It’s just madness that I have been living and volunteering here for 3 months now! It’s flown by... But at the same time it’s gone really slowly. Something that I’ve found is how tired I get in the evenings, even though I’m in bed relatively early and don’t need to be up until 8.30am if I fancy being a bit lazy. After a fair bit of thinking about it – I have a lot of time to do this in the evenings here: I’ve come to realise it’s because of how emotionally draining the work is that I do here... However, I wouldn’t change this experience for the world!
I’ve been back to work for 2 weeks now after 2 weeks of holidaying/travelling. Things are picking up in pace now that the introduction period is over. I was beginning to feel frustrated that I’d been here for a few weeks and hadn’t run any training workshops as that’s one of the main targets for being here. However, it has definitely been an invaluable period of building working relationships, trust between me and teachers and parents and being able to plan an effective training/work programme to meet the community’s needs. I think people are getting used to the bossy ‘mzungu’ bumbling into their workplace telling them how they need to change things, and parents are actually booking, that’s right booking appointments to see us now! Amazing!!
We’ve decided that the EARC in Vihiga isn’t the best place for us to be based all the time. People just aren’t coming. It’s in a fairly remote location which makes travel really expensive for the average person we see there. So we’re now in the process of setting up a clinic at Vihiga District Hospital in Mbale. Again, a slow process. Although people are welcoming and receptive to the talk of training opportunities and running clinics, they are slow to take it on board and actually help us set it up. I don’t think this is anything to do with this being Africa and we’re working on ‘African Time’, because it’s happening really quick for Jon (SLT volunteer) at the hospital in Kisumu. I think it’s because, again Mbale is a small place and it just takes time for people there to accept newbies and new ways of thinking/working.
However, we’ve been there at least once a week for the past 3 and it’s been really interesting. We’re basing ourselves within the O.T. clinic because we already have a link there and are able to see the children that already attend. I’ve officially fallen in love with a child I work with. He’s just too cute – I keep wondering if his mum would notice if I ‘stole’ him... hehe. He’s called Breik and has Downs Syndrome and is a joy to work with, as is his Mum. I would love it if all the mums I worked with here were as receptive to the advice and information provided as she is. What is frustrating though is that ‘Mama Breik’ was told that her child had Downs Syndrome and that was it. No further advice given! So she has spent the past 2.5years coping without knowing any of what can be done with Breik to support any aspect of his development.
The clinic has more of a variety of children attending then I’ve been seeing at the EARC – meaning it’s not just Cerebral Palsy cases!! What surprises me is how much I am getting used to seeing patients with conditions/disabilities that are far more severe than those I have worked with at home. It’s becoming ‘normal’ to meet children of 10years who have severe CP and have never had any input. All because the mother lives in a remote village and didn’t know there were services out there to support her and her child.
I can also ‘cope’ far more than I ever thought I would be able to when I see a child with half of their face burnt off due to falling into the open cooking fire at home...
This week is the start of our training programme. We are going into all of the schools we have introduced ourselves in and are running 2 hour workshops for the staff of the school, and for the schools in the surrounding areas to give the basics of what it is we actually do. As a result of these workshops we are hoping to pick up themes that people would like to have further training in, e.g. Autism, language impairment or facilitating a student’s learning within a classroom. We went to Womalalu Special School on Monday, and considering it was a Monday morning, and the teachers had all been on strike the previous week I was impressed with the turnout of 15 teachers. Teachers were on strike because they wanted the government to change its policy on how they employ teachers. Basically there aren’t enough of them and the government has been promising to employ more, and of course hasn’t been. Plus, when they are employed they are employed on contract which means that they can be sacked at any time without notice. Something that happens quite frequently here – if the children aren’t performing in their assessments, often the teachers are sacked. Not entirely fair when they have on average of 40-60 pupils in their class...!!
The training went well and we received some positive feedback. However, the teachers weren’t very forthcoming with questions and ideas. This was frustrating because I kept reiterating that this is their opportunity to ask anything about speech and language therapy that they wanted. I later found out that the reason they were so quiet is because they were intimidated by the white lady (me) running the course!! Madness. So we’re going to adapt the training in a way that tries to make it less intimidating to have me as the facilitator...
I was really excited today, a mother heard there were speech therapists at the EARC and came with her 7 year old daughter for advice. Marion has the most severe cleft palate I have ever seen – even from pictures! The fistula is HUGE!! She had cleft lip and palate when she was born and at 4months her lip was repaired. I have no idea why further surgery was not offered to her. As a result of the fistula Marion chokes on pretty much everything she eats and drinks, and often has food coming out of her nose. Her mother reports that Marion’s teacher does not want her in the classroom and feels a special needs unit would be best for her. Marion is completely age appropriate in everything, except speech, which is understandable. I couldn’t believe it when mum told me this. Yet more prejudice on show here for someone who is vaguely ‘different’.
Anyhoos, not all doom and gloom. The specialist team were at the hospital in Kisumu today so Marion went there on our referral. Mum is concerned that she won’t be able to afford the surgery (in fact, I know this is definitely the case..) however, before I came to Kenya I did some fundraising for projects out here, including offering to sponser a couple of cleft lip/palate repairs, so because of the generosity of all my friends and family, I am able to afford to pay for Marion’s surgery!! I’m meeting with her mum again on Thursday to discuss what the specialists said today... Fingers crossed...
