Hospital Rant

The past couple weeks I have spent a lot of time at the Kenyatta National Hospital. It is suppose to be the best national hospital in all of Eastern African: patients come from 4 different countries to be treated at this hospital. Kind of like the Cleveland Clinic…except they cannot be compared in any ways! This hospital is absolutely shocking, from the aesthetics of it, to the functioning aspects. The rooms are huge wards with 10-12 beds (some even have people on the floor because they are out of beds), no color on the walls and absolutely no TV’s for patients to get their minds off their situations. One of the patients I visited had dried blood on his gown and his sheets, 2 days in a row- I’m hoping it was his. The most horrific thing I saw was in the hallway of the hospital. When I was turning the corner from the stairs I saw fairly large spots of fresh blood puddled on the floor. At first I made myself believe it couldn’t be blood, but after getting a good look at it, I could confirm it was blood, and a lot of it (see picture). When I went to leave the hall 45 minutes late the blood was still there, nobody had come to clean it up. I could not believe that especially in a place where blood transmits disease so rapidly nobody would be rushing to clean it up. Sanitation would be a concern for me if I were a patient there.
And obviously, before I shared the problem that the hospital had run out of basic nutritional needs for the patients for over a week. When we went to inquire about the medicine Samuel, our patient needed, the matron nurse on the floor didn’t even know they were out of it- so she obviously was not keeping up with our patients condition in the past week. When I voiced my concern that the kid would fail to heal if he didn’t have proper nutrients she was surprised I knew that and asked if I had medical background. I had to laugh and say, no, in fact I know very little, but I do know that much! Another disturbing event was when I was speaking with the doctor (as handsome as he was) in the middle of the hallway and he continued to fill syringes with unidentified liquids and casually hand them off to nurses. Yikes.

Needless to say, I was brainstorming a way to get little Samuel out of this place- but it is the “best” hospital so nobody would go for that. So where is the problem among all this craziness? I am going to suggest the government, since they run the hospital. They pay their doctors and nurses significantly less than deserved, which doesn’t make them work very hard and they do not provide the hospital with the proper medical needs for the patients. It is a very sad sight to see the leading national hospital in such a state. I have to remind myself that Kenya is only 40 years old and we had similar cases when we were a young country as well. But I also want to believe that we can guide these younger countries so they don’t make the same mistakes and have the same problems that we had and have since overcome.

On a better note, Samuel is doing better than before. He is receiving the proper nutrients he needs and went in for another surgery on Tuesday to hopefully close the leak in his intestine. After that leak is fixed he should be well on his way to recovery- I hope. This week, time was not in my favor and I did not have a chance to visit him after the surgery to check the progress, but I haven’t received a call either, which is good news! Hopefully late next week I can confirm his progress. Please keep him in your prayers, as he is just very sad and in a lot of pain. We took him some story books to read and he loved them, he is a bright boy. His uncle was reading them to him and he was drawing pictures on the back cover as we left. We also took him cards that his classmates made for him which brightened his day a bit to see that they remember him.

the 2 month mark

This landmark is much different than my 1 month mark for a variety of reasons. I have seen and been though a lot, but now I can truly say I am in love with it here! I am a living testimony that God is faithful to those that trust in him. If I had lost faith in the beginning when it was hard I would not be able to say I love Kenya: the people, culture, the work I am doing, the children, and especially the slum. Everyday that I leave the slum I am usually overwhelmed, frustrated and confused at what I experienced, but everyday that I leave I am so thankful to have been there even though I may not have all the answers. Even in the middle of absolute shock and despair I see hope and I am so grateful to be a part of it. The situations that I am encountering are unlike anything most people will encounter, I am aware of that. But I am also aware that part of my mission here is to expose it to the world and not let it continue in the silence that so much of it is right now.

I love seeing that kids are kids, no matter where you are. These kids just want to play and go to recess like all kids, but the difference is they have to make play a little differently. They use rocks and trash to play with, and are just as joyful as the kids who have toys overflowing from every room. I love seeing that mothers are mothers no matter where you are, always wanting the best for their children. The only difference here is that so many of the mothers I encounter are not educated enough and usually don’t have the resources to help their children. I love seeing high school students study harder than I ever did in my life, with only a far off dream of attending college one day and making a better life.I love seeing the kindness and generosity of people, even when they have nearly nothing to offer me. I am always being welcomed into different homes and offered the little tea or food they can muster up. I love seeing the hope in the eyes of the people I meet, holding onto the idea that they will one day have a better life.

Our lives are so precious and short, and I have really been shown the many blessings that I have in my life in the past 2 months. I consider being here to be one of the bigger blessings in my life, and I am thankful to everyone that has made it possible for me. I have grown in ways I never could have imagined, and my mind has been opened to a world that will be with me forever. I am changed for good, and changed for the better. But it isn't over yet, I am sure there is much more for me to learn this next month, and the months after that.

This weekend the family comes! I am so excited to finally be able to share this beautiful country with them first hand. Sometimes I have such a hard time putting into words what it is like, so hopefully with their first hand encounter they can help me share it with everyone.

I hope ya'll are enjoying the beauty of the fall weather in the good old US of A... oh what I would do for a cup of hot apple cider mmmmm
I love and miss you all, keep me posted on your exciting lives!

Hakuna Magi (No Water)

“Nearly half a million people without water”

If this were the case in the US, people would be working around the clock to get the water back for those people, at most in a couple of days. In the slums of Mathare, nobody seems to notice the half a million people without water. For the past 4 weeks the slum has had no water. None. And did anyone take a notice? Nope. The Chinese are rebuilding a road a mile from the slum and they must have broken a pipe along the way, but didn’t care to fix it quickly (should I mention they are paying their Kenyan laborers less than 50cents a work day for had manual labor?) So the people of Mathare were forced to travel up to 2 miles outside of the slum to purchase water for their daily living. They would carry large 10 litre gerry cans to fill with the water. The people selling the water were making a fortune, selling it at over 4 times the normal price- which was a nickel for 10 litre. This price increase makes a huge difference for the family of 6 living on $1 a day and spending 30% of that on water to supply their basic needs of cleaning and washing. Our school alone has had to spend over $100 purchasing water just to cook with. I’ll let you imagine what the bathrooms smell like with no water for 4 weeks.

So my question is, how can people get away with this? The answer: Corruption. From beginning to end: the people working on the road, the government, the water providers, everyone is feeding into corruption in order to make more money. The people of Mathare don’t have much hope for the future either. They told me that for the past 6 months when they started working on the road their water supply has not been consistent. And the project is estimated to take 2 years, so the residents are expecting their water supply to come and go for the next 2 years. What a way to live. It makes my bucket shower seem like heaven!

desperate plea...

This weekend we went to visit one of our 10yr old students named Samuel in the hospital. He was admitted in the middle of September and had 4 stomach surgeries. Our social worker went to visit him shortly after and he was in stable condition but very weak. We decided to go back this weekend because we hadn’t heard anything about it. When we arrived we were more than shocked at how his condition had worsened. His knees were pulled up to his chest and he was crying when we walked into room and told us he was so hungry. His uncle followed us into the room and showed us his chart and how he hasn’t been given any nutrients in 1 week. He said the hospital has run out of all forms of IV: fats, sugars and proteins so for the past week so he has only been given water. He looked so frail I didn’t want to touch him. His stomach wound is still open 6 inches and the doctors are worried since it is not healing. I know nothing about medicine but I know he needs nutrients in order for the wound to heal, but he is basically laying in bed slowly dying since they are only giving him water. I don’t understand how a government hospital could completely run out of such a basic nutrient. Samuel has a wonderful uncle who has not left his side at all, but he has a drunk father who doesn’t do much and his mother died. They have no money and our worry was that they knew Samuel’s family situation and that he would not be able to pay the bills so they won’t give him the proper nutrients he needs.

We left on Sunday completely in turmoil about what to do for poor Samuel, not only is he hungry and in pain, but he is bored in bed all day. We decided to come back Monday with books for him to read and hopefully speak with the doctors. He absolutely loved the books and took the pens we brought and started drawing pictures on the back cover. He is an excellent artist. When we met with the nutritionalist she wasn’t even aware he was not being given the food. Neglect. It turns out in the morning they put him on sugar water, so that is better than nothing but when we expressed our deep concern for his wound she agreed and said he needs to be on something more, but they really don’t have anything in stock. Finally she said she can borrow some of the liquid fats from another patient to give him for the time being.

When I asked how we can get the proper nutrients for him she said it is possible to purchase it ourselves and have the hospital give it to him. It costs nearly 3 times more than having the hospital purchase it, but it seems like the only option right now, if we want to save his life. It is absolutely shocking and appalling to me that the hospital cannot provide for Samuel, but it is yet another opportunity for the community to come together and support this child. He is bright and so young and we are desperate to find him help.

Sooo my desperate plea is for you. Please take a moment and consider if you are able to give any type of donation for Samuel. No donation is too small and it will go DIRECTLY to his medicine and healing in the hospital. We are not sure the final costs of this because more operations and surgery is expected, but his family has nothing so it is up to the community to help him. To give you an idea, the fats we put him on today costs $40 and they should last at least a week and will give him much more energy, but that is only ¼ of what he should be taking.

If you are able to donate and help Samuel, please mail a check made out to CHANGE LIVES NOW ASAP to

Jan/Forrest Pommereke CO/ CHANGE LIVES NOW
320 English Oak Rd
Simpsonville, Sc 29681

thank you thank you.

The Loaves and the Fishes

I have been at this Children’s home for 1 month now, and I have seen a HUGE transformation. It is very exciting. When I first came here they were struggling to feed the children each day, and were living off of the donations that were coming in one day to the next. The orphanage (for 140 kids) and the school (for 1000 students) literally runs on $5,000 USD a month. If you break that down to pay about 40 teachers and 10 staff members salaries and water/electricity bills for the 2 buildings there is nearly no money left over for anything. Yet, the children need to eat in order to pay attention at school. The school has been having huge problems on Monday’s because the children from the slum are not eating over the weekend and they are fainting by the time they get to school on Monday.

With this problem, they decided the most important thing that needs to be done is to secure additional money to feed every child every day. With many hours of work and dedication from a volunteer here in Kenya they did in fact secure enough money to begin a feeding program at the school that will feed every child every day of the year—including Saturday and Sunday and all holiday’s. It is a beautiful thing. Last week we started the program and it has been an incredible success. The first day we were worried because the school did run out of food before all the high schoolers were fed, but it was just a small glitch and we learned how many KG’s of beans and corn we needed to add for the following day. The students were a bit cautious the first 2 days about this program because they could no longer leave the school compound and roam the streets of the slum. But this week the students are racing to line up for lunch, excited to have a meal. They were pleasantly surprised to also find a variety in the diet: meat once a week and fruit once a week, rather than rice and beans everyday. This is seriously heaven on earth for them, truly a blessing! It is such a joy to watch these kids get lunch, which will sustain them and help them to learn more rather than fainting in class. In addition, research has shown that children participate in risk taking and unhealthy behaviors when they are deprived of food, so now that the children are eating and are not roaming the slums they will be given a brighter future. The attendance in just 2 weeks has increased a substantial amount as well- it's not just poor college students that love free food! Soo exciting!

2 days before the feeding program started we had a huge donation of food to the children’s home. When I say huge, I mean over 5000kg of beans donated from a local organization. I have no idea how they found out about us, but they were happy to help, and we were happy to accept. When they found out how needy we were and how grateful we were for their donations they said they wanted to do more. The most immediate thing they wanted to do was to cook a delicious meal for the entire school and church community on Sunday. I still don’t understand the whole situation, but we wouldn’t turn that down of course, so on Sunday they hired a caterer and made some of the best Kenyan dishes, including my favorite- Chapati, for not only the kids, but also the families in the community. We had a huge party all day with dancing, singing and food. Lot’s of food! I helped to serve the food and the line just kept coming. After 2 hours of serving food we estimated 1,500 people came to eat! When everyone had gone through the line once there was still some rice left and I foolishly thought, “oh leftovers for tomorrow, great” but before I could finish that thought the children were knocking me over to get to the rice, and the bowl was scraped clean in minutes.

The Lord is good and provides for his people! It is so easy to become overwhelmed by the problems encountering here but then beautiful people are sent to assist and give us hope to continue. The fact that these children can now eat and study is a huge burden lifted from everyone working on these projects and we can now go to the next issue. So, one step at a time we are making progress and improving the future of these kids.
As they say in the churches here…
God is good, all the time.
And all the time, God is good!

Football Frenzy

Some of you might know, but I am typically one of the least competetive you would meet. I think it has something to do with never having played formal contact sports, or being a middle child, I'm not really sure. Anyway, I have had many opportunities over here to become more competitive, and poly-poly (slowly) I might be making progress!

Last week there was a sports day at school and I was excited to have a day off and hang out (note hang out-- not play sports!) with the kids. We ventured over to a nearby dusty field where at first all 1000 students ran around in complete choas. It is amazing to me in general, in Kenya, how little control teachers take once they are outside of the classroom. Nobody was organizing the games or the students for a solid hour. At one point I tried to, but nobody listens to me, they just laugh at me when I speak! But at last, a huge football tournament began, one class against another, split boys and girls. It was so exciting because Africans LOVE their football, the world cup excitement is still here. They are so competetive and give the game everything they have. I really enjoyed watching it. All day the students and teachers kept asking me to join the teachers team to play the winning high school boys team. Little did they know, I haven't played football since I was in kindergarten, and I'm sure my best position was picking flowers on the field. I knew I would have absolutely nothing to offer the team, but after a while I agreed to play quidogo (a little bit). I only played the second half, thankfully, but I kept hearing the DJ say something about the Mzungu (that's me!). When I asked the kids what he was saying they just laughed and laughed. Finally I found out he was telling the high school boys on the field to take it easy on me because I don't know how to play with Africans! It's true, and they were quite easy on me. I am proud to say we were victorious over the highschoolers, but I cannot claim that I did much to help... or even touch the ball! Everyone tried to make me feel better about myself by saying "you can run though, you are in good shape!"

This past weekend I went to a Kenya vs Uganda National football game! I was so nervous to go to it because I had heard about all kinds of riots and fights that happen at African football games since the fans are so invested in their teams, but again the guys I was going with insisted I would be fine and would take care of me. And I was in fact totally fine! It was a blast, there were 30,000 fans packed into the stadium sitting on any object available- steps, signs, towers etc. There was a small section of Ugandans that travelled over night to get the match as well. As soon as we walked into the stadium we joined a procession of cheering and dancing fans around the field (again, I'm the only white person, which always attracts people to gawk, I was also wearing a friend's jersery and it had his tribal name on it so I got many comments about being in that family!) the energy in the stadium was insane from one end to the other! I think the wave passed through the entire stadium 10 times in a row as soon as we got to our seats. The game was so much fun, I loved seeing everyone so united and invested in their national team. The only dissapointment was it ended in a draw with no score. However, I think the Ugandan's thought they won because they were celebrating all over. There were no riots though, I learned those are only for the club teams since tribal clashes are involved- that's a whole different problem.

I really love the spirit they have when they play and watch football, it is such a time of enjoyment and relaxation for them. Who knows, maybe I'll become more competetive after all this football craziness. It sure is a blast.

Spirit of St. Francis

Happy Feast of St. Francis! In the spirit of the poor, here is a taste of what I see, and some begging...

I am continuously blown away by the way the people in the slum live, it is absolutely shocking to imagine living this way. The average house that I go into is a 10ft by 10 ft room. There is usually 1 twin bed with a sheet hanging to separate it from the rest of the room where a small charcoal stove burns, 2 wooden chairs and a table sit. In the corner of the room are pots and buckets piled up for washing clothes. There is barely enough space for the mom, student and 2 of us interviewing the family to sit. With that little space, the average family living in one of these houses is 8 people. 8 people sharing a 10 by 10- shocking. The children never have a bed to sleep on, let alone sheets or a blanket to use. I usually leave the house wondering WHERE does everyone sleep, there cannot possibly be enough space for 8 people to sleep. It’s still a mystery. I am sure at least 3-4 people share the twin bed though. The house is made of tin sheets ( or mud) with a tin roof and dirt floors. All the tin makes the house incredibly hot when the sun is out, and it also blocks all the light making it very dark. There is no electricity, so a candle can be found on the table for at night (imagine doing homework by candle night each day…) There is no running water so the mother has go buy 10 liters for about a nickel each day (but it is probably not clean and shouldn’t even be consumed). The average cost of rent for the family is $12-15 USD a month, but the average daily wage of the mother or father is 50cent- $1 so paying rent is a struggle, on top of having enough food to feed 8 people. Most families will eat 1, maybe 2 meals a day consisting of ground and boiled corn meal called Ugali. Luckily, the school has just implemented a feeding program that will feed every student 1 meal a day, including Saturday and Sunday and all Holiday’s so the children are guaranteed a meal now. These are the people you hear about living on $1 a day, and it still baffles me as to how they do it and survive. Family is very important and they all help their families whenever they have extra food, money or space for living.

With that being said I am super excited for my family to come over and visit in a month! Bridget comes in from Luxembourg and Mom and Dad from the states on October 30th. We will have a week together, and I am planning all the things and places I want them see-- including the slums to get a better picture of it. Since they are coming over I thought it would be a great opportunity for them to bring donations for the children and students here. I know in my house we have tons items that we need to get rid of and donate so I am requesting that they pack a 50lb suitcase full of donations for the school and orphanage. If you are in the Hudson or Pittsburgh area and would like to donate any items I would be very grateful, and the kids would be too. You can drop them off at our house or give them to my parents sometime before they leave, the earlier the better.
Some of the items we need are the following-- (anything is helpful that you have!)

- School Supplies (there are 1000 students at school, supplies go quickly)- pens, pencils, erasers, staples, calculator, math tools: protractors, ruler, compos etc. notebooks, folders, file folders

- Clothes of any kind- boys and girls, ages 2 though 20 yrs. (funny story: i saw a girl at school wearing a Harry Potter Festival shirt, and it was from Peninsula, Oh-- the town next to Hudson, pretty crazy!)

- White cotton socks girls can wear with school uniform (tall socks, not ankle)

- Underwear/socks for all kids

- Black shoes for school- girls and boys

- Sheets, to give to families in hope the children will use them to sleep when they dont have mattress/blankets

Asante Sana (Thank you so much!)