Day 0 - Arrived in Kenya and getting settled

I was lying in bed, a totally new bed to me because I’ve arrived in Kenya, and couldn’t fall asleep. Mosquito net overhead and sweat beading up on my neck and back. (The AC hasn’t fully kicked in yet and it is something like 12,000 degrees outside. Not sure of the conversion to/from F to C but I'm sure it is about 12,000 either way.) I’m fairly certain it is about 1 AM currently here, but I’m wide awake. Jet lag is no fun. (Flying to the east is so much more difficult than flying to the west, and the journey home hopefully won’t have the same effects.)

Flying over the Alps

This whole thing started on Friday morning when my parents so graciously drove me to the airport. Honesty moment… I think they were a little bothered by the idea of driving to Miami from Gainesville to drop me off when I first told them but I don’t think they would have it any other way. I mean they watched as I cleared security in Miami (see also “slow as molasses in January”). So I can only imagine that they would really like the idea of saying good bye as I drove my own self down to Miami much less.

I'm totally the loser who was taking pictures of inside the plane.

And thus began my 27 hours (or roughly 2 days) of travel, depending on how easily you can wrap your head around the idea of time travel. There was some sitting around in Miami because you have to show up waaayyy early for international flights, not 1 but 2 8.5 hour flights, and then a little puddle jumper flight once I got to Kenya from Nairobi to Mombasa. Really at that point, I don’t know that adding an extra hour of flight onto the tally is much in the grand scheme of things. With all of that traveling, I didn’t think it was  all that bad which tells me 2 things.

1.       Medical school has really upped my tolerance for horribly long and miserable ordeals

2.       27 hours of travel sucks, but it all got done with no missed flights, no delayed flights, and no lost luggage. I’m going to call it a win even if it means I’ll put together a blog entry at 1 AM before actually going to sleep.

The living room

So despite the prolonged travel, I’m now here. Laying in a truly quiet house, the kind of quiet that makes me re-examine the fact that I call my apartment in Pensacola quiet. The only sounds I hear are the AC humming quietly and a sprinkler in the front yard. With that, I’m going to give sleeping another shot.

My bed complete with mosquito netting

New day, or well same day just several hours of sleep later.  It is now morning on Sunday 3/25/12; a fact that took me a good 5 minutes to figure out last night on the way to the house from the airport. I couldn’t figure out if it was going to be Sunday or Monday morning today. Got it figured out and feel like a complete fool for having struggled with that. I think the fatigue of travel plus the utter confusion that comes with traveling through so many time zones really set me up.

Monkeys!!! (Right on the wall around the house)

I am now rested, showered, mosquito repellant-ed and fed. No complaints. The house which seemed absolutely lovely last night in the darkness has proven to be everything I expected. The accommodations are simple and perfect. Call me weird but I think there is something almost magical about sleeping under a mosquito net (and not just the part about not getting malaria). I have now wandered around the house and met the monkeys that apparently come by the house each morning! Not an interesting thing to locals but incredibly cool to me. There were lots of them, too. Probably about 20 and several of them were babies.

And baby monkeys!!!

Today is slated for orientation to the program. I am to walk about the local area to see where the market and beaches are; kind of get my barings. Plus, get set up technologically which means I’ll be getting  a local phone that can make international calls (Yes, Mom that means I can actually call you.) and a modem so I can start posting my writings and my pictures to the internet. I also learned that I will be headed for my safari at Masai Mara on an extended weekend on April 13^th. Super pumped!

Rooster - that actually kept quiet this AM

Tomorrow I get to start at the hospital. I’m excited and nervous about it all. I want a taste of what medicine is like here in Kenya so I am going to split my time between a few different areas; general medicine, maternity wards, and the emergency department (which kind of sounds like it is combined with surgery here). I am really looking forward to getting to see all of these different areas of medicine and how they are similar and different from how things are in the US.