Day 5 - Chest tubes and giraffes and crocodiles! Oh my!

I’m getting used to the rounds here. Intermittently being able to understand what is going on between conversations with the patients in Swahili. I also think I’m getting better at recognizing the speech patterns and body language because I get the feeling that I know what the conversation is about often because I have had the same conversation myself with patients in English. Like when Dr. Hussein was counseling a patient with angina following an MI, he mentioned not smoking, exercising, and sticking to a healthy diet. I picked up on this through some pantomime and just being able to anticipate the counsel being given.

I also helped insert a chest tube into a patient whose left lung had collapsed for some reason that is unknown to us (maybe TB, maybe something else but the patient doesn’t have money for investigative testing). It really is a sad story because he had a chest tube placed earlier this week and during transport back to the ward, whether it was poorly secured or just jostled out, came out before he made it to the hospital ward.  He then sat in the ward for 2 days without a chest tube while the consultant insisted that we just reinsert the same chest tube that had come out (unsanitary to say the very least) while Dr. Hussein fought back saying there was no way he was putting the same tube back in, and we tried to find another chest tube within the hospital. Today, we found one. Therefore, we took him to the “minor theater” (what they call the operating rooms – the major and minor theaters for larger and smaller cases respectively) to reinsert the chest tube after rounds.

I found the procedure a bit frustrating because the technique that Dr. Hussein used was pretty different than what I have seen and done in the US. I think the language barrier (Dr. Hussein trying to explain his technique to me and me trying to explain what I was used to him) and heat in the minor theater (no AC, no windows… AKA crazy hot) made it more so as Dr. Hussein was pretty abrupt in the way he spoke to me. However, I do now have another chest tube under my belt and a new technique to pick and choose from when it comes time to do them myself. So, I think it was well worth it.

After I got home, I got a call from Gaurav. We made plans to go to Haller Park. (Sid couldn’t go because he was scheduled to have a colonoscopy. Sucks to be him!) It is a park here in Nyali with lots of animals some loose and roaming free, other in enclosures. This was by far the coolest thing I have gotten to do so far while in Kenya! And I got tons of pictures – only a few choice ones of which I’m including on this blog. Make sure to check for pictures on Facebook when I get back and have a faster internet connection to upload pictures with.

Gaurav by one of the biggest palm trees I've ever seen

The park itself is beautiful with lots of trees and little ponds.  Once we walked in through some beautiful gardens and got to the reception desk, we were assigned a guide who would take us to the all the animals and tell us about them as we walked. One of the first things we did was head over to the giraffe enclosure because it was feeding time. (I am learning that they cluster feeding times around the time that people usually get off of work to try and get them to come into these attractions. Not sure that it works as the majority of people in the park were foreigners, but oh well.) Here we got to hand food pellets to the giraffes, and they took them from our hands rather gingerly with their long black tongue leaving our hands covered in giraffe spit. Gross, but totally worth it to get that close.

 

Me feeding a giraffe

Boy and girl giraffe (You can tell because boys have a 3rd horn on their head and girls don't)

Pretty fantastic picture of a croc if I do say so myself

 

We also got to see the hippos and crocodiles feed (my camera didn’t crap out on me this time so I have pictures of this feeding). The giraffes were the only ones that we got to feed ourselves, but the feedings meant that the animals came up really close to the enclosure walls for fantastic photos.

Waterbuck

Puff adder

Hippo!

Monkeys that kept stealing the hippo's food

We also saw a giant tortoise wandering about the park. This is one of the animals that I indicated earlier were not enclosed as it doesn’t pose harm to anyone. We got really close and even got to touch his head and feet. Really neat animal. The park also has water bucks walking around the eating grass and leaves off of trees. These look kind of like a hefty deer.

Me with the giant tortoise (No wonder they had "Please don't sit on tortoise" signs throughout the park)

Feeding time for the crocs

We also saw cape buffalo, warthogs, some deer that I can’t remember the name of, and many snakes. Oh… and course monkeys. They were all over the place and were a constant source of amusement as they would steal food from the much larger animals by reaching their paws into the large piles of food under the mouths of the hippos, cape buffalo, or deer that I can’t remember the name of.

The park also makes money by raising fish for feeding their own animals and to sell to local restaurants and markets. They have large tubs with hundreds of tilapia in them.

Overall, fantastic way to start the weekend and a must-see if you ever come to Mombasa!