if you had one shot, one opportunity

september is already amazing; part I.

this week has only just started and yet it has already hit the mark of fan-bloody-tastic. I hit AU$4000 in donations, which is – quite literally – out of this world. even people I’ve never met have donated. so a huge thank you to my family and friends who have spread the word of what I’m doing. really, all of you are my backbone here in kenya.. I wouldn’t be able to help the people I’m helping without the selflessness of you all. so here is my thank you #1.

there’s a quote by mother theresa which says something like, ” if you can’t feed the world, then just feed one person”… I’ve slightly adapted it to, “if you can’t help the entire world, then focus on one small part and do as much as you can”. that’s how I feel about the ray of hope school. my amazing uncle ron is back home making skipping ropes to send over for them because I said they use old wires instead. this is everyone’s project, everyone who has donated, not just mine!

so as I’ve let you all know, I’ve already used a fair bit of the donation funds here in kenya – particularly on stationary, books and necessities for my little angels at ray of hope, as well as at other medical camps and donations to slums I’ve visited. however I didn’t realise that gofundme (the website I use to fundraise) and paypal both take a percentage of these funds. but that’s life, nothing comes without a small fee! anyway, long story short, I still have approximately $2700 – an incredible amount of money – for this medical camp; which brings me to the second part of this post.

september is already amazing, part II.

I met a pretty awesome norwegian girl called anna, who volunteered here in kenya last year, and loved the country so much that she’s now moved here for university. I was telling her about my goal of running my own medical camp, and she said she was really happy to assist with funding the camp with some of the money she raised for separate volunteer projects… approximately $850. I was speechless. and then finally, when I found my voice, extremely thankful! how on earth did I get so lucky with such generous people in my life? cue part three…

september is already amazing, part III.

yesterday I met with marcus, the co-founder of KCC slum project, to discuss my medical camp. he was at the last camp I did in naivasha, and knows a thing or two about the organisational side of things. anna came with me, so she can know where her donation money is going too.

he was blown away with the amount of money I managed to raise and was excited at the concept of how far it will go. usually volunteers organise one day medical camps, but he is certain that these funds can make an entire weekend-long medical camp, on october 26-27. that’s huge! the potential number of people we could see in two days is phenomenal, hundreds and hundreds, at least.

I let him know that I would love it run just like the one in naivasha as it was so so organised, but would love it to be for everyone, not just women. still have triage and doctors (maybe even specialists) and a pharmacy and voluntary HIV testing, also cervical cancer & breast cancer screening stations… but I would love to include dental in it as well. he loved the idea, as he had been brainstorming places to have the camp, and came up with a school on the outskirts of naivasha with a huge number of pupils, which would ensure we had a huge turnout. and I loved the idea of ensuring kids had dental checkups, as well as adults. some of the kenyans teeth here are shocking, I’ve seen in the past two months, which is what inspired me to have a dentist at this camp. I also thought of having little take home packs for kids after having a dental checkup, you know like a toothbrush and toothpaste (maybe a sticker or two), like we used to get when we’d go to the dentist as kids.

so marcus is going to get in contact with the local hospital, the school and then give me a run down of a potential budget for the camp. and then everything will start from there; getting staff, organising volunteers to help out, getting medications, getting equipment ready, making flyers & posters to spread the word throughout the entire area of naivasha and the surrounding villages and towns. it’s going to be a huge job, but it will be so worth it.

september AND october are going to be amazing

I don’t know if there’s a way to describe how inspired and excited I’m feeling right now. words are failing me! this was my goal, my dream. running a medical camp for the people who can’t easily access or afford healthcare. it’s my passion, what drives me every day here in kenya.

marcus said to me today “I remember you saying you wanted to fund a medical camp on your very first day in kenya”. this was my goal, and it is actually happening. my ‘one shot, one opportunity’ (cheers eminem). but it’s not just my medical camp, it’s ours. anyone who has donated, this is your medical camp that you’re helping run so that hundreds of hundreds of people can have medical attention, for free, close to their homes.

so now is the time to share my story, if you haven’t already. share what I’m doing with your work colleagues, your parents, your extended family, your children, your aunties brothers sister-in-law’s step-daughter, your boss, your favourite barista, your tram driver, your great-grandma with a huge estate and is unsure of how to spend it, your school, your basketball team or your church… this is it. if I raise any more funds between now and october 26-27, my idea of sending kids away with a toothbrush & toothpaste could come to life. I’d love to have vitamins for children as well (a new idea I just thought of), we’ve not had them at any other camp – and so many kids are malnourished, vitamins could do the world of good. and I am very open to suggestions, the brainstorming starts now!

if you’ve donated and want to again, or haven’t yet because you’ve waited until the right time, this is it. this is where all of the donation money is going (except for the little bit I’m saving for the clinic in Tanzania). this is your chance to directly help hundreds of kenyans, adults and beautiful children, reach healthcare. click on this link:

taking healthcare to kenya

asante sana, from the absolute bottom of my heart. ♥

there are places I’ll remember all my life

medical camp number 2.

this is the medical camp I’d been looking forward to since my orientation on july 1. held in naivasha on august 17, it was run in conjunction with KCC (kitendo children’s charity), NVS and kijabe mission hospital. 10 of us volunteers from NVS helped out on the day, with pretty varied backgrounds. nurses, nursing students, med students, an ex-army medic.. most of us were medical in some way or another; it really doesn’t matter if people don’t had a medical background because there’s always something for people to do!

up at 6am, to meet at 7am, left by 8am (by the time some stragglers came late), arrived by about 10am, worked until 4:30pm, left at 5pm, home to nairobi by 6:45pm. it was a long day, both in the sense that I’d been awake for ages, and that it was both hectic and intense at certain parts of the day!

as we arrived, everything was pretty much set up and organised, unlike the last medical camp in nakuru when we sat for ages waiting for tents to be set up and tables brought in and chairs brought from a church 15 minutes away etc etc. it was clear that this medical camp had been 6 weeks in the making, people had been organising it down to an absolute tee, to ensuring we had more than enough medication and staff to deal with loads of people. the camp was directed towards women, having breast cancer screening and cervical cancer screening areas, as well as general check ups.

arriving at the site, it was surprising to see that everything was already pretty much organised. tents were already pitched, PA systems already installed, patients already started to arrive. if anything, it was the staff (and us) who were holding up the proceedings. the staff wanted to welcome us with a prayer or two, a few worship songs and morning tea. if there’s one thing I bloody love about kenya, it’s that regardless of what job you have, regardless of how busy you might be… everybody has time to take tea.

what our pharmacy looked like

I started the day in pharmacy, not really fussed where I work in medical camps like this – I know that you’re needed wherever you are. I was expecting that pharmacy would be pretty cruisy actually, oh how wrong I was. wai and I were run off our feet. none of the medication had been pre-packaged into smaller ‘take home’ packs, huge 5L bottles of liquid paracetamol and amoxicillin had to be decanted into small bottles for children… all the while receiving the patients cards and trying to decipher what the doctor had prescribed, then running to the doctor to clarify what they’d written, then running back to do instant drug calcs. not even kidding, it was the most mentally straining work I’d done since my last placement shifts last year. and they use weird abbreviations here. paracetamol gets shortened to PCM. metronidazole is shortened to MTZ.

I could write my own drug calc quiz on examples of the day;

if our paracetamol tablets are 500mg & a patient has been prescribed 1g PCM TDS 5/7, how many tablets do they require?

a patient has been prescribed 400mg MTZ TDS 2/52. tablets are 200mg. how many do they require?

holy shit. it really hurt my head. but after 2 minutes of floundering around, I had to mentally slap myself to get my shit together and do it quickly… the line was growing exponentially. I am in total awe of my friends who started their careers this year as nurses or paramedics and have been doing this for months now. crazy.

pharmacy friends

it’s also living proof that wherever you are in the world, doctors have the worst handwriting ever. us running back and forth to the doctor should have given them the ‘gentle’ nudge for them for realise that they should write clearly and legibly. no wonder patients die from errors made from medical staff, I blame doctors handwriting. a note to all you doctors/med students out there, please for the love of all things good and alive, write neatly, so poor nurses like me aren’t left guessing what you want the patient to have.

funny story that made me laugh: was about to get the drugs together for one woman when I needed to double check with her doctor. so I asked her who she saw. she pointed in the general direction of two doctors, and said “the black one”. I actually laughed out loud.

putting drugs into packets

kelsey and kristy in pharmacy

another thing that’s different is how they write the instructions for taking the tablets. none of this easy to understand “one tablet, three times a day” or “two tablets, twice a day”.. you just get told 1 x 4. does that mean one tablet four times a day, or four tablets once a day? apparently patients understand it here, but it definitely took me a bit to get my head around. so the instruction for taking the amoxicillin above is ‘two tablets, three times a day’. right…

working in triage

a nurse from australia, kristy, started working in triage and said to me at the start of the day that we should swap half way through so I get a chance to work there. it’s not as exciting as it sounds, really you’re not triaging anyone, you’re just taking vitals, and not even manually.. they had automatic BP cuffs, which I was glad to get rid off and do it manually, I don’t trust the auto ones. one 24 year old comes up and I take her BP, get a reading of 220/150. shit. so I do it again, on the other arm, same result. she got really anxious when I went to do it again on the other arm, and I just said something about not hearing it correctly so I had to check again. avoid elevated anxiety in patients at all costs. but when I got the same result, she must have read it on my face and asked me how bad it was. I have a horrible poker face, in fact I can’t lie to save my life. I was as diplomatic as possible and just said that it was pretty high but she was about to see the doctor and they’ll discuss it with her. she goes on to tell me her whole family has high blood pressure, and she doesn’t want to be on medication forever… it’s too expensive. bloody hell.

william, an ex-army medic now osteopath, doing diagnosis work for patients

my little follower, who when I asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said she wasn’t sure, so I said how about a doctor? and she looked at me blankly, unsure of if I was joking or not. I told her if she works really hard at school, she can be anything. cue: massive smile from her. melted my heart.

the group

it was such a great day, seeing almost 300 patients. we got back to nairobi at about 6:30 and I had a well earned beer with two awesome girls who were also at the camp, sierra and mollie. absolute legends. a massive thanks to my amazing friends and family who donated, I used approximately AU$55 which was my donation towards the purchasing of medications and supplies. while it wasn’t as large as the one in nakuru, it serviced women in an area who can’t afford healthcare or simply can’t reach it easily. people travel from far and wide to come to these medical camps, which is why they require so much planning… so the word gets out & more people can be helped.