Archive for October 6th, 2009

Hello again everyone!

Here is my first attempt at a more readable (read: smaller) blog post about my experiences here in Kitale. Today we woke up and got ready and were picked up by Richard, Sister Freda’s husband, to visit the school, hospital, and other facilities that Sister Freda and her staff run.

For those who don’t know, Sister Freda runs a free hospital out here in Kitale. By free, I mean that people can pay whatever they can afford, even if it means nothing, to receive the care and medicine that they need. Anything from childbirth to surgery, vaccines to malaria treatment, it is all covered here. She also runs a school and feeding program for neighboring children as well as has a traveling clinic where she and some staff travel to towns further away that cannot walk to her hospital to provide health care.

They are also building a nursing school to train more nurses to help around her facilities. Lastly, they have tens of acres of various crops that are used primarily to feed the children, and secondly to sell to raise funds to run their other facilities (in addition to donations).

It was so amazing to see all that Sister Freda and her staff are doing for so many people free of charge. It really hits home for me because with all of the talk about universal health care in the States, I really feel that the Church has such an awesome opportunity to step up and fill the need like Sister Freda has.

When we first got to the compound, we visited the children at the school.

Elia!

Unfortunately, there were so many kids and not a whole lot of time before they got called in for porridge and class, but there was one little girl who absolutely stole my heart. This girl was Dot.

Alice holding Dot

Dot is the cutest little girl I think I have ever seen in my entire life. She didn’t say a word to any of us, though she made a few noises, but she was calm and just loved to be held. You could try and try to make her smile or laugh and she never would, but occasionally she would let out a big smile for seemingly no reason.

Dot came to Sister Freda’s extremely malnourished. Sister Freda actually described her as being unrecognizable as even a human because she was so tiny. She lives at Freda’s compound and has been being taken care of and although still tiny, she is now doing much better and growing healthily. After we hung out with all of the kids, Richard took us on a walk around all of the acres of crops and we took Dot along with us. I took quite a few pictures of her hoping that maybe I could capture part of the reason I loved her so much for everyone reading along.

She was absolutely adorable and I loved having her on the walk with us. After our walk around the premises, we went and ate lunch with Freda and Richard (black beans, rice, and potatoes – there were also two meat dishes which I passed on). Freda then had to run and take care of other things and Richard took us home after the brief rainstorm passed.

I got to catch up on blogging and reading and some Youtube watching (go there and search “boy sees lobster for first time” for a good laugh) and then Alice made us some delicious buttered noodles with corn. After which, our Kenyan friend Leila who lives with us informed Alice that she would be making dinner from here on out.

So now it is almost time for bed and another busy day tomorrow! My closing note for everyone is that always remember:

Peace and love,
J