Day 10: Bamburi Orphanage/School

After waking up at 7am, I ate my ham sandwich and got ready for the hospital. My stomach was still a little upset, and two of the others also apparently felt sick. They decided to stay in for the day to get better, but I was feeling better than yesterday, so I still opted to go to the hospital. My group of 6 (usually 8) proceeded to the hospital, leaving the housing complex at 7:30am.

I started in the women's general ward again. Two or three of us followed one of the doctors who was examining the patients. She assigned each of us a particular patient's case, to research the symptoms, causes, characteristics, and treatments for the ailment. Mine was acute and chronic renal failure and the differences between the two. Supposedly tomorrow we're going over our topics.

Monkeys at the hospital today!

After general ward, I went down to Casualties and Minor Theater. One patient got attacked by an alligator, and her leg was completely broken. I followed her up to Major Theater for her osteotomy, but I didn't stay to watch since I didn't have my spare scrubs with me. Back in Minor Theater, I was taught how to take out stitches (though I didn't take any out this time). We left the hospital at around 1pm.

We were back at the housing complex just long enough to eat lunch before being told our volunteering planned for today was cancelled, so we were asked to go to another orphanage. Most of the group were too tired, and I was tired too, but I ended up being one of the 6 or 7 who decided to go. We left around 2:30pm.

This orphanage/school was in a very small village called Bamburi. About 86 kids are taught in a very small hut. When we arrived, they sang for us, and then we played games with them for an hour or so. The games mostly involved making circles and dancing or running around in circles and then stopping. After a while, we gave them some candy and headed back to our housing complex.

The small hut that holds the 86 kids for classes.

Balloons ended in chaos... again.

Me with a few of the kids.

After we got back, we ate dinner (rice, beef stew, and some corn stuff that's fairly common in Kenya), played some games, and went to bed.