I’m sitting in my quaint little compound on a Saturday morning, enjoying some time to myself before noon hits and the familiarities of life in Kenya begin. This has been the first day since we’ve been here that we haven’t been up and on the go before 8 or 9am. Finding it hard to believe that we are three quarters of the way through our three month internship. Four of us have been staying in a small urban town called Kiirua, just outside of Meru town in Kenya. We’re fourth year nursing students working at Saint Teresa’s Mission Hospital. I never would have imagined myself here this time last year, and without the opportunity and support from CIDA, I really don’t believe I would have made it here this early in my young career. Luckily though, I did. And it has presented itself to be an unbelievable learning experience – not only from a nursing perspective, but culturally, socially, and personally as well.

Our working days here in Kiirua are never boring. In the hospital, we spend our days in one of the following areas: the maternity ward, the medical ward with paediatrics and adults, the theatre (known more commonly as the operating room), the outpatient’s clinic, the maternal-child health clinic, or the HIV/AIDS clinic and outreach program. We also travel to a children’s home about 15 minutes from here on Friday’s, where we spend the day in helping with bathing and feeding the children there.. beautiful Kenyan babies. The staff here are very warm and welcoming, and we have grown to know most of them well. These friendships make learning an effortless task; the staff is more then willing to include us in interesting cases or skills, and hands on opportunity is endless. We have been lucky enough to witness many exciting surgeries and, after proving ourselves worthy, over time we have all had the opportunity to scrub in and assist the Doctor with caesarean sections and other medical surgeries. Just yesterday, we spent the day in theatre helping with a skin graft of a young boy who was badly burned, and the correction of a pyloric stenosis in which the Dr reattached part of the intestine to the stomach in order to bypass the damaged area. It’s amazing, the time that is taken by the theatre staff during surgeries to teach, and the small gestures to make us feel comfortable. We will miss them all greatly when we have to leave in September.

On our weekends, we keep busy by exploring Kenya. Just last weekend we took a day trip to Isiolo and learned how diverse the culture is just an hour from here. The people in Kenya are what I will miss the most. Aside from the occasional obnoxious stranger on the street, the people whom I’ve met in Kenya will always go out of their way to make you feel welcome and loved. I sincerely hope that I can take some of that genuine kindness away with me when I return to Prince Edward Island. Another thing I love most about Kenya is the fresh food! Almost everyone has a Shamba (farm) or at least a garden of some sort in which they pick their vegetables and fruit for supper. I remember staying at a friends place in Meru town one weekend, and we literally went outside and picked everything but the meat from a bush or tree to cook for supper. I really love being able to do that. On that note, I will never eat fruit the same again once I leave. Living in Eastern Canada, fruit that has been imported from other areas of the world tastes completely different then fruit you pick of a tree in the back yard. I’ll miss that a lot too.

Well, I’m off to get my day going. I feel like time here goes by 3 times quicker then it does anywhere else. The girls and I were just talking about how it felt like just yesterday that it was August 1st, and now we’re into the middle of it already. Not sure where the time goes – then again, on the contrary, when I think back on all we have experienced it feels like 3 months is such a short time to fit it all in. We’ll be staying around the compound this weekend for the most part, so we’re on call for any surgeries that might come up. Fingers crossed for something interesting!

Marley Bruce
Prince Edward Island, Canada

Category: Kenya, On location // 1 Comment »