29th july

29^TH JULY

UMM, IS THIS THE AFRICAN WAY

Today again I was consulting alone again, thankfully many of the patients had signs that I could recognise and the Consultant Dr Phill was around to confirm or deny my findings. I still haven’t got to grip with the in and outs of Malaria and HIV but I do know that all the patients have malaria until proven otherwise.

I saw the worse herpes that I have seen in my entire life, it was really sad the patient was female and in her early twenties. To remove the warts, she had been tying string around each individual wart and hoping that they would drop off, and to complicate things she had a really bad deep seated thrush infection. This girl was on a really bad state and almost felt defeated with illness. I asked her how her husband and children were, and her sister told me that her husband had left her because he thought that she was dirty, at this point I welled up but managed to remain composed. She was prescribed an antiviral and admitted.

What I really wanted to talk about was the behaviours of some of the people I have met these past three days. Well i made friends with a ‘nun’ on Monday I call her nun in inverted commas because she is wearing nuns clothing and looks like a nun and wears a cross and the image of Mary, but it transpires that she actually has 6 children. AND after convo with my roomy Una, it transpires that no one actually called the nun sister...umm. Yesterday the nun came round and cooked us dinner –that was nice (please note that we bought the food and paid for her to get home). Then today, she invited herself round, cooked dinner with our food, ate Unas bread, sat and watched our TV, invited one of her six children round to ‘meet me’ and then left at seven o clock, with the statement that she would again return tomorrow. ...Also one of our Kenyan reps ‘friend’ just invited himself round and sat to watch TV with us. Im sure that you can guess what my response to this situation was, Una is too polite despite being bloody annoyed and so she texted me (I was in my room) to come out and deal with things, and so I had to politely (well ronx politely) had to ask this unknown gentlemen, who had this time had taken his shoes off -? To leave the house as this was our house and we wanted some privacy. He replied ‘but i want to get to know you’. I rather abruptly told him that I had landed in Kenya three days ago, I was tired and didn’t want to know him today, but next week, he can make an arrangement to get to know me, but not in this house’. I think he got the drift and left.

I think what I am trying to say is that it seems that everybody is trying to rip the shit out of us. A girl that lived here previous to me, gave the locals money, paid for peoples health care and basically made a general nuisance of herself. I say nuisance because we have been specifically told not to give anyone money, or goods or anything as this not only attracts people to the house but is not a sustainable or fair way of distributing wealth. Since then, our house has been associated with wealth, everybody says hello to me in the street with longing eyes, men want to help me all the time, and women bloody women over charge me . Like today was the first day that i took the ‘matatu’-the bus by myself to and from the hospital. I got off at the market on the way home to stock up and really wanted some fried fish, I went to one of the market stalls and the fish I wanted that I knew and the women who served me knew I knew was proceed at 80 shillings she tried to charge me 150 I said no my friend, give me fair price and I come every day, so she reduced it to 130 and then her boyfriend told me to go away. I in true feminist ronx style was like ‘er, ok then and muttered my favourite word –moron’ under my breath. Ergh.

I just really dislike being a potential target for the locals and being unable to decipher genuine friendship and helpfulness from those who are only helping out for payment. I mean a part of me is like, to be honest perhaps id do the same if i were in their shoes, however, i have paid a huge lump sum donation to the charity, im paing to be here, I pay for my whole keep, our fee pays the staff, and the hospital have received a small donation. I just feel that ive done my bit, and especially since I am seeing patient after patient but yet im still seen as the ‘American Dr to be ripped off’. I must be harder for Una as she is very pale and white and Irish and is a visual walking target. Lol.

Anyways despite this I am having a brill time here. I could live here (with running water and a hot tap and a girlfriend –actually no, scrap that id be lynched) although Una and I live together and share a room and some of the girls live with their sisters and cousins, so maybe a gay life could work lol. Anyhow, I have a headache MALARIA? Lol who knows, if I presented with this at the hospital, IT WOULD BE!