Our Day in Maasailand

Yesterday, after a long and bumpy ride on mostly unpaved roads through some beautiful scenery--vast vistas punctuated by acaia trees, some with birds' nests hanging at the end of their branches, and countless low growing bushes with white and magenta flowers that looked much like hibiscus blossoms--we arrived in the village of Kajiado in Maasailand. The village was nothing more than very rudimentary huts made of cow dung and branches and a three-room school, made of cinder blocks. Not sure what the Maasi people who live there eat as the village is miles from a store, but I do know that water is extremely scarce and that the women spend much of their days searching for water, which involves walking for miles. The Maasai women wear brightly colored cloth and striking jewelery all made of beads (handmade I assume) -- a couple wide bands of beads around their necks and very large earnings. The men I saw all wore western garb. Most of the children were dressed in their school uniforms.

We ran a number of different clinics while we were in Kajiado, including an eye clinic, a diabetes testing clinic, and a prenatal clinic. We also tested blood pressure and the nurse on the medical team gave the children physical exams. I ended up working with the eye doctor, helping to conduct vision exams. I also led people who needed to see the nurse into the hut where she was treating people and put stickers on the hands of the children who visited the eye clinic. We were very, very busy seeing people of all ages who had eye problems -- problems with far and near sightedness, cataracts, eye injuries, infections because people could not keep their eyes clean due to lack of water, problems related to constant exposure to the sun, and so on. We provided those who needed them with reading glasses, cleaned a lot of eyes, gave a way countless small bottles of eye drops for lubrication or infection, and wrote prescriptions for glasses should any of the people be able to get to an optometrist someday. We were not able to help those with cataracts or blindness due to eye injuries (mostly caused by being hit in the eye with a branch years ago).

The rest of the medical team was very busy seeing adults and children with respiratory infections, headaches, including migraines, serious neck and/or back pain, high blood pressure, and other maladies too numerous to count. One medical team member spent a lot of time with a young woman who was very depressed because her husband had died and the men in the village were taking advantage of her sexually and as a result had had another child.

Some volunteers spent the afternoon with the children. It did not take much to make those kids happy. They were overjoyed with pipe cleaners, frisbees, stickers, bubbles, and other simple toys.

We left the village later than planned -- about 4:30 -- because there were so many people to help. Our drivers had wanted to get us back to Nairobi before dark given the dangers involved in driving through many parts of that city, but given our late departure, that did not work out. As a result, once we arrived in Nairobi we drove through crowded streets full of people - mostly men -- hanging out in front of countless tiny shops of all sorts, packing up their wares at the end of a market, or returning home on foot and on bicycle at the end of their workday. Who knows how far they had to walk or ride. It was quite a scene and all very interesting. Wish we could have just sat in one place and taken everything in.

That evening Beth and I walked with some other volunteers to a restaurant that was very close to our hotel. We've been warned not to walk far because Nairobi is so dangerous at night, but a 5 minute walk in a group in the neighborhood where we are staying is okay. The neighborhood seems to be home to middle and upper middle class Kenyans and nearly every building and home is surrounded by walls topped with broken shards of glass, barbed wire and/or electric fencing. There are many guards around too.

Time for breakfast and then to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. I am sure it will be an unforgettable experience given all that I have heard about Kibera.