Moore Family Blog |
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Thursday, January 13, 2005
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Nazareth, chicken farm, tea and coffee plantation walkWe had lots of guests at our house today--morning through evening. We visited a chicken farm in the afternoon and took a walk through the tea and coffee plantations surrounding the hospital before dusk. Margaret visited us this morning with her children. She helps out around the hospital and makes $2 a day. She has five children that range in age from 8 to 21 years. We gave her $36 for her children to buy uniforms for school. We had mixed feelings about giving her the money because it's only a bandaid--she'll need money for books and next year's uniforms. We decided to give her the money because she works hard and is doing everything she can to help her children. James, the chicken man, paid us a surprise visit. Mommy and Jay met him when they bought chicken from him at Christmas for all the nuns of the hospital. James is in his fourth year of medical school and speaks excellent English. He told us about the Kikuyu and Luo tribes in Kenya and about raising chicken. James saved $500 and started a chicken farm before he started med school. It can be a lucrative business, but income fluctuates because he's constantly struggling to find customers. He buys chicks, feeds them for six weeks, and then slaughters them as he gets orders from customers. His farm (which is also his home) has no electricity and no refrigeration, so he can only slaughter chicken once he has a customer. Each week that he feeds the chicken beyond the six-week maturity age costs him $108. Mommy and Jay and I visited James's chicken farm and I slaughtered and cleaned a chicken! James selected a chicken, held its wings and feet, and I cut its head off. Then I defeathered it and removed its internal organs. It was a lot of work for just $1.50 per chicken. In the evening, we enjoyed the company of Manfred and Froukje ("frow-kyeh"), a Dutch couple of Daddy's and Mommy's age that is traveling around Africa in a Land Rover. They sleep in a tent on top of the jeep, so they can camp anywhere. Manfred is a retired architect. He and Froukje are going to a coastal Kenyan city to oversee the construction of an orphanage for a few months. Then they'll drive down to South Africa, ship their car to South America, and drive up to Alaska. Manfred, Froukje, Daddy, Jay, and I walked through the tea and coffee plantations around Nazareth before dusk. The seas of green look pretty. I saw a coffee plant for the first time. I didn't know that the beans are red and green before they're picked. (0) comments Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Nazareth, charity victims, cow farm, BrackenridgeWe stayed much of the day in the house and in the afternoon we visited a cow farm and a pretty garden. We gave food and clothing to some needy people outside the hospital. Mommy knows all the locals, so she brought in needy people one at a time and we gave them tea and biscuits, talked with them, and sent them off with clothes. Our first "charity victim" was an old, crazy woman who stands all day outside the hospital, singing religious songs and preaching at no one. Her daughter doesn't help her because the daughter's husband rejects the woman. She had such an appetite! She ate everything we put in front of her: sweet potato, tea, and biscuits, and she took a couple bananas in her bag. We gave her a shirt. Next, Mommy brought in a 30-something-year-old man who hasn't worked since 1999, when he lost his right hand in a car accident. He used to drive a matatu (minivan taxi). We gave him some clothes and a little money for his daughter. His wife died of AIDS, but he and his daughter are HIV-negative, thank gosh. We took a walk through the pediatric ward at the hospital and gave toys to a few children. I would feel so lonely if I were nine years old living in the hospital with a broken arm and no family! A nurse got jealous and asked me, "Why do you give to these children but not to my little one?" I didn't know how to respond, but Mommy said she's used to that. She just laughs off the question. We drove to a nearby farm and saw a veterinarian tending to a cow. The cow has salmanella. When we arrived, the veterinarian had his arm (covered by a long plastic glove) down her anus. He scooped out some poop and smelled it. He went around to the front to deliver his medication. He hooked the cow's nose with pincers and tied the pincers to the ceiling to immobilize the cow. Then he pushed a bottle of iodine down the cow's throat and emptied it. The cow was gasping for breath! After he extracted his arm, the cow coughed all over his face. After the iodine, the veterinarian delivered several injections. All his motions were big and forceful--I guess you have to, with such a big animal. We drove on to a pretty garden compound called Brackenhurst. The compound has lots of grass and flowers and trees. They were having a conference about home-schooling, so we saw lots of mothers and kids. (0) comments Monday, January 10, 2005
Nazareth, NairobiThis morning we discussed the family 501c3 that we're considering founding. We discussed mission, scope, and alternative ways to fund Daddy's and Mommy's projects. I got diarrhea from some milk Mommy bought in the village outside the hospital. I'll be on a 24-hour liquid diet. We retrieved our last lost bag from the airport. Out of four bags that Jay and I checked, the airlines or the airport lost three of them! We eventually recovered all of them. We had terrible traffic in Nairobi and we saw *three* fender-benders! Roundabouts are bad for traffic--we should replace them with stop-light intersections. (0) comments Sunday, January 09, 2005
Nakuru National Park, car collision, Lake Naivasha, NazarethWe did a game drive in Nakuru National Park this morning. We saw tons of pelicans and flamingos and some buffalo, zebra, gazelles, impala, water bucks, and a white rhino! The pelicans glide so gracefully just above the water. The adult flamingos are pink and the children are white. We saw lots of dead, dried-out flamingos on the lake shore. The white rhino was lying in the shade of an acacia tree among 20 buffalo. We heard that the park has lions and leopards but we didn't see any. We saw two hippos wallowing along the lake shore among the flamingos. We were lucky: people rarely see hippos in this park. The attraction for all the wildlife in this park is Lake Nakuru. It's a "soda lake." Here in Rift Valley, there's not good drainage, so rain forms shallow lakes like this one. Evaporation creates concentrated water where blue-green algae grows. I think the algae supports the fish and krill, which in turn support pelicans and flamingos. During our drive to Nazareth, we came upon a head-on collision that must have happened just minutes before we arrived. Bystanders had extracted a man and baby and laid them on the grass outside the car. They were both bleeding but conscious. Bystanders were working to extract the driver of one of the cars. His side of the car was smashed in, crushing his legs. Daddy took his pulse and found him talking and breathing. Bystanders tied opposite ends of the car to two trucks using cables and freed the driver. Daddy said the driver could die from a ruptured spleen, other internal bleeding, or an infection from his legs' protruding bone fractures. We overtook cars more conservatively after witnessing the accident. The cause of the head-on collision seemed to be that an overtaking car didn't get back into its lane in time. We took an hours' detour to see Lake Naivasha on the way to Nazareth. We strolled around the well-kept Lake Naivasha Country Club grounds for half an hour. We arrived at Nazareth and Mommy greeted everyone as we entered the hospital grounds. She knows the guards, sisters, village vendors--all the locals. (0) comments Saturday, January 08, 2005
Kitale, Kerio Valley, NakuruWe took a detour through the beautiful Kerio Valley on the way to Nakuru National Park. We stopped for a couple hours at the Lelin Campground, which has a peaceful view of the valley. Ethan (the Israeli we met in Jinja) recommended the place to us. We wanted to spend the night but it was too early to stop for the day. Instead, we sipped Fantas, read, wrote, napped, and talked for a couple hours. During our three-hour drive through the hot, dry valley, we passed many charcoal sellers and honey sellers. Many people flagged us down for a ride but we decided that picking them up was more trouble than we wanted. We had a hard time finding a place to stay in Nakuru because we didn't like the loud, congested downtown where all the hotels are. We eventually took a room at Midland, outside downtown. (0) comments Friday, January 07, 2005
Eldoret, AMPATH HIV hospital, Kitale AIDS ProgrammeThis morning Joe took us on a tour of the HIV hospital he's building in Eldoret. The first floor will be patient care, second floor teaching medical students, third floor undecided, and basement research. Joe built it mostly with individual donor money--no government support. The cost is $1.6 million. The quality of the construction and design look good. We drove 1-2 hours north of Kitale to visit the Kitale AIDS Programme. It's run by two Irish nuns, Mary and Teresa, and an American physician's assistant, Marj. They've built a few patient exam rooms and offices on a 100 foot by 100 foot plot of land next to a church. They started small, in 1992, with home visits. Now they have 700 clients, whom they mostly see in the clinic. They started receiving ARVs a month ago and just put their 80th client on the drugs. The largest expense of the Kitale AIDS Programme is helping orphans and children of clients go to school. The program buys uniforms, books, and pays secondary school fees and vocational training fees for 500 orphans. The total program budget is $100k and the orphan budget is $25k. Catherine and I donated $6300 to the program--half of that is Google's match. Mary asked me where I'd like the money to go, and I said, "Whatever you think is most urgent." Mary and Teresa both replied, "The orphans." We funded a quarter of the annual orphan budget! I feel good about the money we donated to the Kitale AIDS Programme because it's a lean operation and I have a clear idea of where the money is going. Marj, Mary, and Teresa are simple people who have been helping people like this for many years. They genuinely care for the people they're working with. The Kitale AIDS Programme includes an income generation component. It started 1.5 years ago and now has 100 clients. A social worker first visits the client and makes sure basic needs are met. Then they set the client up with a charcoal shop, a donut shop, or a one-acre shamba (farm). The loans are more like grants because the program coordinators don't expect their money back. We visited an orphanage in the afternoon. It serves 100 boys and girls. We saw their bunk beds, food silos, and classrooms. All were immaculate. I quizzed a few kids on addition and subtraction and they answered correctly *in english*. (1) comments Thursday, January 06, 2005
Eldoret, AMPATH microfinance, pediatric clinic, farmThis morning, Daddy, Jay, and I visited the microfinance part of AMPATH, led by Peter Park. It looks better put-together than the Reach Out one we saw in Kampala, Uganda. We have more confidence in the leaders of the AMPATH program here in El Doret. They're smaller and younger but they seem to have good ideas. For example, they require all their clients to undergo a month of business training before they access a loan. They've categorized loans into beginner, intermediate, and advanced:
The AMPATH microfinance program is about a year old and has about 200-300 clients. The first year was a pilot program where they explored different microfinance tactics. The repayment rate was an abysmal 5% because clients used the money from the loan or from the profits to buy food to eat. They were starving! The program now includes food and training, and the repayment rate so far (post-pilot) is an amazing 92%. Mommy visited the farming part of AMPATH this morning. AMPATH runs a model farm where it trains clients to be farmers. An ex-peace corps volunteer from England designed the farm. Three workers attend to three cows: two chop grass and a third feeds molasses to increase the cow's appetite. Since the cows don't move from their pen, this is called "zero-grazing." It's meant for farmers who don't have much land. The irrigation mechanism, an Approtech pump, requires the farmer to perform Stairmaster-like stepping for hours every day. A farmer with AIDS might not have the strength. In the afternoon, Jay and I visited a pedatric AIDS clinic at a nearby village with Jill, a young American doctor who is halfway through her year here. Most kids were healthy and just came in for their monthly checkup. Jill poked their bellies, looked in their eyes, opened their mouths, and talked in Swahili with the parent. Jill said that she doesn't know how long children born with AIDS can expect to live because they've only had ARVs for a few years. The oldest AIDS child she's treated is 13. The adult who brings the child to the clinic is invariably female: an aunt, a sister, or the mother. Men need to get more involved in caring for children. (0) comments Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Kampala, Kenya border, Eldoret, AMPATHToday we returned to Kenya and are staying in Eldoret, the home of AMPATH, a successful AIDS program. In the morning, I picked avocados from the tree outside our cottage with Mommy. She tied a coat hanger to the end of a stick. I hooked each avocado and Mommy caught it. We stopped at the barbecue chicken roadside stand on the way to the border. The hawkers swarmed around our car again and they all recognized us. "Welcome back," they said. "You bought from me last time." The drive to the border was again scary. We took a gamble every time we passed an oncoming truck or bus. Those big vehicles own the road. Several times a truck/bus swerved to avoid a pothole and forced us off the road. City driving is similarly lawless. Roads have few lane markings and no stoplights. Sidewalks and medians are fair game for cars, so pedestrians had better watch out. Cars come within inches of each other but I have yet to witness a scratch. With all the traffic jams and cutting people off and near collisions, I would expect fights, but I have yet to see any disagreements. People seem to accept the jostling as part of driving. We had a much easier border-crossing re-entering Kenya than leaving Kenya. It turned out that Daddy's and Mommy's visas had *both* expired, but renewing them was easy ($50 each). An entrepreneurial young man helped cross again, but we didn't need him so we only paid him $2. We arrived at the AMPATH compound in a little town called Eldoret in time for dinner. AMPATH is a 4-year-old program that takes a holistic approach to AIDS treatment. With 6,000 clients, it's the largest program we've seen. In fact, it's the largest program in the country, which is particularly amazing because it's operating in rural areas, not cities. We had dinner with Joe and his 7 American staff at a local Chinese restaurant that has surprisingly good food. I learned at dinner that Joe has been working abroad for many years. He started building a medical school in Afghanistan in 1970-something but got kicked out by the Russians. He worked in Pakistan for a while, waiting to return to Afghanistan. When it became clear that he couldn't return, he came to Eldoret and started working in a hospital in 1988. In his first year at the hospital, 85 people died. When he returned a few years later, 1000 people died that year in the same number of beds. The AIDS pandemic had begun. Joe started his AMPATH program in 1993 with funding from Indiana University (IU), where he was dean of the medical school. AMPATH stands for Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment of HIV. The IU compound, where we're staying, is quiet, clean, and spacious. There's internet downstairs and they feed us three meals a day! (0) comments Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Kampala, Reach Out microfinance, stone quarry workersMommy and Jay and I spent most of the day with the Reach Out microfinance team while Daddy visited the Reach Out clinic. We talked in the microfinance office in the morning and then visited two client businesses: a charcoal store and a stone quarry. The quarry workers are among the poorest people we've met. In the office we learned about a chicken project funded by a group loan. The clients underestimated costs and the microfinance board was discussing how to go forward. The idea behind the project is to raise chickens and sell them in the neighboring market. The chicks take six weeks to reach maturity. The clients have sold a few generations but it seems that their current batch is several weeks from maturity and the clients can't cover expenses. We visited a client's charcoal business. She showed us a shed full of charcoal that she sells for 30 cents for two buckets. She's on her fourth loan. In the afternoon, we visited a stone quarry partially owned by a Reach Out client. The quarry workers did physically demanding work with primitive equipment for unbelievably low wages. Men chip rocks from the ground and carry them out to where women and children smash them with mallets into pebbles to be sold for construction. A man I spoke with makes 50 cents to a dollar a day, which is about what a packet of biscuits costs at the supermarket. He's 32 years old. A younger man makes a quarter for every 15 trips he makes carrying a 30-pound bag of rocks from the bottom of the quarry to the top, where women and children break the rocks into pebbles. He wore flip flops with holes in the heels. Seven-year-old children hit rocks with small hammers next to their mothers. They worked in the hot sun. The only shade was three sticks propped up together with a cloth draped over them. It was big enough to cover a baby. Most of these poor quarry workers came from villages in northern Uganda, where there's a war. "This is the only job we can find," said one of the men. Little kids make 15 cents a day and teenagers make 30 cents a day. They all work 12 hours a day. Both evenings in Kampala we experienced power outages from 6 to 11. I don't know how the capital of a country can function with daily power outages. Someone told us that Uganda sells its energy to Kenya and doesn't keep enough for itself. While Jay and I were talking in the microfinance office this morning, Mommy spoke with six female Reach Out clients and found that they have little power in their marriages. Mommy asked how many of their husbands had beaten them and all six raised their hands. "Has he ever forced you to have sex?" Mommy asked. "Whenever he comes home drunk," one responded, and others nodded. (0) comments Monday, January 03, 2005
Jinja, Kampala, Reach Out MbuyaWe had breakfast in our peaceful Jinja campground overlooking the Nile, said goodbye to Ethan, and set out for Kampala. Along the way we stopped to buy grilled chicken at a roadside stand that many people have recommended to us. Young men wielding 5-10 sticks of chicken in each hand swarmed around the car as soon as we stopped. We bought a skewer each for 75 cents each. It was the tastiest, most tender chicken we've had on this trip. In Kampala, we visited the Reach Out Mbuya program. Daddy and Mommy visited it last March and Jay raised $6000 for the program from her HBS section. We met Dr. Margaret, the European doctor who founded the program 3.5 years ago. Annette, a 24-year-old local, led us on a tour of the place. Reach Out takes a holistic, community-based approach to HIV/AIDS care. Annette showed Jay and me several departments: ARV pharmacy, ARV education, HIV counseling, primary and secondary school scholarships, primary/secondary school HIV education, microfinance, work training and income generation, adult literacy education, World Food Programme, and medical clinic. An innovative aspect of the program is CATTS: Community ARV and Tuberculosis Treatment Support. A CATTS volunteer is an HIV-positive client who has gotten healthy via Reach Out and helps about 10 fellow clients get healthy. The volunteer visits each client once a week to make sure the client is taking ARVs and has enough food. Frederick explained HIV counseling to us. People come in to get tested, usually with the suspicion that they're positive. Frederick takes them five at a time through pre-test group counseling, where they discuss ARVs and what's available at Reach Out. Then they take a blood sample and continue counseling while the tests are pending. Ten minutes later, the test results are ready. Frederick takes each client individually and reviews the group counseling before disclosing the test result. He said that the individual review is important because clients are often too anxious about their test result to absorb anything from the group counseling. If the client turns out positive, Frederick enrolls the client in Reach Out, prescribes ARVs, and assigns a CATTS volunteer. The work training is focused on women because 79% of Reach Out clients are female. Clients attend a 1-year sewing course and graduate with a certificate and a sewing machine. We visited Dr. Margaret's family--husband, four sons, 1 daughter--in her house at night. Noah, her husband, runs the World Food Programme in Uganda. I spoke with her oldest son (16), Benjamin, about applying to US colleges. The family has lived all over the world: Sudan, Cambodia, Thailand, Swaziland, India, and Uganda. On the way home we evaded the Uganda Highway Patrol! We accidentally drove the wrong way down a one-way street. As they came up behind us, we accidentally cut them off. They pulled in front of us and motioned us to pull over but we turned up the road to our house instead. They turned on their siren lights so Daddy veered into an alley and turned off his lights and waited for them to pass. After 10 minutes of waiting, whispering, and looking over our shoulders, we continued home. Exciting! (0) comments Sunday, January 02, 2005
Jinja, Nile raftingI felt like I almost died rafting the Nile today. I came closer to death than I've ever felt. I'm glad I experienced almost dying, but I would not make that same trip again. In fact, I wouldn't have even made it the first time if I could understand what I was going to go through. My dad asked what my sister and I would advise someone else considering rafting the Nile, and we both said "Don't do it." The thrill is not worth risking death. I doubt our advice would stop anyone, though, because it's hard to explain the feeling of drowning to someone. My dad said that we got a taste of what the tsunami victims experienced, and I agree. It was much safer for us, of course, because we were guaranteed to come up after the rapids. The tsunami victims had no such guarantee. The rafting trip lasted the whole day. My dad and sister and I went. My mom opted out. We hit two Class 5 rapids and a few others in the morning, had lunch on an island in the river, then hit a few small rapids and one last Class 5 in the afternoon. Our boat capsized on both Class 5 rapids in the morning, and we took an easy line through the last Class 5. The first rapid was an exciting Class 4 called "Bujagali Falls." We had seen this set of rapids from shore, and it looked big. It was still scary in the boat, but once I was through it and we didn't capsize, I thought, "That was easy." On the next rapid, a Class 5, our boat went vertical and everyone went overboard. I came up for air but got whisked down again, and this time I went deep into dark water. I flailed and gasped for air but only brought in water. I brought in water for maybe 10 breaths. I started thinking that I was going to die. "I can't die yet," I thought. "I've just started my career." I thought I'd get a second chance when I surfaced unconscious because the guide could do CPR on me. I kept my eyes open the whole time and struggled toward the surface when I saw sunlight. I couldn't believe I surfaced with consciousness. I took several quick breaths. Once I knew I was going to survive, my thoughts went to my sister and dad. "Where is my sister? Where is my father?" I asked the guide. "They're fine," responded Jane. A guide pulled me into the "safety boat" and I just sat exhausted and shocked for a few minutes. I had heartburn because of the lactic acid buildup from lack of oxygen. My ears hurt because I had gone so deep. I felt nauseated because of the water in my ears. My sister and father had similar feelings of drowning, althought they didn't go as deep or stay down for as long. The name of the Class 5 rapid where everyone went over is "Total Ganga," which is Swahili for "Total Chaos." We stopped for lunch soon after Total Chaos and had sandwiches on an island. My mom met us there. We told her about almost drowning and said that we were happy she chose not to go on the trip. Two types of boats came on the trip: paddle boats and safety boats (also called "oar boats"). The paddle boats carry up to 8 paddling clients and a guide, and the safety boats are for clients who don't paddle. The guide in the safety boat sits in the center with two big oars. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the safety boat because I was too nauseated from my dunking to row. My sister and dad took it easy through the last Class 5 because, in my sister's words, "I have nothing to prove. I've experienced swimming through the rapids." The kayak champion of Uganda, Geoffrey, works with the rafting company we went with: Adrift. We watched him surf the largest rapid of the day. He's amazing! He was a little dot in a huge standing wave of white water, and he was surfing it. He flipped 180 degrees and made surfing the deadly rapids look easy. Another highlight was when another kayak champion pulled two paddle boats using his oar boat. We all just sat and relaxed while he pulled. Thank you, Tutu! Drowning is a horrible way to die. I felt helpless yet frantic. Knowing how to swim was probably a disadvantage because I panicked more when my swimming (flailing) didn't bring me closer to the surface. We learned that the brother of one of our rafting guides drowned just a couple months ago swimming Bujagali Falls with a jerry can, which is a 2 ft by 2 ft water container. He lost control of the jerry can and got pinned under some rocks. They only found his body three days later when his body bloated with water and floated to the surface. The young men who swim Bujagali Falls with no life vest and just a jerry can are called Bujagali Swimmers. They keep swimming the Falls for tips from spectators after the man drowned two months ago. Since the drowning, they've started attaching the jerry can to their wrists with a cord. (0) comments Saturday, January 01, 2005
Jinja, Bujagali FallsWe stayed around Jinja today. We checked e-mail, ate an Indian lunch, saw Bujagali Falls, found a beautiful campsite overlooking the Nile, met Isreali Ethan, and arranged a rafting trip for tomorrow. Bujagali Falls is on the Nile. It's a set of Class 4 rapids. I didn't realize that Class 4 rapids are so scary! We saw no rafts coming down the rapids because the rafting companies rest on New Year's Day. We did see crazy local men surfing the rapids on a plastic water container (2 ft by 2 ft). It was exciting to see a head dive into a huge rapid and come bobbing up on the other side. They made it look easy. After each trip, a man came by with a small basket asking for a donation. We gave 50 cents. Tonight we're staying in a tent at a peaceful campsite overlooking the Nile. We're taking an all-day rafting trip from her tomorrow with "Adrift." We'll go through 10-12 sets of rapids, including three Class 5 rapids. Ethan is also staying at this campsite. He's from Israel and he's been backpacking in Uganda for a few weeks. I learned that, as an Israeli, he can't travel to Sudan, Malaysia, and other muslim countries. Ethan talked about his three-year military service. He drove a tank and he participated in village raids to root out suicide bombers. (0) comments |
