The Mission Team in Action

Today was our first full day of work and this evening we're all feeling the effects of it. Monday had been our "shakedown" day - setting up our work stations, determining how the registration and patient flow processes would work best and then doing a dry run of everything for a few hours. So today, having sorted out most of the kinks, we had a full day of seeing patients.

Making our way into the slum area for the first time yesterday was very emotional for all of us. Many of us have been to Africa before and, if not to Africa, at least to other large cities in the world that had slum communities. But we all agreed that nothing could have prepared us for the slums of Mukuru. Here some 500,000 souls live and move, but have no being. For all intents and purposes, these are the forgotten souls - forgotten, that is, to most of the rest of Nairobi society. In a way, it's not surprising.

The streets (roads?) that wind their way through Mukuru are hopelessly pot-holed and ragged. Heaven only knows how long they have gone without maintenance, but it must have been a very long time. Lining the streets are one shop after another: dress shops, produce stalls, meat markets, pharmacies, print shops (albeit without any visible printing equipment), and on and on. What sets them apart from other shops in the city is that few of them are larger than 10' x 10', with dirt floors and the roofs (if any) are either tin or cardboard. How these shopkeepers manage to sell anything at all is anyone's guess, as there is no other visible way of earning a living to pay for the items on sale here.

Every street is teeming with people - walking along the roads, gathering in the storefront openings, darting in front of any autos that happen to pass by - just wall-to-wall people. A glance down any alleyway reveals what passes for homes: dark, narrow openings with no visible furniture. Like the shops, the homes have dirt floors and are walled and roofed with tin or cardboard. Neither running water nor indoor plumbing exist here, so every few blocks there is a row of filthy, smelly latrines. At various intervals, as well, are large containers of water of questionable quality, from which the women and children fill water jugs to carry home.

It is nearly impossible to adequately describe the poverty, filth and hopelessness of this area and yet all the children we see along the roadsides are smiling and waving and shouting, "How are you?" For most, it's the only English they know, but they use it liberally and proudly to hail our arrival. They want to touch us and have their photos taken, but mostly they want to be noticed. They want the fact that they exist to matter to someone and to us it really does.

So on Monday as we were setting up and getting ourselves organized, we also had a few meltdowns. More than one team member needed to slip away for a bit of a cry before they could continue. Then, having gathered themselves together, they returned to the clinic and proceeded to work. There will be more such instances throughout the week. It would take a very hard heart not to be moved by what we're seeing.

But today we had to put all that aside and concentrate on some really sick kids. We saw many dozens of them today and we can honestly say that we saved some lives. Most of the children could be treated with antibiotics, others with careful wound treatments, but I fully believe that two in particular would not have lived through this night without our intervention. They are tiny, malnourished, and very sick twins who were so desperately dehydrated that I despaired of being able to get to the hospital soon enough to save them. Thankfully, we were able to do that, so at least for now they're still alive. One wonders what kind of life they'll face even if they do live, but we can't worry about that. We've done a good job today and we fell really good about that - not only because of the twins, but because of all the other children whose infections we could treat, whose pain we could ease, whose wounds we could clean and treat, and who will see well because they will get glasses. All in all, a pretty good days' work.

In the process, we the team members are experiencing the joy of each other, as we adapt to each other's manner of speaking, styles of work, and personality differences. I've heard a lot of laughing in the past two days, as we discover interesting tidbits about one another; however, the most fun of all is seeing what can be accomplished when a group of very diverse people are focused on a single goal, as we are.

So tonight we rest our weary feet and backs and heads and prepare to go out tomorrow and do it all over again.