the last few days i have been in the nursery, which is a nice place to be! most of the babies there were born premature. the biggest thing for the babies seems to be increasing their food intake at the right rate – a lot of them have to be fed through nasogastric tubes because they haven’t developed their sucking reflex yet. we can test for this reflex by putting our little finger in their mouth! also, a big problem for many of them is hyperbilirubinemia, which, long but physiologically fascinating story short, is treated by putting the baby under ultraviolet light. so the whole room is full of all these tiny babies in their incubators, being bathed in blue uv light. the only drawback of the nursery is that they keep it very warm for the babies, but it is a little too warm for an adult after you’ve been in there for a couple hours. the best part is that whenever there is a c-section they call us and we get to go and when the baby gets out, stimulate it and make sure its crying, and cut its umbilical cord off. i have also spent the last few evenings (as opposed to all-nighters) in the emergency room, which continues to be exhilarating in the fullest sense of the word.
in other news, on friday night i went with peter and isaac to a classic african pentcostal worship service at the hospital chapel. then we went for tea at one of the kenyan intern’s place – turns out he is a undercover celebrity in the kenyan christian music scene, and does concerts around the country when he’s not on call. very cool music videos!
then on saturday we went to lake naivasha, which is about an hour up the road. we got a guy to come pick us up with his car, but when we saw it we wondered if it was going to make it. sure enough, as soon as the driver sat down, his entire seat broke off and fell into my lap. so eventually we stopped on the side of the road and get someone to weld the seat back on before carrying on. we went to this wildlife preserve called crescent island – although it is not really an island because lake naivasha has basically dried up because kenya is experiencing a drought right now. anyways, there were giraffes, wildebeast, zebras and antelopes all over, and we could walk amongst them and even chase them (to try to get as close as possible)! perhaps nothing is more exciting than running right behind a giraffe – their legs are so long and they gallop so gracefully that it literally seems like everything is in slow motion! you have to try it i guess. i climbed into an aardvark hole but i needed help getting out because i got stuck. we spent most of the time looking for a python but it was obviously hiding in the one place on the island we didn’t look. it was a good day. we’ve also been playing copious amounts of basketball just up the road at the rift valley academy boarding school (which, as some of you may know, is where my mother grew up and also was a teacher for many years!). from there one can look out over the great rift valley – truly a beautiful sight.
