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| Many patients & employees arrived at front gate by piki-piki |
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| Several moms arrived with babies |
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| Three women waiting on grass in front of hospital gates-don't know what they were waiting for-just waiting |
Wrote the following entry yesterday morning in my journal as I waited at the front gates of St Joseph Umbo Mission Hospital for one of the kids we'd referred to the PT specialist. I did not know what time they would arrive, just that they would look for me at the front gate Weds morning:
9:25 AM Practicing patience, trying to accept Kenyan concept of time, waiting. It's hard---given my culture's preoccupation with time, being "on time", not "wasting time", making appts for a specific time, trying to be early, not "late", apologizing if late, calling if going to be late. A complex set of human interactions in my culture related to time. Wearing watches-even here (few Kenyans seem to wear watches...maybe they do in Nairobi, but not here). Clocks in homes run on batteries-or not at all. Too many power interruptions for electric clocks to be useful. Just watching the comings & goings of patients arriving on piki-pikis (motor cycles). Lots of activity. Now waiting in shad of covered shelter with stone benches elevated above entrance roadway. Watching each arriving piki-piki for my patient. Worried I won't recognize her. Only met her once, but know she's 11 & her mother's coming with her & is overweight. Not much to go on. Just need to relax. They'll be here.
James- you got it!!!!! The differences seem so big when you first arrive in Kenya but over time there is a settling that happens... time is different, chai has a different meaning, acceptance of illness and deformity are at a level that we could not have fathomed before exposure to this work.....So many differences yet a thread of connection.... how amazing - our point of view rotated/flipped upside down/tripped over itself; tightening and relaxing, our minds and spirits transformed.... our view of ourselves and our world changed forever.... and a little girl gets a pair of shoes that may change her life and her view of what she can do for herself and the world.....
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