Theatres and Cows

I'm just starting my third full day of being here at Tenwek, and I'm getting really busy during the day, which is awesome! On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in the operating room-except Kenyans call it the "theatre" (it's the British term for it. And I love surgery-especially with all of the crazy cases that I've already seen. We have five surgery rooms that are all connected to a central storage room, so it's easy to scrub in and walk between the different rooms to see everything that's going on. Plus, I get to wear scrubs and a white lab coat and my badge around and look super official...as well as a mask and cap in the theatre. So, so awesome. I may become a surgeon just to wear the scrubs and caps; they're basically super comfortable, but super official sweatpants, which I think is brilliant. Anyways, I was able to watch surgeries on esophageal cancer, hydroseal, and salivary gland tumor patients. I haven't been able to do anything beyond retrieving supplies and opening sterile equipment (and I'm definitely not qualified to do more than that), but one of the residents asked me if I wanted to scrub into the sterile environment next week when it's less hectic, which I of course got really excited about.

The doctors here are incredible; they have the most sincere and loving hearts towards the patients, and are all so excited about what God is doing at Tenwek and are eager to let me learn about the surgeries and patients they are working with. I was able to do a few patient visits as well with some of the PA's, and that was really eye-opening. The beds are almost all full, with some patients doubled up in the surgery wards beds, and the rooms often smell of body odor and urine, but the patients are all so sweet. There is a twelve year old boy named Peter who the PA I am rooming with knows from her visit to another part of Kenya, and he is nearly blind, but just had an eye surgery, which was supposed to greatly improve his vision. He speaks very little English, but on Thursday, we stopped by twice to bring him milk and pray for him; and even though there's a huge language barrier and his vision is severely impaired, he still manages to smile when we talk with him. It's incredibly humbling and rewarding.

So yesterday (Thursday), besides visiting Peter, I was in theatre all morning to watch another esophageal cancer surgery (which apparently is one of the most common surgeries at Tenwek, and no one totally understands why that's such a problem here) as well as an ovarian mass and cist removal; the ovarian mass was fluid-filled and was seriously as big as my head...and the woman was only 23! After theatre, I went to lunch at one of the missionary families' homes, which is something that visiting medical staff get to do almost every week day, and it's really awesome! I ate at the home of a woman named Linda who had served for ten years as a nurse and single woman in the Congo, met her husband, and they have now served at Tenwek together for several years since then. She has started a Bible study that started with only a few women from surrounding villages, but has now reached thousands of women around Kenya; she writes the studies and translates them into Swahili and Kipsigis (the two main languages around Tenwek) with her housemaid and cook, and then teaches almost fifty leaders every month, who teach other women leaders and members in their villages, and the trend continues. They also have a program where the women have to memorize 17 verses and quote them all together, and then they receive a Bible; through this, over 5,000 women have received Bibles in Kenya! She also coordinates donation money from the US to go towards buying cows and metal roofs for homes of needy women in the Bible studies. My mind was blown at how much this woman has done for the Kingdom of God here in Africa.

And on top of this, I got to go to a cow dedication ceremony with her after lunch! I didn't realize how much of a bubble Tenwek is until this event. We crammed eight women into Linda's jeep and traveled thirty minutes on mostly unpaved roads to get to the home of a single mother with three children who had just received a cow purchased by a third grade classroom in the US. There were seriously 50-60 women there, along with two pastors of the churches represented by the groups and their families. When we first arrived on her small farm, the women sang and all lined up to hug us. We then went into the woman's small, two-room mud house for chai (tea with sugar and milk) and lunch (bread with butter); usually, chai is acceptable to drink because it's boiled (and it's pretty good), but I was a little worried about the lunch food...so I took a few bites and tore up the rest to make it appear that I had eaten more. The ceremony took place outside after we had finished our chai, and basically consisted of two hours of testimonies, encouragement, Bible readings, and singing. All of us white women were able to introduce ourselves and, since I was the only one who didn't mention a husband, a woman came up to me afterwards and told me that "There are men here!" and tried to make me agree to stay or at least come back (or so our translator told me). So glad they are concerned that I'm not married with four children, like another woman my age there was. And afterwards, they presented us with shawls as gifts, which broke my heart because these women are so poor and must have paid for those scarves with the pennies they had for food or other necessities. I cannot even express how grateful and welcoming they were; I was constantly being hugged and touched and smiled at and welcomed. The Kenyans have the most beautiful faith; every woman who spoke was so excited about her faith in Christ and continually wanted to express that to us. I can't wait to go to another village soon!