As I write, I have Oscar Kiproteich the chameleon on my shoulder. The name is fairly typical for Kenyan names. Most Christians have some sort of English first name, usually from the Bible (twins Shadrach and Meshach were in the hospital today visiting their mama). The second name usually refers to the time or occasion of birth. Kiproteich means born at 4pm, Kibet is born 12-1, and many others indicate time of day. Some mean things like “should have been born yesterday”. Names starting with “K” are for boys; girl names start with “Ch”. It’s quite interesting, but I have a hard time remembering the meanings of all the names.
In case anyone was interested, I received more comments about my hair today than “habari”. Everyone greeted me with “oh your hair, it looks so smart” (or in one case, “lovely” and “fly”—still trying to figure that one out). It was rather interesting to walk around the hospital with my hair all braided. It was also my last day at the hospital (time has just flown by), and I had a good morning on OB, just nothing too exciting. I walked up to the local Children’s Home during the middle of the day, which was interesting to see. The kids don’t have much, and there isn’t a lot of money in the local churches to take care of the orphans properly. They’re fairly self-sufficient, growing their own maize and beans and vegetables, but they lack things like flour. As a result, the Christmas treat every year is a chapatti and a soda…it makes me realize (yet again) how great I have it back in the US. In the afternoon, we finished off seeing OB clinic patients, including one with rheumatic heart disease (not something we’d see in a pregnant lady back home).
Tonight I assisted with a c-section of a lady who had been in labor for over a day. (Probably TMI ahead, skip to the end if you don’t want medical talk). The c-section was held up by the placement of the Foley catheter (goes into the bladder), because we had a really hard time finding her urethra. She had been circumcised; about 80% of the women here are. It’s horrible, as it completely screws up the normal anatomy, makes everything more painful, and makes childbirth much more difficult. Episiotomies are so common here that it’s almost rare to have a delivery without one. Circumcision for girls and boys happens at about age 15-16, and it’s basically an initiation rite into adulthood. Even though it causes a whole lot of problems for the women, it’s still a part of the tradition and culture, and that’s really hard to fight against. I think slowly but surely the strong Christians are trying to make an impact, and change is happening, albeit much more slowly than we would like. Ok, I’ll step off my female circumcision soapbox now
It has been a good week on OB, but it’s also reinforced that I really want to go into Pediatrics. I still easily like the babies and the kids the best.