Interests:Currently I'm interested in not becoming jaded, embittered and generally dissatisfied with my life as an surgical resident. Many times I fail. Once in awhile, I appear marginally compassionate. Oh, the heights I've fallen. Expertise:Discharge summaries, electrolyte replacement. Occupation:Scut-recipient Industry:Medical
I've mentioned Dave and Trudy Petersen is past blog-posts; I thought it was about time to properly introduce them, since they are an integral part of the Kapsowar station community, and I count Dave as a close friend.
Dave and Trudy hail from Soldotna, Alaska. (I have no clue -- I'm told it's near the ocean.) Dave is a builder and general contractor; Trudy is an English teacher. Dave is also a pilot and flies a small two-seater Cessna around Alaska. A few years ago, Dave got involved with Samaritan's Purse (my own sending agency) in helping build a community youth center for a northern native Alaskan village. One thing led to another, and then suddenly Dave and Trudy found themselves in rural Liberia, close the Guinea border and a full day's drive from Monrovia. They stayed there for twelve months, building a Bible college in the jungle.
After their year in Liberia, they wanted to do more. Samaritan's Purse gifted Kapsowar Hospital with US$500,000 to build a new hospital theatre and then assigned the Petersens to Kapsowar for nine months to spearhead the project.
In their late 50s, the Petersens have three grown children who all live in Alaska. Trudy teaches English to over 300 ninth and tenth grade students at Kaposwar Girls' High, the local boarding girls' secondary school.
Dave has been leading a group of men (and the occasional woman) on the work-site to build the new 10,000 sq. ft. building, which will house a new theatre, Maternal-Child Health department, and administrative offices.
The theatre will house two new operating rooms, a minor procedure room, a orthopaedic cast room, an outpatient office, and -- supposedly -- a three-bed ICU. This would be a huge step-up from the current theatre building, which holds a single operating room, a sterilization room, and...well, that's about it.
Dave and I have taken to running about a mile every morning at 6 a.m. Dave wants to get into "the same shape I was in Liberia, when I ran a 5K every other morning." I hate running. I despise it. I hate sweating. However, keeping up with a man over twice my age isn't too hard, and it gives me good motivation to get up early and start my day, so I've been persevering with it.
On our trips together, Dave and I have encountered some interesting places and characters. As Dave says, "I'm not here for the building. The building is just an excuse to develop relationships and share the good news."
Dave has promised to take me up on his Cessna when I come up to visit him on Alaska, to go bear viewing and salmon fishing on remote Alaskan beaches.
American Thanksgiving has come and past. And wouldn't you know, I enjoyed turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie -- pretty much everything I would ever want or get the States.
Dave, the Alaskan builder from Samaritan's Purse, drives to Eldoret twice or thrice weekly -- a bumpy ride on a dirt-road, a four-hour-long round-trip. He meets with various businessmen and suppliers, obtaining cement, gravel, steel, electric wiring, and all the other necessary ingredients in constructing a 10,000 sq. ft. building in the middle of rural Kenya. In his dealings, he came across a Danish missionary who lives in Eldoret. For the past many years, his family has hosted a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for all the Americans in town.
"It may not be as big as last year," the Dane told Dave. "Last year we had 75 people."
This year, ninety people showed up to the Thanksgiving feast in Eldoret. The vast majority of them were living in the Eldoret area, so it wasn't as long a ride for them as it was for us. Interestingly, not everyone was American. There were Canadians, Germans, Swiss, Kenyans, Australians, Britons, and a smattering of other nationalities.
I wish I had taken a picture of all the food. I'm not sure if I had ever had quite as a traditional American Thanksgiving feast as I had in Kenya. I suppose there's something about expatriates living abroad that makes them want to recreate home traditions as much as possible. I don't think a single traditional dish was missing. There was even ice cream!
This year, despite being far from my family, I still have so much to be thankful for. I've discovered the truism that fellow missionaries become like family. Not only the wazungu, but I count Kenyans among my best friends here. Without James, Thomas, Michal, and so many others, my few months at Kapsowar would be not nearly as enjoyable and fun. And I don't have to look far to realize how privileged I am. I have a mattress; a flush toilet; a propane stove; a hot water heater; a refrigerator; a toaster; a computer with Internet; electricity to run them all; and a bungalow big enough to fit a six-person Kenyan family. Thanksgiving may be over, but the thanksgiving never ends.
(Now that American Thanksgiving is past, Christmas music is now fair game, of which Christina has plenty of in her house. Admittedly, without mall Santa Clauses and television commercials galore, it doesn't exactly feel like Christmas is quickly approaching. But there is a rumor that there is a fake Christmas tree hibernating somewhere on the station and Christina is determined to find it.)
When I first arrived in Kapsowar about four months ago, there was a medical student Naomi and her computer whiz husband from Scotland. Luke spent a lot of time using his professional video camera to take shots of Kapsowar and the surrounding area. He also spruced up the Kapsowar Mission Hospital website (a far cry from the Geocities website I once found five years ago in med school). The newly revamped Kapsowar website can be found at:
There is another children's home about five miles down the dirt road from Kapsowar. The Nerkwo Children's Home is run by the Catholic Diocese of Eldoret. Sister Lucy, an Indian nun who came to Nerkwo three years ago, teaches at the local Catholic school and also serves as headmistresses of the Home. This Home, like Kapchesewes, also has a couple volunteers to act as "mother" and "father" to the children.
Like Kapchesewes, the children are all between preschool and Class 8. After that, they can continue no further until they find sponsors to help with the fees for high school. (Dr. Lee, one of the previous family practice missionaries at Kapsowar, currently sponsors three high schoolers.) Technically speaking, the Nerko children aren't orphans -- most have parents or close relatives. However, their family is unable to care for those children -- and so they are sent to Nerkwo.
All the children at Nerkwo are physically disabled in some fashion. All but a couple of the two dozen kids have normal mental faculties, but because of their crippling deformities and malformations, they are deemed "too difficult to care for at home." They are sent to Nerkwo, where they attend a public primary school just on the other side of the fence.
The majority of the children can walk despite their handicaps, albeit not easily. The missing legs and deformed arms are congenital, not acquired.
Many of the children could benefit from corrective surgery -- indeed, a handful of them have been sponsored to go to the CURE Hospital at Kijabe, where pediatric orthopaedic surgeons have helped some of them. However, many more still need surgery. Only for lack of funds do they stay put in Nerkwo, unable to make the five-hour journey to Kijabe and pay for surgery.
For instance, this boy, though he was born with only one leg, is able to ambulate with a single crutch.
However, he has a slowly growing and painful and bony spike coming from the end of his foreshortened leg. Unless this is corrected, a prosthesis can never be fitted.
Other children have relatively simple things to fix.
A trip to Kijabe could fix this boy of his relatively mild clubfoot deformity.
However, the majority of the chidlren ultimately have non-correctable deformities. But they are still children -- they learn, adapt, laugh and play.
This girl was born without feet and a clefted right hand. However, she still can tie her "elephant boot shoes" and, in fact, just finished her 8th grade exams and looks forward to going to high school.
This boy, despite not having hands or feet, has learned to write, eat, and do most things that other people can.
His penmanship, frankly, is better than mine.
Only a few of the children are truly wheelchair-bound. However, there aren't enough wheelchairs for all their children that need them. Currently, there's only two -- one used but functional wheelchair, and another makeshift wheelchair created by bolting a plastic chair to a metal frame with two wheels.
Unsurprisingly, the makeshift wheelchair breaks frequently.
Over the past couple months, I've had the privilege of going once or twice a week up to the Children's Home, visiting the kids and sipping chai with David and Rebekah. I try to being some small, usually edible gift to the kids -- always in multiples of 25, so as to be fair. Hershey's chocolate pieces, mangos, passionfruit, papaya -- the kids don't get much fruit, since they don't have any close-by fruit trees save oranges.
The children weigh heavily on my heart, as I know they do on Laura, one of the long-term missionaries. There are seven kids who just finished Class 8. Assuming they can find sponsors, they will leave the Children's Home to go to a boarding high school, returning to Kapchesewes only during the holidays. However, due to the lack of real beds and blankets, the Home cannot accept any new children, despite the overwhelming need.
All the children will stay a week after school lets out for Christmas break to care for the animals and weed the garden. However, most of the children still have some distant relatives who they can visit for a few weeks at a time during school break. Only a handful of the kids have truly nobody -- these brave souls will stay at the Home for the month-long holiday, until all the children return to again to their Home under the shadow of the mountain.
