INHL 653: Health and Development in Kenya in the Time of HIV/AIDS

First let me start by mentioning how much I dislike the blogger program. Google needs to resolve some serious issues with its and I think I will be writing them a very long and detailed email when I return. For example, when I first tried to write this post (the beginning of July), the blogger program will not let me add a title to my blog entry or publish a post. Because? I have no idea. However, now (beginning of August) blogger will let me edit, add a title and publish this post. Sigh of frustration.

I will spent my last month in Africa taking a course offered through the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The course is INHL 653 and it is called, "Health and Development in Kenya in the Time of HIV/AIDS." It is a 3 credit class and will satisfy my credit requirements for graduation.

The class had 10 students, 2 professors and a TA. One of the professors has connections with Samburu District and the other primary professor works in the Western and Nyanza Districts.

This is our primary professor, Dr. Murphy, with her son Callum. She is an amazing teacher and was able to bring discussion and learning into every experience.

Our Itinerary was:

1) Spent 2 days in Nairobi. We visited the Nation AIDS Control Program, TICHA (an organization working with indigenous medicine and traditional healers), Movement of Men Against AIDS, and the AMREF head office. We had an interesting writing assignment on the difference between the 'mainstream' and 'alternative/traditional' ways to manage HIV/AIDS.

2) Traveled to the foothills of Mount Kenya and went for a nature hike.

3) Traveled to Samburu District. There we were hosted by the SAIDIA (saidia means 'help' in Swahili) Clinic and got to see a variety of activities. We took a tour of the clinic, then went out with mobile clinic team. On the mobile clinic site all of us students got to assist with growth monitoring (weighing babies), giving immunizations and sit in on maternity check ups in the very rural areas of Samburu. Then we went to visit a local school, went on a hike to see a bee project, and met with traditional birth attendants. On the last day of our visit in the Samburu district we got the opportunity to 'give back to the clinic.' Two other students and I were on a team that dug a huge pit for the clinic to burn their medical waste (needles, etc.) in. Not exactly how we take care of medical waste in the United States. We had a writing assignment analyzing how to improve services at the Samburu SAIDIA clinic.

4) Next we spent a day of relaxation at a lake.

5) From the lake we drove 8 hours to Kakichuma Village in Bungoma. This is a village where one of our professors has been studying how households use kitchen gardens and indigenous greens to respond/mitigate the impacts of HIV. We stayed in Kakichuma for a week and it was getting a little old by the end of the visit especially since it rained everyday and my tent leaked. Not so much fun. I don't really enjoy camping in th rain. Here we had an assignment to make a PowerPoint presentation to teach Tulane undergraduates about the HIV situation in Kakichuma village.

6) From Kakichuma we drove down the Kisumu and then crossed a section of Lake Victoria on a ferry. It wasn't exactly the same standard of ferries we have in Washington State, but it was safe (I guess). We stayed int the Village of Nyapuodi for 4 nights. Our professor also does research in this village about how labor-saving farming techniques are or are not being utilized to help families impacted by AIDS. This is a small village about 17 kilometers from Lake Victoria. Unfortunately, this is the area of Kenya most severely impacted by HIV/AIDS. The village has only 150 people. One of the most touching things in the class was when a bunch of village elders all gathered around a map of the village and wrote down where all the deaths from HIV had occurred during the last two years. In Nyapuodi we saw some work by Heifer International giving dairy goats to people living with HIV, as well as seeing an expensive plough that no one in the village could afford. We also went to see a fish village on the edge of Lake Victoria and learned about how women who sell fish for a living have to have sexual relationships with the fishermen to get fish to sell. This has contributed to the explosive spread of HIV in the area. At this sight we wrote about the relationship between HIV/AIDS and development and had some very interesting discussions.

The village elders in Nyapuodi writing down all the deaths due to HIV/AIDS in the last 2 years on the village map.

7) Next we went to the Mara National Park and spent a day going for a game drive. We got to see lions which was quite exciting. At first I didn't see how the game drive would factor into a class about health and development in Kenya. However, our professor incorporated very interesting readings and discussion about 'wildlife tourism' and the impact it has on the lives and health of Kenyans in the area.

A beautiful sunset over the Mara National Park.

8) We returned to Nairobi and had one last day of discussions, before departing for our separate ways.

It was a great class.

These are just some random pictures from my stay in Nairobi. I have had a very good opportunity to rest and my neck is almost completely healed. Mission accomplished! I start the Kenya course in a couple of days.









This grandmother/great grandmother/ great great grandmother is really old. She doesn't have any teeth, she uses a cane and she is so old she doesn't speak any Swahili or English. However, when it came time for all the women to dance and sign a song, this woman got up and started signing and dancing. No, I am not joking. An African next to me told me that in Swahili they say, "Dancing always makes African women young." I guess it is true!

These boys were laying out in the grass after a church service. They were very shy and I had to try about 10 times to get a picture of them. They were trying so hard not to smile no matter what sort of crazy things I was doing to get them to look at the camera.

I had the opportunity to go shopping for some meat a couple days ago. There is something about watching a man use a saw to cut up half of an unrefrigerated (for several days), fly covered cow that makes you loose your appetite for meat for a while.

This is a picture of me at the celebration we went to outside of a Nairobi. It was really cold. I guess the 'winter' temperatures plus the high altitude combine for some really cold weather. I was freezing even though I was wearing my SVC fleece. You can't see my neck in this picture but it is almost completely back to normal.

My Mombasa Vaction

Here are some pictures from our trip to Mombasa. It was nice, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. We were very separated from the people and the only Africans we saw were waiting on us. I wasn't really accustomed to this after living with the people and working to help them in Uganda. It seemed like during our vacation we were reinforcing the situation of the white people having the money and the power and the Africans serving them. It was strange. There were two Kenyans in the group, Peter and Niko, who were training to be priests. I ended up spending more time with them because they spoke English and Swahili (everyone else was speaking Spanish the whole time) and it made me feel less distanced from Kenya.

I will apologize in advance for some issues I had with the picture order. The blogger program won't let you switch the order of the pictures after they have been uploaded.


I didn't really want this to be the first picture, but this is a restaurant in Mombasa called Casablanca. I found this picture interesting because the women sitting to the right of the picture are sex workers. I took this picture at 1:30pm in the afternoon. Apparently, the sex workers are not hired by the restaurant, but they are encouraged because they get men to drink more and to buy them drinks while they are negotiating their transaction. One of the priests told me that men can't come alone to that restuarant because the sex workers won't leave them alone until they leave.

The main tourist attraction in Mombasa is Fort Jesus. It was build by the an army from Portugal in year 15 something something. Then it was captured by the Arabs in year 16 something something. (Can you tell that I was really paying attention during the tour). Then it was recaptured by Portugal then it was recaptured by the Arabs then it was captured by the British then it was claimed by Kenyans when they won Independence. The fort was build by carving coral. It was pretty interesting to see. Here I am standing at the entrance with, Niko, one of the priests in training.

Here is one of the canons of the Fort looking over the Indian Ocean.

Here is one of the walls of Fort Jesus.

Here is a picture of our resort. It was pretty nice except for monkeys (and these weird crab things) would come into our cottages and eat our food and leave a huge mess. I think that monkeys must be the raccoons of Africa.

Here is another picture of our resort place. The Indian Ocean is in the distance. The ocean was nice, except there were sea urchin and if you stepped on them, their spines would break off inside your foot. It also rained a lot while we were there, although it was a lot warmer than Nairobi.

Here I am on the Ferry. (You have to cross a ferry to get to the other side of Mombasa). Mombasa was a fairly clean place and you can see that they actually had a trash bin (a very rare sight in Africa) on the ferry.

Sorry again about the picture order. This is another picture of Fort Jesus. This is my favorite picture of it because you can see how big it is. It is named Fort Jesus because the layout of the fort is like a person laying on the ground (it has a head, two arms and two legs).

A couple articles

If you are interested, there have been a couple newspaper articles about my trip.

1) The most recent was a one-page publication in the Skagit Valley College Currents Magazine. It is available at:

http://www.skagit.edu/imageuploads/file1330.pdf

(go to page 14)

As you can probably tell from the article, Skagit Valley College means a lot to me. I wouldn't be going to medical school this August if it wasn't for them.

2) A very old article from the UW student newsletter about the work in Uganda. Available at:

http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/2/21/workingToEmpowerFostersCommunitybasedChangeInDevelopingCountries

3) A series of articles about my trip, mostly from the blog, in our local newspaper, "Stanwood/Camano News." Unfortunately, it appears that the articles from this newspaper are no longer available on-line.