Jambo my lovely family and friends!!!

Jambo family and friends!! We are in eldoret (the main town that we flew into here...about an hour form kipkaren) for the day, saturday. we just had milkshakes and are now sitting here enjoying a little internet cafe for 1 shilling per min. its a great deal! It's been like 4 days since my last blog so im gunna have to really jog my memory to try and fill you all in on all the crazy details of this adventure!! it wont be the novel like last time cuz its costing me this time but ill do my best...and once again...it will be all over the place to bear with me!!

So after American night on tuesday, william, michelles husband walked us home through hte pitch black dark valley. It was beautiful to look at the sky...you havent experienced the stars until youve seen the kenyan sky in hte dark of night in hte heart of the great rift valley. WOW. so as we are walking and enjoying the night...alie manages to fully submerge her entire left foot (in her teva sandals) into a warm fresh gooey smelly cow pie!!! ahhhh!! oh man it was horrible...the poor girl was so very traumatized. so that made for an uncomfortable walk back. When we got back to our room, we were shown a little mud hut across the way that would be our new home starting in the morning!! so off to our 4th living quarters of the trip! i enjoy the chnage of scenery:) A 5 day youth camp started on wed so thats why we had to move out of the dorm rooms.so in the am, we packed up and moved all our stuff over into our little mud hut, with a grass roof...oh how i wish you could all see it...it is the real kenyan experience! iv taken alot of pics of it for you all to see when i get home...ive taken over 1000 already!! so get excited to see them all!! i can hardly wait to show you them!

The thunderstorms just keep coming and they are by far my favorite part of the day...in the afternoon at the clinic, i find myself peeking out the window, watchin the clouds and thunder roll in! its soooo great! The clinic has been great this week...we have seem tons of patients. its like an er cuz they get a lil bit of everything and you never know wat to expect!! we have been giving tons of injections during mama/baby clinic on tues and thurs which has been great practice. but i just hate making those poor lil babies cry! ahh i just feel so bad...but im gunna be a nurse so sometimes, in making ppl feel better, you gota hurt them a lil bit first i guess. we have gotten to see many more pregnant moms and feel their bellies and listen to the babies heart beat which i am reminded every time, is just a miracle in itself how that all works. God is so creative in the way her designed these crazy bodies of ours! We have seen tons of malaria cases this week and have learned how to assess their signs and symptoms to figure out a diagnosis and what treatment they need!! gosh, i really am learning SO much! Michelle is a wonderful teacher and deals so great with our loads of questions everyday! its been great to watch her and how she works with the patients and even is able to use some of her swahili skills to communicate....alie and i, not so much haha. we try tho. i know "pole sana" (So Sorry!) which i repeat numerous times after giving an injection! We have seen lots of typhoid and tb, upper respiratory infections in little kids, dehydration, UTIs, etc. We have given tons of polio injections and tetanus too...i even gave one right in the butt! ouch! pole sana to that patient! But, the climax of the excitement in the clinic this week came when a little boy about 10 years old came in with his family and he had been running and fell onto a stick which impaled his thigh above his left knee...went in about 4 or 5 inches and then broke off!!!!!!! ahhhh pole sana!! the poor kid! so michelle went to work and injected the heck out of his leg with lidocaine (if you remember from my last blog about the tooth extraction, they love their lidocaine and use it well!) to numb it up before she performed a lil surgery to get that stick out. she used a scalpel that for some reason was a bit dull so she had to saw back a forth a bit to make the incision to open up the tissue to get to the stick...it was quite deeply wedged in there. OWCH!! so after making the opening, she grabbed big metal sweezers and gripped the stick and after muttering under her breath "please Lord let this stick come out in 1 piece", she gave a few good smooth yanks and it gave way and slid right out in 1 piece!! wow, the relief in the room was tangible...such a relief...the procedure went as good as it could possibly have gone! she stitched the boy up and sent him on his way with a lil ibuprofen in hand for later when the lidocaine wore off. the kid was sucha trooper:) and s0o was michelle with her awesome surgical skills! we were all impressed. Other than seeing patients, we finished up the giant job of organizing and cleaning up the entire clinic! it is finished!! "Tetelestai!!" (thats 4 u Davis!) We looked at the wonderfully organized, clean clinic and we saw that it was good!!! We are loving our days in the clinic and the experience we are getting with 3rd world medicine and health care! So thats basically the update on the clinic:)

The children's home...the other part of our internship has been interesting. It has had its ups and its d0wn and has definitely been much more of a challenge than the clinic, where we feel like we fit in and have a distinct purpose. The children our wonderful...the just love alie and i so much and just want to be close and climb all over you all the time!! they have so much energy and just this zest for life that i wish that i could capture in a bottle and bring home with me. the way they play, the way they sing, the way they love each other and the way the truely, sincerely love the Lord is astounding. gives me chills just to think about it. talk about "faith like a child"...that phrase has a whole new meaning to me now. they are truely inspiring. they are alot like american children in some ways tho...like the boys will be boys...the other day, they set a trap by propping up a box with a stick that had a long string tied to it and placing food under it and then running to hide with the other end of the string...then, when a bird would come eat, they would pull the string and catch the bird. so, needless to say, it worked and they now have a pet bird of which they "play with"...i would call it torture. they have tied a string around its foot and it flies around trying, hopelessly to escape. its pretty darn sad. i named the bird "kidogo" which means small in swahili. so at least now it has a name. it lives in a little hole in their room and they feed it ugali and it poops everywhere...see, even the birds get diarrhea from eating that stuff! on that subject...the food is still a daily struggle. we have eaten more corn that any person shud have in a year and well, not to go into too much detail, but we all know how our body digests corn...right, it doesnt! so when thats all ur giving it...it makes for frequent and unpleasant trips to the squattie!! also, for lunch most days we have white rice...much different than wat ur thinking tho...it tastes like dirt/earth. but i can handle that. remember the scene from how to lose a guy in 10 days...where he is sitting in that vegan restaurant trying to choke down that horrible food that he says "is for cows" and he is just covering it in loads of salt...ya, thats me with the ugali and cabbage and rice etc. hahaha. so, we have just been pushing on thru and sucking it up and choking it down. i have decided that im guna bag some ugali up and bring it home so you can try it...be excited! not. devotions at the CH have been fun...we are slowly learning some songs in swahili and will be purchasing their self made album of all them singing b4 we come home so you can all listen to it. it sounds awesome!

It has been fun to have the Christian Assembly team here, who are running the youth camp. we get kinda lonely here, just al and i, so its been fun to take part in some of their meals and their devotions and worship and prayer time at night. oh, and the girls have been so kind to let us use their shower every few days so thats been awesome. on a random note, on our walk back from the clinic yesterday, we saw the immdediate aftermath of the birth of a calf! it was awesome! we got to see it stand up for the first time and take a few shaky steps and the mom was cleaning it, with the placenta still hanging out of her...sorry for the gory details but it was really cool to get to see. again, my camera is catching every moment of this adventure so anything i forget in the blog you will get to see in pics when i get home...16 days!

i am loving this crazy adventure and anbeing challenged and stretched in a ton of ways. please keep praying for me...for strength and encouragement and that i would ultimately finish strong, the work that God sent me here to do. I am so so blessed to get to be here and be a tool for God's work in this amazing place in this world! i love you all TONS and cant wait to be home and hug you allllll!!!!! til next blog.....

Love you!!!!

Somey