Thursday 20.01.11
This morning we headed out to the hospital again to check on our friends. We are getting much better at using matatus now so saving a lot of money which is great. We stopped in town so I could go to the bank to get money out, this time with my passport!
At the hospital we headed to the ward with the three boys in one cot, and Damaris in the other one. They were all so happy and cheery as usual so we left them and went to check on Martha and Zach and Lincoln. Martha was asleep which is rare so I let her rest for the time being. Lincoln was also very content as usual and Zach was being fed. His oxygen mask had been removed but he was now receiving oxygen through a tube.
So far he had been on a level of 15 but they had dropped his oxygen supply to 4 which is a good sign that he is improving! You can now see his face properly which is great, but it is also clear that his eyes aren’t the same. One is bigger and higher that the other one but it could possibly be due to the mask pressing on his face. Hopefully this will improve with time but it seems unlikely. He is still cute regardless! Unfortunately he does seem to be struggling to breathe, which is not surprising considering he has an naso-gastric tube in one nostril and an oxygen tube in the other! He also seems to have a cold of some sort.
Tammi managed to read over Zach’s chart and we discovered his name is Angelo Gabriel, but it is unclear as to whether the hospital gave this to him or his family. The chart also explained a lot about his condition. He is estimated to have been born at the start of December and was abandoned at the hospital at one week old weighing 2.2kg. He had pneumonia and within a few weeks developed malnutrition and his weight has dropped to what I would guess would be half of his previous weight. Appalling really, as considering he is force fed through a naso-gastric tube this should really not happen. Apparently he was also ‘exposed’ to HIV during his stay at the hospital and has since tested positive to the disease. It is unclear how this happened or whether he already had it from birth, but even so it makes me so angry that they can let this happen.
I changed Lincoln as he had fallen out of his nappy and it had worked his way up his back and covered him in poo! The nurse handed him to me while he was still covered in it and she changed the bed sheets. Here’s hoping I didn’t catch anything from getting poo all over me! Martha awoke shortly after our arrival and she was trying to tear her clothes off as usual. She looks os uncomfortable in clothes. She was sobbing after a rough physio session so I fed her porridge then held her as she continued to sob until she fell asleep. It’s very hard to hold a heavy two year old child that has no control of it’s head as she has never developed the muscular function required after spending her life in bed. She is only comfortable over your shoulder but her head keeps falling off as she isn’t strong enough to hold it up. Then as soon as you put her down in her cot she cries again. Today I figured out that if I stroked her feet she just smiled and fell asleep so easily! Such a simple thing to do but it brings so much benefit to her!
We caught a taxi from the hospital into town and had the funniest driver ever. He wouldn’t stop talking in his broken english and explaining to us his version of life in Kenya so we were entertained for the whole trip. We arrived back at Khweza and chilled out for a bit. Then we headed to the furniture shop on the corner and Tammi found a small combination oven and stovetop for $130. We bargained the guy down to $90 and Tammi bought it to take down to Mombasa for her new house, as we figured we would never find one that cheap again. Unfortunately when we got it back to the hotel room we figured out the oven didn’t work. So we will take it back tomorrow and see if they can fix it. It just appears to be the heating element so hopefully it won’t be a tough fix. Even if we had to pay a bit the cost would still be worth it!
I had a beautiful dinner of sweet potato soup, the best so far at Khweza, in fact my whole time in Kenya so far! After some blogging and facebooking and a bit of chatting and planning for tomorrow, I headed to bed for a big day tomorrow visiting an education centre at Kubira slums, the biggest slums in Kenya. I am thinking it will definitely be an interesting day!
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