Pole Pole

In Swahili, “pole” means both “sorry” and “slowly”. This is not a coincidence. Everything in Kenya happens pole pole and people constantly say it. They actually even translate it into English. An actual conversation we had with Mzee Mungai the first week:
M: Mzee, how was your day?
Mungai: Fine, fine.
M: What did you do today? (it was a Saturday)
Mungai: I did some work in my room slowly slowly.

Life in Kenya is much less structured and everything is always late. They are thoroughly amused at the American custom of arriving on time to anything much less EARLY. School is supposed to start at 8 and we never start before 8:30. Church is supposed to end at 12:30 and never ends before 12:55.

There are some reasons for this: transportation is much less reliable [matatus break down a lot], travel times are extremely varied [matatus will stop constantly to pick up more people if there is a single square inch free in the vehicle], and people lack a lot of the “instant” technologies that we take for granted in the US [a lack of microwaves, refrigerators, etc. all extend meal times for example since prep is virtually from scratch].

The hilarious thing is that even though everyone knows in advance that things will be pole pole, no one ever seems to take steps to mitigate this. For example, the other day I watched the “Baby Class” (ages 2-3) at school while one of the teachers ran into Mombasa. She left early and said she would be back at school by 11. The previous day I asked her what work she wanted the children to complete in her absence and she left me about one hour worth of work total. I thought this was strange because I had at least 2.5 hours from 8:30 to 11 to kill but figured it would be fine.

Now, I didn’t expect her to be back at 11. I expected her to be back pole pole at around 1 – even with this guess I was off by almost 2 hours when she showed up at 2:45 which is basically the end of school. I’m not at all surprised by this incident but I was surprised that she didn’t leave me with more work. If you know that you’ll likely be delayed by several hours, wouldn’t it be smart to leave me with extra work, not minimal work? The end result was me sitting with 15 3-year-olds for over 4 hours singing every nursery rhyme and playing every clapping game I could think of. I think the kids thought I was insane although that’s commonplace here. M and I call these moments “crazy wazungu moments” because you can tell that’s what people are thinking.

Pretty much any description of activities includes pole pole. When asking what the itinerary would be for a safari, we were told that the first day would include “a game drive slowly slowly”. I have to admit that it’s sort of nice that no one expects you to be anywhere at a specific time although I can imagine it’s rather frustrating if you’re trying to accomplish something which is time sensitive. Luckily we aren’t particularly pressed for time so we’re adapting to life slowly slowly.

I just wish that mail weren’t delivered pole pole. We’re on day 17 of waiting for a package to get through Kenyan customs. I contacted someone and finally they informed that I have to go to Mombasa to retrieve it even though it was sent to Msambweni. Not sure how I was supposed to know that or when we would have been informed if I didn't ask. So, we’re going to Mombasa today to see if we can “finesse” it out of customs so we’ll update you on what is sure to be an interesting adventure.

Our Neighbor

When E and I arrived in Kenya at the apartment, we noticed that there seemed to be a lot of cars around with squeaky breaks, and they were particularly noticeable from our bedroom, at around 8 PM. However, we soon realized that the sound was not due to cars, but rather from our next-apartment neighbor, Mr. Parrot.

Parrots in America are typically taught to say idiotic yet charming things like “Hello” and “Polly wanna cracker?”. Apparently Kenyan parrots are left to their own devices though so our friend has learned the ambient sounds from his surroundings. He dazzles us every evening with such fan favorites as “Brakes”, “Car Alarm Arming”, “Car Alarm”, “Musical Scales”, and finally, “Jambo”. He’ll often reel off a string of five or six of these in a row, as if he’s showing off. Usually he wraps up at a reasonable hour, but occasionally, he performs well into the night. It’s pretty jarring to be woken up by a car alarm basically going off in our room. One night he must have spaced his calls out every five minutes or so, just enough that I kept waking from near-sleep, which resulted in the can’t-go-to-sleep anger that lead to me to contemplate going next door and releasing him into the wild / something worse.

They used to keep him on the front porch but he was becoming a menace to the matatus. Locals often whistle when they want a matatu to stop and Mr. Parrot was notorious for throwing down a long whistle right when they were going by. Now they keep him in the room next to ours where he’s a menace only to us but at least the matatus can resume driving at 900 miles per hour.

Finally, I’m getting my research on track in the lab. Untold amounts of politics are involved in working here, and I happened to be on the unlucky side of some, which delayed the start of my intended project for six weeks. It wasn’t all bad, as it gave me a chance to spend more time studying Swahili with E, more time in the operating room meeting other docs, as well as time to work on a proposal for another potential project while I’m here. However, I am very glad to have this limbo portion of our visit behind us (hopefully).

I'm mad

I’m not really sure who I’m mad at but I’m just plain mad. Today at school, a little girl got a deep cut under her eye. You see the swing set is rusted out so that there is no seat on one side and instead it’s just a rusted chain. The kids still swing on it and today somebody swung the rusted chain back and it caught Joann in the eye. There was a huge cut and it was gushing blood. (that’s her in the picture above, a few weeks ago we were playing with my hat and I snapped these photos)

As previously mentioned, the school has no soap. They also had no disinfectant or even a band-aid. Mary took her to wash it off while I ran over to the primary school (the kindergarten and primary are on different sides of Diani Beach Rd) to see if they had any. They didn’t so by the time I got back, her eye was swollen shut. The teachers rinsed her eye with the well water but my first thought was “untreated water is flowing into her eye which may have tetanus from the rusted chain. Awesome.”

I was so fed up that I grabbed my wallet and ran to the nearest supermarket and brought back soap, bandaids, and disinfectant. The suckiest (yeah, I know that’s not a real word) part was the fact that Mary kept apologizing to me. As if she has anything to feel bad about as she frantically tried to stop the girl’s bleeding with ice borrowed from one of the houses next door to the school. I helped her clean up Joann and we used my phone to call the girl’s mother to come pick her up. We handled the situation but I was mad and I’m still mad.

Mad because the school is supposed to have budgeted for disinfectant and included the price in tuition – so someone is either being lazy or mismanaging funds (Mary told me this and I believe her). Mad because if anyone would have spoken up to the US-based ministry that helps to support the school, I imagine that disinfectant could have been procured. Mad because at least twice a week tourists drop off idiotic things like candy instead of asking what we actually need and then providing it.

But as I think more about it, I think I’m mad because it’s just patently unfair. You know the phrase “there but for the grace of God go I”? That’s all I could think about. Why do some of us get born in the US where schools have nurses and decent (or at least non-injurious) playground equipment and others are not? It’s just really frustrating and there’s no easy solution.

Mary was very thankful that she now has the disinfectant but she did say that she’s now concerned that no one at the school will ever buy the supplies. She is concerned that once you give someone something for free, they now don’t want to buy it. So in the long run, I may have made the situation worse. I think that’s a risk I am willing to take though, I couldn’t have forgiven myself if her eye got infected because I didn’t buy the disinfectant. I just needed to do something. If I’m honest with myself, I’m sure it was to selfishly assuage my own guilt at being so privileged in comparison to these kids. So maybe I’m also a little mad at myself while growing up for ever being disappointed up with my lot in this world.

Shimba Hills

Over the past week, people from M’s lab have been arriving each day including M’s close friend from med school, A. Most people are here just for a few days though A and another person will be here for the next 3.5 weeks. To say M was a little excited about A’s arrival is an understatement.

Since A is only going to be here a few weeks, we have several trips saved up that we were waiting to do when he arrived. So yesterday we set out for an all-day tour to Shimba Hills, a small national park about 1 hour from Diani. The park is known in particular for the Sable antelope which is found within Shimba Hills and nowhere else in the world. We also knew there was a chance to see cape buffalo, elephants, and giraffes but these are much more rare.

We went on a short game drive in the morning and saw the Sable Antelope as well as a lone cape buffalo. The buffalo was simply sitting in the road and examined us with a combination of disinterest and disgust before moseying off into the bush.

The Sable Antelope was actually a complete herd including a mature male (he’s the black one) and several babies.


We spent the remainder of the morning hiking to a waterfall where we saw river cockroaches and a few tadpoles. What the place lacked in animals though was offset by the beauty of the waterfall. M and A in a romantic waterfall interlude are shown below.


As we drove toward the lodge for lunch, M spotted the rear ends of 2 elephants and as we neared we realized that they actually had a baby with them. They protected it by keeping it between them and disappeared into the bush without a trace. We were so excited to see two of the big five on our first safari. (The “big five” that everyone wants to see on safari are buffalo, lion, elephant, rhino, and leopard).

We ate at the lodge which is designed into the trees to look like an enormous tree house. It is frankly inexplicable that this structure has not been completely consumed by termites that roam the jungle (and let me tell you, the bugs here could join the big five...) but we’re glad that they’re holding off for now.



As we began our afternoon game drive, we discussed how amazing it would be to see a giraffe but that we knew it would be a long shot. There are only 6 giraffes in the entire reserve (the climate is not ideal for them) so it was extremely unlikely. We drove around another hour or so before we came upon a pack of baboons and saw this little guy riding horseback on his mama:



We started heading for the park gate and I randomly said “Giraffe yuko wapi?” which means “where is the giraffe?”. Clearly this was a rhetorical question but less than 30 seconds later someone yelled “Giraffe!” and we found Geoffrey:



He was pretty far away but we could see him quite well through the binoculars. (Yes, we confirmed it was a HE, I’m married to a budding urologist). All in all an amazing day.

The germ factory

This is Yasmin – she’s adorable right? I love her eyelashes. She, like all kids, is a germ factory though and my immune system is not accustomed to kindergartners. They’re constantly coughing, wiping their noses on you, and generally getting dirty. Plus, she loves playing with my ring and holding my hand.

So, now I’m congested and coughing too. The school has no soap so it’s impossible to actually clean your hands. They have a tap of running, salty water but nothing to disinfect or remove any actual germs. I mentioned this to Mary and it didn’t seem to concern or surprise her, apparently this is pretty normal. This was especially gross when we had a stomach bug going through the school last week (I didn't catch it thank goodness) and kids were vomiting. Apparently when kids have head colds, they stay home from school but when they vomit, they come to school. As mentioned in M's last blog, people are much more scared of colds and pneumonia than they are of stomach or GI illnesses.

I’m buying soap this weekend and putting it in the teachers closet. I’m not a germaphobe but I hope that washing my hands keeps me from getting sick too often (though on some level it’s inevitable).

It's getting hot in here

Though air-conditioned, the operating theatre here is not the cool 60 degrees that they spoil us with in the States. For those who have never been scrubbed into a surgery, once you add the surgical cap, a mask over the nose and mouth, a full-length gown, rubber gloves, and surgical lamps aimed at you, things can get pretty hot. The OR has to be very cold to keep the surgeon from dripping sweat onto the patient, as this is less than sterile. In the US, gowns are made of an impermeable paper (not sure how they do it), so they’re actually quite light. Here, one wears the big galoshes, a heavy rubber apron, and then a cloth gown over that.

The other day I was invited to scrub in to get a closer look at the surgery. I excitedly washed up (with a bar of soap, not the single use sponge/brush/fingernail cleaner from the Ttates), and put on my gown and gloves. Then, I noticed that the room was a little too quiet. One of the nurses had turned off the air conditioning because it was “too cold” in the room. Kenyans hate air conditioning; multiple people have told us that they came down with pneumonia from being around it.

It started with my back; beads of sweat marching towards my waistband. Soon, there was a line of sweat beads visible to me, dancing on my eyebrows, just waiting for my signal to drop onto the surgical field. The surgeon across from me displayed no sign of discomfort. It looked as it he’d just powdered his face. Soon, I would be soaked; I knew this. I was simply standing there, definitely not exerting myself, but the sweat did not abate. By the time the surgery ended, I had only dripped a little bit, and not near the incision, so that was good. However, my scrubs were not in were not so lucky. I took off my butcher’s apron, which revealed the damage. Those of you who saw me or picture of me at the Fitzpatrick wedding in Phoenix a few years ago have some idea of my appearance at this time. Malesi (a nurse) looked me head to toe and with a slight smile said, “you should change now”. What he didn’t say, but was on his face, was “crazy mzungu…”.

I am very much enjoying the operating theatre, but my European hypothalamus and sweat glands are not doing a good job of adapting to the climate here. I have since been asked “why do you sweat so much?”, and heard comments such as “you’re really suffering”. I’ll survive, but this is also the “coldest” time of year. Perhaps I’ll go on surgery sabbatical in January…

Our Indian Ocean View

One of the best things about our time here for me has been the opportunity to work on my photography. I took photography in high school and absolutely loved it but had little time for it in college or after college. Before our honeymoon, M and I invested in an SLR camera and now I have time to actually learn how to use it. In anticipation of this extra photography time, I purchased some amateur photo-editing software before we left and have been playing around with it. It’s a lot of trial and error but it’s really cool to be able to adjust my photos since I’m still learning how to take good digital photos.

My favorite subjects are my kindergarteners and our view. The view especially allows me to play with different settings, plus it’s a pretty great view. We are directly across the road from the beach (about a 5 minute walk)and the editing allows me to remove the phone lines from the view. Below are some of my favorite shots that I have taken and edited while we’ve been here.