Sunday - Relaxing and Hopital Tour

Not much happened on Sunday, pretty much the same as Saturday. We all got up pretty early because we were told that a doctor from the hospital was supposed to be coming to explain some rules of the hospital at 9:00 am, but it turned out that he wasn’t coming so the plans changed and we were then going to go do our “hospital orientation” that evening. So since we had the rest of the day free a few of us went back to sleep for a while since we had been out pretty late the night before and when we all finally woke up we decided to go back to the beach. The sun was shining and it was really warm. When we got down to the beach, the tide was out so there wasn’t much sandy bottom in the water. It was mostly seaweed, so we spread our towels out and lay in the soft sand. The beach here has absolutely the softest and whitest sand I have ever seen or felt. Eventually the tide came back up a ways and we tested out the water. Mombasa lies on the Indian Ocean and it’s very salty but also very warm. 

Trying to make a pyramid on the beach

Racing the local kids

Around 5:00 pm we were all getting hungry for supper so we headed back to the compound. On our way back we spotted this monkey hanging out on the wall of someone’s yard. If you open up the picture to view it big and look really closely to the right of the monkey back in the tree you will see here baby! It was the cutest thing ever! 

Monkey on the way back from the beach (look for the baby)

We got back to the compound and dinner was a local dish that consisted of a homemade tortilla with white rice and a beefy sauce to put over it with cooked onions and peppers. It was delicious. Around 8:30 pm we all headed to the hospital to take our tour. After surviving the mildly dangerous drive through Mombasa traffic, we arrived at Costal Province General Hospital and I was absolutely speechless. We had to wait for the other two cars behind us to arrive so that the whole group was there when we started. As we waited a man was rolled our of the hospital from the ER region on a gurney (if you can call it that) with a broken leg, a bandage on his head and blood all over his clothes and they were trying to get him in a car to go home. As they wheeled him out blood was still dripping off him and the gurney all over the floor. It was shocking enough to know that he was leaving the hospital still bleeding, but it was even worse to find out that no one ever cleaned it up. When the rest of the group arrived we started our mini tour of the hospital with Dr. Abdul. He recommended that we split up into groups of four or five and rotate through the different wards of the hospital. He showed us where Minor Theater and Casualty (ER), Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Maternity, and the Main Theater (OR) were located. It was hard to get pictures of the hospital in the dark but I will upload pictures as I get them of the hospital. In general, imagine the most primitive hospital you possibly can and then subtract about twenty years of advancements and you’ll be pretty close to this one. The whole hospital is open. Most of the hallways are located outdoors and all of the wards have the windows all completely open since there is absolutely no air conditioning. Because the windows are open there are mosquitoes everywhere and all the patients have to have mosquito nets over their beds. There are quite a few stray cats and dogs that live around the hospital and because everything is so open, they are apparently frequently found inside the wards. As we walked through the pediatric unit, we passed an open crib with a cat sleeping in it. The one thing I can’t yet seem to put into words is the smells. As I spend more time there I will attempt to describe them, but just know, it’s like nothing I have ever smelt before, and I wouldn’t miss it if I never smelt it again. After our tour around the hospital, we all headed back to the compound and for the first night since we got here we all headed to bed pretty early since we knew we would have an early morning at the hospital the next day.