Recent Posts

Friday, May 18, 2012

Home Sweet Home

So, here is my home for the next 7 weeks!


A lot happened between leaving South Jersey and arriving at the “yellow house,” so here it is. Okay, so I flew from Philadelphia to London, where I had a 4-hour layover before my next flight into Nairobi. While waiting in my terminal in London, a Kenyan woman approached me and asked about the CURE t-shirt I was wearing. I told her that I would be working at the CURE hospital in Kijabe for about 2 months, and she said her husband works for CURE! Today, I walked into the OR at the hosptial and met Dr. Mbugue, who when I told him my name was Cassie said, "Oh! You met my wife in London!" Crazy.

I arrived in Nairobi about 9pm Wednesday night, where I was expecting to be picked up by someone from the hospital with Haley. Haley is a junior at the University of South Carolina planning on going to school to become a physician’s assistant. We are both doing internships with CURE for the same amount of time, which is really comforting! I found Haley in the airport after we got our bags, but then the man that was there to pick us up was not from the hospital. He is employed by CURE to transport people from Nairobi to Kijabe, or in our case, to a hotel in Nairobi. So, we ended up staying the night in Nairobi, and then David came and picked us up in the morning to bring us to our final destination. Now I thought that we would be staying at the ENT house, which is a big guesthouse owned by CURE just down the road from the hospital, but we are actually staying with Lauren in the “yellow house” right on the hospital campus. Lauren is the CUREkids coordinator here in Kenya, so she will be here for a year. You can see the CUREkids on the CURE website here. Here are the three mzungu's! (Me, Lauren, and Haley)



So,  thank you to the lovely Lauren that invited us into her home for 2 months! Here is my room:




And here is the downstairs kitchen and living area:




We are basically at the top of a mountain that looks over the Rift Valley and it is beautiful! Here is a picture, but it doesn’t do it nearly the justice it deserves. It’s just amazing.


It’s also the rainy season right now, so Haley and I got to nap during a huge thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. It was kind of great. I was told that I should have brought rain boots (which I was planning on bringing, but totally forgot!), so I think we are planning a little trip into Nairobi. The three of us have actually been planning our free time quite a bit and I have to say that I’m super excited for what Kenya has to offer! For now though, I’m just super excited to get started on our schedule at the hospital and meet the physical therapist I’ll be working with. Today we went to work with Lauren in the operating room, but there were no surgeries today so we've been hanging out in the doctors lounge, taking pictures of the kids in the ward, and panting nails for the moms and little girls.

Hopefully next week I'll be starting in PT, but for now I'm just getting used to the area and meeting the hospital staff. Kenyan's are so welcoming and they are all so excited to make us feel at home here!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Cassie,
Thanks for the update! It looks like you have a great little place to stay for your time there in Kenya! Enjoy every minute! I look forward to following your time there this summer. God Bless!
Nathan

Post a Comment