As a third day of data collection came to a close, I was all over the place with heart rate data on watches and spreadsheets and papers. My head was about ready to explode when I though I'd lost a whole afternoon's worth of data. But my brain survives to think another day thanks to my cheerful team, calming prof, and the super tech-savy David (A part-time student member of our team who happened to be in Africa this summer with his son and came to visit us at Joytown).
Today we worked with students from the secondary school (high school) next door in our studies and it was a total blessing! I was weary at first about how the wheelchair runs would go with them because of my experience with U.S. high school students/youth who generally tend to put up the attitude of "I'm just too cool for this". But I found a group of bright, engaging people who were reletively interested and excited about participating in our studies. I was surprised when asking someone's birth date to realize they were near my age within a year or even older than me. My head has been so geared toward working with kids, its awesome to get to talk to subjects who are going through a similar stage of life (although in drastically different settings). I met one girl, Charity, who shares in my dream of being a doctor. Maybe one day I'll wander back to Kenya and we'll start a clinic together or something. :)
High-lights from the day include:
Today we worked with students from the secondary school (high school) next door in our studies and it was a total blessing! I was weary at first about how the wheelchair runs would go with them because of my experience with U.S. high school students/youth who generally tend to put up the attitude of "I'm just too cool for this". But I found a group of bright, engaging people who were reletively interested and excited about participating in our studies. I was surprised when asking someone's birth date to realize they were near my age within a year or even older than me. My head has been so geared toward working with kids, its awesome to get to talk to subjects who are going through a similar stage of life (although in drastically different settings). I met one girl, Charity, who shares in my dream of being a doctor. Maybe one day I'll wander back to Kenya and we'll start a clinic together or something. :)
High-lights from the day include:
- 10:30 tea (chai) time with the Joytown therapists and high school students. We definitely need to start having this in the states...
- The slithery visitor outside our work space that just happened to be poisonous but was quickly killed by a rock as a crowd of children gathered and giggled and screeched in delighted disgust.
- Getting an entire piece of chapati at lunchtime. Before I had only seen pizza-shaped triangles, this baby was a full face-sized circle of goodness!
- Finding some max-strength anti-itch cream for the constellation of unidentified bug bites around my ankles/foot. Note to self: bring socks longer than ankle-length to Kenya and forget the Off bug spray, it seems to be nothing but icing on the cake for the dang creatures...
- Mercy, once again saving my brain and continuing to teach me Swahili words
- The smiles and small conversations with various kids around Joytown. Especially when Charity's quaint voice asked me for a "pitchure?"
Oh, another futbol game is playing tonight and our buddies over the fence are having a repeat party. Let's hope there's no overtime on this one...
Emily,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the daily updates. It is great to hear how your research is going and your impressions of Kenya. I'm glad you have been able to make friends there while you work.
I can't wait to hear more.