Today was mobile testing day and we headed into the neighbouring town of Kitengela. It was another hot and sunny day, but we were able to get over 40 people at last count. I was asked by one man if I was married (I lied and said yes to put an end to the conversation) and Milanne was asked by another man if he would marry her. If they ask us who our husband is, we all point to Josh... somedays, he has up to 5 wives. Justine wears a decoy ring on her finger and we're all thinking of following her lead.
I spent a good part of the afternoon chatting with some business men who were sitting on a bench under a tree. It was their office, one man told me. They are in the construction business and supply materials. They sit there all day and people just know they are there. There is one cell phone for the 6 or 7 men and customers call if they need anything. A bit of a different corporate culture than I'm used to.
Milanne and I kept chatting with them and that's when we got another type of proposal. They asked us if we would like to have a piece of land in Kenya and build a house so we could move to Kenya and become permanent residents. I jokingly said that I would only if they made sure it had A/C... they didn't get the sarcasm and proceeded to tell me how common air conditioning is in their homes (not that I've had the pleasure of seeing this yet). When we said we would miss our families too much, they said they could fly back and forth to visit us because it's not that far. This is when I asked them how long they thought it took us to get to Kenya from Canada. The man next to me said 3 hours, and I wondered if he had even been on a plane or looked at a map. When I told him it was more like 20 hours of flying on 3 different planes, I think he understood that visits are a little challenging. Their last attempt involved going on about how Obama is from Kenya and he is supposed to visit this year. Not much of an argument when we live an hour away from the US border, and also... don't really care.
After our entertaining conversation wrapped up, Milanne, Debra, and I headed over to Kitengela Medical Services to visit Lynda. She's a 19 year-old girl youth from the centre and had a baby boy on the 16th named Cedric.
The night before she delivered him, Josh got the call that she was having contractions. She went to a clinic in Mlolongo and the man there said there was nothing to worry about since her water hadn't broken yet and he sent her back home. So Josh, Katie, and Evayo (from the youth centre) took her and her sister Karen to Kitengela where actual doctors work. Nothing much happened that night and it wasn't likely that she was going to deliver anytime soon. She spent the night there and Josh, Katie, and Debra headed back the next day. This is when all the fun started...
From what I've been told, it was a stressful and confusing day. Lynda was about 6 or 7 centimetres dilated by late afternoon when the doctor approached Katie and the others to suggest that she needed a C-section. No one was allowed in the room to see her at this point and since Katie was the one closest to Lynda, it ended up being her in charge of making the decision. They had already paid the regular fees for Lynda to deliver at the hospital, but the cesarean they said was necessary was going to be 30,000 KES (about $400 Canadian). Cash only hospital.
At this point, there was no way of knowing if she really needed the C-section or not. They may have just been saying it to get the money from the Muzungu who were with this girl at the hospital. It's been proven to us many times here that white person = money, and some will try to take full advantage in order to fill their own pockets. We also have no idea if the C-section really cost 30,000 KES - but it was decided it wasn't a decision worth risking, even if they were being duped.
Since no one had that kind of cash on them, Katie and Josh had to trek from the medical centre which is down a dirt road, about 30 minutes away from Kitengela's centre, to find an ATM to take out the cash. Obviously an expense none of us expected or budgeted for. Fortunately, Katie's mom is helping out, as well as one of her co-workers, and Josh's parents.
I'm glad I wasn't there that evening from some of the stories Deb recounted. She said that night made her more grateful than ever to have been born in Canada... and to have delivered her children at a hospital in Canada. Lynda's supposed to get out of the hospital tomorrow and will be staying with us for the next little while. So looks like we'll have a little mtoto living with us for a couple weeks.
Deb, Milanne, Katie, Justine, and I are headed to Hell's Gate tomorrow for a night. We'll be doing a cycling trek through the national park up to the gorge where we'll hike through. It's going to be an exhausting day because we're heading back Sunday night because Justine starts a job in Nairobi on Monday. She's the English teacher for 3 kids of a wealthy French family who have been living in Nairobi for a couple years.
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