Don't Throw Off My Groove!

Three weeks in, I think the initial shock of simply being in Nairobi has worn off, and I'm getting into a good rhythm. I'm getting comfortable going around the city, I have a regular place to eat at school, and I'm making friends in my classes at USIU! There's a lot that's happened in the past week, so let's start at the beginning:

On Saturday, I woke up at 6 in the morning from a very intense pain in my chest. It felt almost as though the malaria pill I had taken the night before was still stuck in my esophagus. I got up and drank water, but it was super painful. So then I took a shower hoping that gravity would do it's thing - no change. I got out of the shower and drank some tea and tried to have some oatmeal - my last apple cinnamon from the states :( - hoping that would help. Nope. That's when it started getting hard for me to breathe. So I did what any sound minded American would do: I pulled up Web MD. After being told that I probably had one of 6 different cancers, I ended up calling my mom and subsequently the advice nurse through my health insurance. She told me that it was probably a rare reaction to the malaria meds I was taking that had either irritated or burned through the mucus layer in my esophagus. Regardless, I needed to go to the doctor.

So I pulled my wonderful friend Jessie out of bed, and she escorted me to the local health clinic where they confirmed that I basically had a small hole starting in my stomach-throat area. They gave me meds, and after 3 days of a liquid diet (lots of yogurt thanks to the power of lactaid), I feel so much better! Now to just figure out how to remain hole as well as malaria free...

Next order of business: my internship! No surprise from my previous post about Kibera, but when Lynsey (the program director), talked to me about where I wanted to work for the next four months, I couldn't say enough wonderful things about ICA and Kibera itself. I found out a few days ago that she put me with ICA! I couldn't be happier. I get to work with those wonderful people for the rest of my time here and I couldn't be more scared/nervous/excited.

On a sadder note, I'm sure some of you saw in the news that there was a pipeline explosion in a slum here in Nairobi. It was a huge tragedy. The hospitals are full of burn victims, families lost loved ones, and many more are wounded after the explosion. It's extremely unfortunate that it could have been avoided had the correct precautions been taken by various parties involved. I could rant and rave about who to put blame on for hours, so I won't go into it right now. But it's a very sad way to start my time here in Nairobi, although it's extremely realistic to the area. Feeling almost helpless, my friends and I decided we wanted to do something to help, and found out that the Kenyatta National Hospital was taking blood donations for the victims. We set out today after an excursion in Kileleshwa (a colonial era slum - also extremely interesting) to the hospital. We had filled out all the paperwork and were waiting in the queue to get our fingers pricked when we discovered that, having been immunized from Yellow Fever in the past 6 months, we were unable to donate blood. It was really disappointing, but I'm still hoping to find some way to help those affected by the explosion.

All in all, it's been an extremely eventful week and a half. I have my internship, I had my first experience with the Kenyan health system (not as bad as you would think), I'm getting used to making my way through Nairobi as well as USIU. I really feel like I'm getting a groove here in Kenya!