Well its Wednesday - Joytown Day 7

It was a rather calm/sleepy day of data collection at Joytown. There was a mellow cloud that seemed to hang around the team. But the day must have taken a toll on us because by the end of it, four of us were jumping into the school swimming pool to cool off.

Devotionals this morning with the BK staff were really cool this morning as it was lead by two of our very own team members! We sang hymns (in both English and Swahili) and then heard from Anna and Matt as they read from 1 Corinthians 12:4-26 and shared about the struggle with jealousy and pride in relating to others. They emphasized the point that each person has been picked by God as a specific part of the greater functioning body of Christ. We should each stop worrying about comparing our actions to others or trying to do everything on our own. Rather, we should instead focus on doing what we CAN do, and make sure to do it well. This was a cool point for me because I often get caught up in the futility that can be found in humanitarian medical work as far as "fixing" a problem. No matter how hard I work, there will always be someone hurting or sick or dying in the world. Even though it may feel like I am only removing tiny drops from a huge ocean, they are still drops that are being removed.

We have a visitor on the team from the Motivation division in Africa (this is the company that produces one of the chairs we are currently studying). She plans to hand out with the team at Joytown tomorrow and watch how we do what we do. Hopefully she easily understands our methods and can get something beneficial from our preliminary data as well as give us any hits or comments about how we could improve our study.

Tomorrow will also be an interesting day because it is mobile clinic day at Joytown. This means that a clinic of doctors will be setting up camp on campus and people from the community will come receive consults and free medical care. We are praying that this won't interfere with our data collection or with the availability of subjects/space.

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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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