An Amazing Time in Kenya

 

Tuberculosis and HIV. Various-colored glasses. Baboons. Time with my daughter. Rice and beans and fried tomatoes. I wanted to reflect a few amazing things from our time at Kijabe Mission hospital in Kenya last month. It was a wonderful opportunity to serve, along with my med-student daughter Erika. We worked on the general inpatient wards, along with awesome local and expatriate staff, interns, and medical students. 

Despite countless voyages at over 30,000 feet to get over oceans and around the globe, I remain amazed at safe transport and God's protection. Getting in one of those massive Boeing or Airbus tubes is magical, like C.S. Lewis or Stargate, where you wake up a little foggy and with indigestion, but in another world altogether.

I am amazed at my daughter, her hard work and determination means that she will graduate med school in May. She worked hard on the wards, amazing the interns who kept asking her to pull night call with them, knowing her hard work would benefit the patients and help them get more priceless minutes of shut-eye. It is a great blessing to share the field of medicine with her, bouncing cases off each other and commiserating when people don’t make it, such as her young woman patient with end-stage AIDS who we couldn’t save. 

The faith and hard work of the doctors and nurses at Kijabe hospital was amazing to see. In America, we get so used to a medical environment efficiently cleansed of anything spiritual. In comparison, Kijabe felt like a feast: weekly chapel services rich with life-giving music, daily prayers before rounds, and colleagues who look to God for help, as well as to quality evidence-based resources. 

Being in Kenya with Erika was amazing. Her Kenya memories were limited to milking cows and walking country roads from her last visit at age 6 with our friends the Kibaritas. That did not stop her from jumping into the current cultural challenge with creativity.

Seeing Erika and how she remembered her time in rural Kenya as a child, I thought it was amazing how differently we translate the world into our mind and memories at different ages. It is like we are wearing different pairs of glasses that emphasize different shapes and colors. 

 

How we see the world depends so much on the glasses we are wearing. It is so easy to put on the glasses of pessimism and negativity. We can defensively wear glasses that look down others. The Bible mentions glasses Jesus wore: "have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus...who emptied himself..." These are humility glasses. Jesus purposefully looked at people asking himself: how can I serve them? Not as better than them, but seeing them first before himself. These glasses keep slipping off my face.

We saw an amazing array of diseases at the hospital in the few weeks we were there. TB, various cancers, malaria, HIV, diabetes and its complications, strokes and heart attacks. But people are not diseases, they are people. Whether their bodies improve or not, healthy connections between caregivers and patients is a good thing. Those who suffer need those who are blessed with health and resources. Erika was especially amazed by the selfless service of Dr Lapore, one of the Kenyan doctors working at the hospital. She trained in Russia, feeling a call to medicine, pushing through to learn enough Russian not only to pass but to excel.

 

Dr Lapore on the right. Medicine Chief Dr. Tony Nguyen on the left.

The pathway to humility is through the humble valley. Having to ask for help interpreting, finding which meds are available, how to make things happen in a new culture, is humbling. Hopefully we grew through this process, and can keep those Jesus glasses on, like the decorations on the bus below.

Chapel on Wednesday Mornings

Christian Bus Culture? And "Stay Humble!"

Erika and I had a day to see some of the animals which East Africa is famous for. Kijabe is on the steep edge of the Rift valley. A drive to the bottom brings you to Lake Naivasha, where you can walk around with zebras, gazelles, giraffes, ostriches, hippos and endless varieties of birds large and small. No lions or Elephants there—but you don’t want to be walking with those anyway. It was an amazing opportunity. Back at the hospital grounds, there were plenty of monkeys and baboons showing off, but we were told to keep our doors and windows locked lest they gain entrance, steal our food, and make a mess.

 

monkey on the hospital roof

Baboon at the hospital

John and Esther

It was so amazing to see old friends! Especially Pastor John and his wife Pastor Esther. A short visit but such a blessing.

In summary, it was an amazing time in Kenya. Thank you so much for praying for us. If you are interested in supporting the work there, I suggest a donation to World Medical Mission. They organized our trip, and do amazing work around the world:

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/medical/world-medical-mission/