A Clinic Evolving

-Nyla


Hello friends of Mama Hope,

I have arrived safely in Isiolo and feel like I have returned to my Kenyan home. We were welcomed with flowers, a song and a dance by the Wind of Hope orphans.

We were told that while the clinic has been under a construction it has served as so many things for the community. During the recent conflict it housed refugees who had lost their homes. During the rains it served as an orphanage for the children whose rooms flooded. While the elementary school was being renovated it served as a school. Until its official launch on August 12th, it is being used as a rehabilitation home for girls who have been sexually abused or have come off the street. The outside waiting area is being used as a preschool while the new school is being built.

Your donation to build the health clinic also helped build a school/sanctuary/orphanage/rehabilitation center providing a safe haven to hundreds even before it has opened to provide health care to thousands!

I'm so happy to see that the Mama Hope Clinic built to nurture the community is doing exactly that!

Thank you for your support. This all would not be possible with out Mama Hope's incredible donors.


During the next two months we will be updating the blog with videos, pictures and stories of our time in Kenya.

With gratitude,

Nyla

A Clinic by and for the Community

Article by Mama Hope intern, Gitty Chemoss (far right):

Health is an important factor for the well-being and peace of mind of any community. In the hot, dusty and windy town of Isiolo, in a place called Tumaini, the skeletal structure of the new Health Center stands as a testimony of the growing need and appreciation of the provision of health. Right beside the construction sight is the old dispensary. A number of patients wait outside to receive their medication while others make their way there. Isiolo town, like many other marginalized communities in Kenya, suffers from abject poverty, illiteracy and HIV/AIDS.

The little dispensary at Tumaini has a history of its own: starting off as merely a mud structure called a ‘manyatta’ it grew to become a small room that now serves the inhabitants of the nine different center points served by the Pepo la Tumaini Jangwani Program. Not having adequate facilities has no doubt been a great challenge in the provision of health and, therefore, supplementary strategies have been employed, for instance the training and putting to work of Home Based Care workers and Counselors. This has proven to be cost-effective and convenient to some degree, but the overall aim is to improve and expand the provision of adequate health services to the growing number who need it. Pepo la Tumaini serves not only those in the program but the community as a whole: “The initial idea for building a Health Centre was voiced from around August of 2006, it has been a long road, but at last there is some result”, says Murithi a VCT counselor and pharmacist at Pepo.

The elderly, able-bodied Turkana women are a conspicuous sight at the construction sight of the new Health Center. They arrive every morning in groups of five to seven their faces set and determined to get right into the work of helping to build the Health Center. No work is too meager or too difficult for these women; from carrying heavy building stones to mixing cement to supplying the builders with water. They live several kilometers away in different center points, Maili Tano and Kambi Garba. Their resolve and devotion is evident on their faces as they work side by side with the youth and the men in the construction of a building they know and feel will be of great benefit to the community. One of the women shares with me her hopes and concerns as I join them under the shade of a tree one hot afternoon. The others nod in agreement to what she says: “They don’t take care of you at the Districts hospital. You could die on the waiting bench before the doctor gets a chance to see you.”

“We are very willing to help build the Health Center because it will help us,” says another Turkana grandmother lying on her side, her hands dirty from shifting rubble and soil. Many of these women have lost their children to HIV/AIDS and other opportunistic infections and have been left responsible for raising their grandchildren. Githinji—the building supervisor—has nothing but praise and admiration for these women: “They work just as hard as us. They have been of great help since we have been in need of more workers.”

Henry—a nursing officer working at the dispensary at Pepo la Tumaini since November 2006—feels that the new Health Centre will be of great help to them as health service providers. At the moment they are able to cater for a number of patients who come to seek medical attention, many of whom are part of the Pepo La Tumaini Program. The cases that they are ill-equipped to handle they refer to the District Hospital in Isiolo town. “There are no sterilizing equipments so we cannot perform sterile procedures,” explains Henry, voicing one of his main concerns. There is a plan to have one of the rooms in the new Health Centre serve as a laboratory. This will mean that the patients will not have to go all the way to town to get tests done. Henry and other health service providers working at the dispensary hope that there will be additional professional help to cater for the undoubted increase in patients once the Health Centre is complete and running.

The foundation of the new Health Centre was not only made of stone, sand and cement, but also from the dedication and devotion of the individuals that call Tumaini and its environs their home, first and foremost Khadija O. Rama the coordinator of the Pepo program, other supporting organizations, the family, co-workers and community at large.

Health Clinic Update

Posting by Nyla

Greetings from Kenya,

It is so amazing to be here and see the health clinic go up before my eyes. In a little less than a week the clinic is already halfway built. I've been told that by next Monday all the walls will be completely built.

The people are so involved that on the first day of construction people were seen taking goats and donkeys to the bank as collateral so they could get loans for materials while they waited for the donations to be wired from the USA. They told me that they want this lab to be built as soon as possible because they are so poorly treated for HIV related illnesses by the district hospital and sometimes this lack of care can be fatal. They really look forward to being cared for by a place that nurtures instead of stigmatizes them because of the virus.

Another reason why the health clinic has been able to be built so quickly is because everyone in the community is involved; from young children to elderly women. We came to the site one day and saw that children were carrying rocks that they collected for the foundation and bringing them to the construction site. While everyone was working it started pouring. At the same time as the rain, a truck full of construction materials showed up. Immediately all the men went to seek shelter but the women and children got in the trucks and started to toss out the rocks, laughing, singing and getting completely drenched by the downpour! We stood awestruck by the power of these two very different generations working together. We learned later that these generations are the backbone of the Pepo La Tumaini community because the continuing devastation of AIDS and tribal clashes has taken the lives of the parent generation and now the majority of the community are children and the elderly.

I wish that my words could do justice to this meaningful experience. Instead I think I'll let the pictures tell the story of the health clinic coming to fruition.

Love from Kenya,
Nyla

Little by Little

Posting by Nyla

Hello Friends of Mama Hope,

Last year I was brought to Pepo La Tumaini through a Safari center called Wilderness Trails who brings their guests here to understand the struggles and triumphs of the local people as part of their “Wilderness” program. Since it is tourist season many groups of tourists in safari vehicles have come here. They all come here fresh off the game trails in their shorts and big hats, cameras around their necks. They walk through here as if on a museum tour looking at the people as if they are in displays marked,“Orphans”, “AIDS Patients”, and “Malnourished Man”. I understand and sympathize with these feelings because I was once on this tour myself and its hard not to see things this way if you are just passing through. We get so desensitized by images of the devastation happening in Africa that even when it is in our faces we still tend to numb ourselves to it.

When I saw a safari vehicle roll up for the third time I asked if I could go around with the tourists and show them the health clinic being built and show them what is possible when you let an experience change you. I tried to stress to them that these people are simply in this type of poverty because they do not have access to the resources that we do. The best way to do our part to help people in need is to directly support their community based efforts by working in partnership with them to meet their goals on their terms.

As they were leaving one of the men told me that his daughter had come up to him after seeing the future health clinic and said “Dad, she really does not have anything to gain from building this clinic she is simply helping because she can!” I'm glad that they left with the feeling of what is possible when you do what you can. Doing what you can is such a simple concept that some times we forget when we focus on all that we can't do. Hopefully she will go back to her home and do what she can!

I know that obviously we can't solve all the world's problems but if we all did what we could, we'd be a lot closer.

Until next time,

Nyla

Breaking Ground on Health Clinic

Posting by Nyla


Dear friends of Mama Hope,

I'm so happy to report that I've finally made it to Isiolo, Kenya and we have started construction on the The Stephanie Moore Health Clinic..
Things have been a whirlwind since we got here. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, we immediately attended a Health Clinic Commitee Meeting to discuss, budget, time frame, and design of the health clinic. The community was so excited and they wanted to start construction immediately so that the Health Clinic could be finished by the time I leave.
The next day was spent going to the different villages and inviting the people to a community meeting to discuss the community’s expectations for the health clinic. This was to ensure that the community would embrace and make this project their own. We were
surprised to learn that the communities are so dedicated to the building of the clinic that they walked from as far as 30 miles through the desert to attend the meeting.
The next morning the community meeting started normally enough until the women from the different villages started a marking ceremony. The ceremony consisted of them singing a song questioning each other where
the building should be and dancing over the area. In the beginning all
the different tribes were separated. As they made a decision they came
together as one whole group circling the area where the clinic should
be. It was incredible because the women's ceremony came up with the
same area for the building as the land surveyor. Fortunately Bryce,
our film maker, got the whole thing on tape and we will put it in the
documentary.

This morning I woke up to the sounds of commotion and came outside to
see women and trucks bringing in materials to start construction on
the clinic. By the time I made it to the site the people had already
dug out trenches of the outline of the clinic. Tomorrow we will
begin erecting the walls.
Thanks to Mama Hope donors, the people of Isiolo are going to have a
clinic that provides loving care to the community. If the community
keeps up the same kind of pace as they did today, the clinic will be
built in just a couple weeks and will be ready to serve patients. You
should be happy to know that your donations are improving the lives of
a whole community of deserving people in Kenya!
All the best from Kenya,
Nyla