We Got Skills - Joytown Day 11

Today I woke up with the Rocky theme song stuck in my head. Well not exactly, but that was the general feeling among the team as we went over our plans for the day of mass data collection. We each had our subjects divided up onto lists and were partnered up with a "people-fetcher" whose job it would be to bring kids from their classes to the research area. All of the kids who were subjects for the original wheelchair skills testing would be called back to test the standard "China chair" on rough ground only, a 6-minute rolling test.

After devos, the first subjects arrived and off we went into a morning of perpetual circles around the school dirt road. 10 names stared at me from my list in the morning and by tea time only 5 remained. After lunch I finished off the last 2 subjects and loaded the last of my heart-rate data. I looked up from the computer to realize we had done it! And with relative peace and ease! A day that I expected to be totally frantic and crazy turned out to be a smoothly flowing collection of data and reunion with each of my subjects. It was really fun to reconnect with some of my first couple subjects, kids I had worked with during my third or so day in Kenya.

The rest of the day was devoted to entering data into spreadsheets and hanging out with the kids once they got out of class. There also was a little matter of mischief centering around the birthday celebration of one of the volunteers, John, who has been helping with our research. John, who doesn't know how to swim, was taken for a surprise dip by Matt. Lured over to the pool by the false information that Matt needed to finish one last subject for the day, John was suddenly bear hugged by Matt and pulled into the water, but not before squirming and frantically demanding to save his shoes from a soggy fate. The comical struggle and splash caused an huge eruption of giggling from the audience of children, therapists, and Wheels members.

In other news, I still feel slightly sickly via my nose and throat but definitely on the mend!

Wheelie skillz

Comments

Oh the Americans are here. Make spaghetti.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed quickly and easily as we now all adjusted to Kenya time (Goodbye jet lag!) and were back to our Joytown research routine. We knew what had to get done and the time we had to do it in. SACDEP welcomed us back with a Tuesday meal including "American food" aka spaghetti noodles. Just noodles. Haha Thanks, Kenya. We continued our wheelchair research at Joytown Primary School and got to return to the Secondary School (Kenyan High School equivalent) for a second survey time with the students. I realized through this survey that although we are very different, Kenyans and Americans, much is the same. High school students are high school students. They are teenagers. Some with attitudes, most with dreams, and all of them with lives that are just as real and crazy to understand as my own. *Philosophical vent over* Once our survey work was finished, Danielle decided to jump in and join a group of Secondary girls rehearsing songs for an upcoming talen...

Hello again Kenya

After 24 hours of travel to the other side of the world and two days of research work I've finally gathered enough jet-lagged energy (and strong enough wifi) to write this. On Monday, I escaped the thunderstorms, tornadoes, and flooding of Texas on a trans-atlantic flight to London. The team included Professor Rispin, Prof Sasaki and Danielle. 8 hours later, we arrived with time to crawl through layers of Heathrow security and wander, sleepy eyed through the airport to our next gate. By 11am we were on our final 8 hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya. My plane buddies included a Kenyan track runner who's said he's filled up three passports traveling and racing in countries around in the world (completely paid for by sponsors, by the way). And he hasn't even finished college. Why am I in school again? Kidding... sigh... Med school... My second plane buddy was a newly graduated Kenyan-born pharmacist living in Houston. He reminded me how much doctors are needed, especially in ...

And Now Presenting… - Joytown Day 13

Our whirlwind day of presentation (no wheelchair pun intended) began with a formal presentation to the Joytown secondary school (high school) and ended with a true Kenyan-style impromptu pres to the primary students and teachers. We carefully planned a presentation to the high school students, even creating a powerpoint to share with them containing graphs of the finalized data and pictures from the study. We miraculously packed 20+ people and wheelchairs into a computer room of the school library that was really only designed for 10 or so comfortably. We shared our data results and the Tinsley family shared some really encouraging words to the teens/young adults, urging them to realize that they are fearfully and wonderfully made by God for great purposes in this world. After exchanging contact information with one of the head-teachers who organized the high school participation in our study, (once she had told us about three different ways about the high school exchange progra...

Redhead Steps Around the World

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