Picture Perfect

Today was our 2nd day in the community and I have SO many great pictures! We went to 2 different schools and the children were so precious! We brought a slinky and they were all amazed. They loved playing with us and the mothers loved posing for our pictures. I have never seen mothers care for their children the way they do. It's so laid back but so so loving. The children are very young but really take care of themselves. They're calm and collected, when they fall down they get right back up. They raise their children to be strong people, which you can see from how strong the mothers are.

In the 2nd school we went to the environment was completely different. The walk there was filled with huge piles of cow poo, flies and bugs swarming, animals wandering through the yard and walkways. And unsurprisingly almost every child was ill. They were all anemic, all of them had worms, and the majority of them had pretty severe colds. The children had rags safety pinned to their shirts because their noses were continuously running.
These kids were the happiest kids though. We played for so long. One little girl kept holding my hand and showing me all around. She loved my earrings and treated me like I was her show and tell :) There was also a new born baby there and it was SO tiny and adorable! Today we had another doctor in training named Lucy join us. She's a med student from New Zealand. She was really good with the kids and she showed us how to check vitals and filled us in on what she was finding in the children.

After that we came back and did more mapping for the tuberculosis research. We all got together after we ate and shared pictures and talked with the group from the hospital about what they had done. Today they watched 3 major surgeries! Hearing about it made me lose my appetite.

We all hung out for a while in the boys room and began collaborating on what we wanted out of the trip and what our expectations of the staff and of our own research was. We all came to the conclusion that the trip was not what we were anticipating. So we compiled a list of the things we wanted clarification on and things that we wanted out of the experience. Once Heather and her mother came back from the market we all sat down and talked for several hours about how to meet these standards and what things needed to change. I think it went really well and we now have a better understanding of how to best manage our time for work while also enjoying the environment and the country itself.

Enjoy my adorable pictures!