Shirazi, hospital stays and Nairobi

I'm so sorry that I have not updated my blog in a few weeks...it's been pretty crazy over here.

Three weeks ago we headed out to the coast and traveled to this Muslim village called "Shirazi" about two hours south of Mombasa. Living in the village was SUCH an amazing experience. I spent the week with a family of 3 women- an 80 year old woman named Miriam, her 55 year old daughter, Mwanasha, and a 13 year old girl named Ziema (I still cannot figure out how she is related to the family.) The three of them share a small mud hut in the village (which has about 600 inhabitants) and graciously opened up their home to me for my week in Shirazi. Hardly anyone in Shirazi speaks English, and this rang true with my family as well. Mama (Mwanasha) was great though, and was super patient with me when we were communicating (which involved a lot of hand motions and shirade-like conversations) After the first 3 days or so, my swahili really started to improve a lot though and I LOVED speaking to my family. I learned so much swahili in just the one week I was there. It was so different than living in Nairobi, because my family in the city only speaks English. Even when I ask them to speak swahili to me, it's a struggle because they are so used to speaking English in their home.

My house in Shirazi

Mama and Ziema

I basically lived in paradise all week (minus the lack of showering and 3 giggers I got) as Shirazi is on the beach and walking around I was surrounded by more palm trees than I have ever seen. Since there is no electricity, the stars were brighter in Shirazi than I have ever seen any stars shine in my entire life. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Every day we had swahili from 8 until 11 and then had the rest of the day free to explore the village and spend time with our families. One afternoon though, we all loaded into a small boat and headed for this sandbar called "Paradise Lost" for the rest of the day. It wassobeautiful...literally paradise.

Group shot on Paradise Lost in all our kangas

paradise

Ah, another great part about the village was the outfits we ended up wearing. As a Muslim village, the women dress very conservatively-- fully covering their bodies and heads. Before leaving for Shirazi, we all purchased kangas and mumus to wear during our week-long stay (traditional kenyan wear-- kangas are colorful sheets of material that have different designs and provide a "message" on them in swahili, like "God will always love you" or "Slowly, slowly is the way to go" and mumus are loose, lightweight long dresses) However, some of us SITers didn't get the chance to sport our new purchases as our host moms dressed them every day. We were respresenting our families, so the moms wanted their students to have the "best" clothes. The "best" clothes consisted of 80's looking prom dresses and bejeweled fashion wear. Every day we had a competition to see who was "best-dressed" for the day. Here are some winners.

It was hard to fight off all the shirazi men with the amazing dresses I was told to wear each day. This pink dress was a favorite.

Best-dressed: day 3

Best-dressed: day 6

My week in Shirazi was a much needed break from life in the city. It was so great to be able to slow down and relax for a week and experience a different style and pace of life. I learned SO much swahili and loved getting to know my family. Even though I only lived with three women, my entire extended family lived in one "section" of the village, so family members stopped by at all times of the day and night, just to say hello and visit.

So much happened throughout the week that I would love to write about, but I don't want to make this post a novel (which it is already becoming) so I'll just list some of our experiences and tell you more about them when I return home. We played soccer against the village team (and got slaughtered...but I scored!), we swam in the Indian ocean, we rode to a nearby town on motorcycles (sorry mom), we were given henna as "presents" from our family (mine dyed my arm hair black and now that my henna is gone, it looks like I have some skin disease..as part of my arm hair is died black and the other part is still blonde...super cute), we watched men climb to the top of coconut palm trees to get coconuts down, and sooo much more. Oh, and I got peed on by a monkey...that was fun.

Riding on "boda bodas" (little motorcycles)

Tat-tat-tat-it up...me and my henna

Click the picture...there's a man up that tree getting coconuts!

Returning to Mombasa, we were told that the week was scheduled for us to explore the coastal city and enjoy the beach. However, I didn't quite get to experience Mombasa. The second day in the city, I went to the doctor, along with two other students, because I had really back diarrhea (sorry for the details) He told me that we all probably had some sort of food poisoning and he gave me medicine to make me feel better. That night however, I got a lot worse and had a fever and felt extremely dizzy and sick and my friends took me to the hospital to see the doctor again (he had told me to come back if my symptoms got worse.) I was admitted to the hospital, and spent the night there alongside the two other students who had also visited the doctor that day. The next day I felt a little better but was still "driving" (a Kenyan euphemism for having diarrhea) and they told me that they didn't want to discharge me until it stopped. I moved into a private room with my friend Yeiri, who was also still sick.

In the hospital (the first time) with Yeiri--all the nurses loved our sleeve tattoos (also known as "henna")

Our friends were great though, and came and visited us, which made me less upset about missing our week in Mombasa. The doctor came in later that day and told us he would discharge us the next morning. The next day, I started getting these really really sharp pains in my stomach, but the doctor told me that this was normal, and my stomach was just readjusting since I hadn't eaten much for a few days. After being discharged, we headed back to the SIT office in Mombasa, and I immediately laid down, still experiencing the sharp pains in my stomach. About an hour later, my fingers went numb, followed by my whole body and I couldn't stand up straight and didn't know what was going on. The pains in my stomach kept getting worse, and they rushed me back to the hospital to be readmitted.

I spent the next three nights there and was finally told two days into my second stay that they thought I had colitis. They kept running tests (x-rays, an ultrasound and CT scan) but didn't tell me much more. I was extremely frustrated and emotionally drained after 5 days in the hospital. Luckily, my dad contacted his friend in the US who is a doctor and got him in touch with my doctor in Kenya. He heard about the IV drugs I was taking and was shocked; he told me that they would never use those drugs on me in the US and that they were extremely strong antibiotics, and that the combination of drugs they were using was probably what was keeping me sick. I decided to take his advice, and my academic director and I made the decision to stop the antibiotics and try to return to Nairobi where I had more support (everyone had headed back to Nairobi the first night I was readmitted) We figured that I could manage to be out of the hospital for a few hours to fly back to Nairobi and be admitted to Nairobi hospital once I got back.

However, as soon as I stopped the drugs I started to feel better. I chose not to return to the hospital when I got back, and began to feel better and better each day. I'm still not sure what was going on, but I think the drugs had a lot to do with it. Right now, I feel completely recovered and am so grateful for the help from the US that I received.

Apart from the not so pleasant experience in Mombasa hospital, things have been GREAT :) We finished up our swahili classes this past week and have our final exam tomorrow. It's an oral examine, where we sit for 30 minutes with a professor and talk to him about our life in swahili..I'm actually pretty excited!

Our independent research period is quickly approaching and starting Friday we have 4 days to travel to our site where we want to do our research and get everything set up and prepared for November 2nd when we officially start our ISP period. I was going to travel out to the coast to do research in a rural village, but after the hospital experience, I've decided to stay in Nairobi. I'm really excited about having more free time to explore the city and see what it has to offer. I'll also be living in an apartment with six girls from my program, which I am SO excited about :) I couldn't pick another 6 girls I'd rather live with for a month--they're all so kind, funny and down-to-earth.

I'm currently trying to get in touch with a non-profit in the area that started a mobile medical clinic for street children in Nairobi. If they will allow me to work with them, I want to spend my ISP period looking into the health concerns that the street children face and their access to health care. I need to come up with a backup plan though in case I am not allowed to work with them.

After our 4 ISP days, we have a few days back in Nairobi and then we're leaving for a week long "educational tour" to Tanzania where we'll be living with members of the Masai tribe for a few days, watching an ICC case about the genocide in Rwanda, going on a safari in the Ngorogoro crater and climbing part of Mt. Kilimanjaro (no biggie.) I'm SO pumped!

Sorry that I basically just wrote a book. I hope I didn't bore y'all too much. I'll try to update this more often now that I'm back in Nairobi and feeling better!

Until next time--

Megan

Just wanted to also share this awesome picture. I have some great best friends who took me and Madison to our sorority event so we wouldn't miss it!