’ve been drinking it
every morning pretty much since I got here. But it is, sadly
because I love coffee in the morning. This morning I did
rounds of men’s ward with Tom, another short morning we
finished at around 9:30. I went over to the “library” and read
for a little bit before going down town to get some bread for
lunch and for dinner this evening when the guests get here.
There were 10 coming (9 nursing students and their
instructor) with the 8 people I go to pick up tomorrow we are
going to have 18 guests and at dinner Karen will be feeding
24 people. That’ll be exciting. At some point this morning or
afternoon Tom and I went over to the guest house and put
up the last bed net. Either way, in the afternoon I walked all
the way to the orphan school (not ideal considering it’s over
100 in the sun) to visit Alusine because I wanted to let him
know that tonight would not be a good night to visit with the
strangers coming in and I wasn’t sure how crazy it would be.
I got there only to find out that he wasn’t there and had in
fact gone to Kagbory for a soccer match. So I sat there for a
little and talked to Kaba and another kid, I know his name
but don’t know how to spell it. Kaba is another one of the
kids there that I talk to some times. He’s a great kid, he’s
about the same age as Alusine (they would be freshman in
high school at home, here they are JSS 3). I didn’t stay long
so that I would be back in time to not miss Karen coming in
with the guests. Kaba told me he would come visit tomorrow
if he didn’t have to work. After I got home Tom and I just sat
around in the living room talking for a little while. It’s nice to
just sit and talk with no feeling of needing to get anything
done. Sadly it could not last, we had to start preparing for
dinner, we had just started when suddenly Karen was arriving
with the guests so we had to go over to welcome them and
help unload their luggage from the vehicles, and man did
they have a lot of luggage. They brought over 1000 pairs of
glasses, which is great and definitely gives us the 1000
Karen said we need to have to have a good inventory. That
gives us somewhere around 1500 pairs of glasses. After
getting them all settled in I went back over to the house to
prepare the spaghetti sauce and boil the noodles. The
stranger’s first meal in Kamakwie was a candle lit dinner as
the battery for the 12v lights was not holding power. Some
of them seemed to think it was great, having a candlelight
dinner in Africa. After dinner they all headed over to their
house to get settled in. I waited around at the house just
long enough to heat the hot water for tomorrow then I went
down to visit Solomon. I couldn’t get ahold of him so on the
way down I checked in the hospital just in case he was there,
and he was. He was in the OB ward which was good because
I wanted to check on a lady Tom and I had seen earlier in the
afternoon. She is pre-eclamptic. (Eclampsia is a disorder that
is categorized by the symptoms exhibited, they don’t know
how or why it happens just that it’s related to the placenta).
Being only pre-eclamptic they could wait till morning to do
the C-section unless her condition worsened and I was
curious to see. She was doing fine, and so were her twins.
The lady had a belly the size of a basketball, it easily doubled
her waist size. I sat and talked to Solomon for a while and
Tom and Karen came by to see the lady while we were there
and said she was doing well and was fine to wait till morning
to do the surgery. They wanted to wait till the husband was
around, because he has to get permission to do the procedure
from the woman’s parents because if he allowed it without
their permission and something happened to her he could
face murder charges, pretty extreme I would say. Anyway,
Solomon and I went down to his house for a little bit but I
had a headache and was pretty tired so I headed up home
and went to bed.

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks