I'm just a little bit in love with you.

After spending all day at TCHD, I went up to visit the Ped’s ward for a few hours. For the first time, I wasn’t welcomed by Chep Rotich flinging herself at me screaming “JEWWWWIAAAA!” She has been discharged, and I am glad, but I miss her and her smiling grandmother. I usually don’t make it through half the room, but today I had enough time to talk to everyone. I hadn’t made it to one bed, when a mother came over and said, “can you please greet him?” When I got there, the little boy who couldn’t move his legs took my hand with a huge smile on his face and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t talk but he just kept shaking my hand and smiling!

For a bit, I got to sit with my friend Mercy and her little boy Dennis. Every time I’ve been in there he has a bandage in his mouth, and today I actually had enough time to figure out why. He’s a hemophiliac, but all Mercy told me was that he has a “blood disease.” Dennis really wanted his picture taken, but his mom wanted to change the bandage first because he was dripping blood. So, I moved back a little to give her room, but when she removed the bandage blood just came gushing out. AH! I’ve never seen a hemophiliac bleeding, and I wasn’t quite prepared for it! She quickly replaced it with a clean bandage, and we played around with my camera, but eeeeeah. He’s still bleeding from two lost teeth and an operation removing a growth on his tongue a month ago. I learned about all the other complications hemophiliacs have, especially those that arise in rural Kenya.

In the Western world, tests would be done to figure out which type of blood clotting (insert medical word here) he’s deficient in. Here, they don’t have that luxury, so all they can do is pump him full of blood to prevent him from going bleeding to death. Except even that poses problems. Today, the vein the catheter used collapsed (or stopped working), and they had to insert a new one in his hand, except they had to leave the other one in to stop blood from coming out. AH. Anyway, he was probably the kid in the best shape, if that tells you anything about the others .

After that, I headed back to drop off my stuff and go up to the nursery. I took Sarah Baskin with me, she’s thirteen and here with her family. Her mother asked if she could come with me and I was like of course!! When we got to the nursery, we scrubbed in and started walking around. Two new twin babies had just been delivered by c-section ten minutes before so I was distracted by them when Sarah Baskin was like, “look at that one.” I thought she was pointing to Ester, one of the premies who is just incredibly tiny, and she was sleeping peacefully (she’s usually the one screaming), so I was just like “yeah, so precious.” Then my gaze shifted to where she was really pointing. A baby lay sprawled out, almost white, totally dead. We walked over, and I tried to see if he was breathing- he wasn’t. I guess they tried to resuscitate the little guy, but there was nothing they could do. Sarah Baskin was pretty shook up, and I kind of was too, so we left and headed to the mothers ward for a quick visit before heading home. I’ve felt sick since (but it could also be the milk).

We have a new family at the guest house- Joey, Tia and Bethany. They are from South Carolina. Bethany is 17 months and is constantly smiling! We ate at Mercy’s house for lunch, and I was treated to “Morsick” for the first time. Curdled milk that sits for 3-5 days. I added two heaping spoons of sugar so it wasn’t that bad, but my stomachs feeling it now. I can’t complain, if I was out with the Maasai, they mix it with blood from the jugular vein of a cow for certain ceremonies. (The cow doesn’t die, they just patch it back up).

Gross, you might say (and I did), but (unless you are a vegetarian), as you judge them, think about what you eat. Baby cows taken right from birth, tied up, prohibited to move and denied proper nutrients so their meat stays tender (veal). Which ones crueler/more disgusting to eat? I think I’d choose to eat a healthy cow’s blood than a baby cow’s (tortured) meat.

Big news of the day: A few hours ago a small plane went down pretty close to here. The plane was on its way to Narok and was carrying Roads Minister Kipkalya Kones and Assistant Home Affairs Minister Lorna Laboso. People are upset and blame Kibaki for not improving the roads. Not unsaid is that both politicians were members of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party, which had opposed President Mwai Kibaki and advocated public protests after he won a disputed re-election in December.

Unsaid for right now, is the idea that it’s more than an accident. It literally just happened an hour ago so I will keep you posted. Here’s one idea, I will start at the beginning, I hope you can follow. The roads here are terrible. It’s easier, safer, and more comfortable to drive NEXT to the roads in the ditches. Tourists coming to the game reserves avoid some of these roads by flying to their resorts/safari parks. Why haven’t the roads been fixed? Some think there’s something fishy going on between the top guys who own the PLANE services. If the roads are fixed, tourists won’t pay to use their planes. Eh, I don’t know how much of it is just talk- but the fact that the “Roads minister” died in a plane crash makes me wonder.