The President is Coming!

So the President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki is coming to the hospital tomorrow! They are opening up a new surgical (“theatre”) wing so he is coming for the grand opening. He has never been to Kijabe before and so everyone is WIGGIN’ OUT! They have been working day AND NIGHT repainting,  scrubbing floors, scrubbing exterior walls, smoothing out roads, making parking spaces, sewing new curtains for all the beds (there are huge rooms here with like 10 beds per room just separated by curtains), gardening (they created AIC Kijabe Hospital in the flower bed in front of the hospital out of these cute little plants), setting up these huge awesome tents…TIME STOPS FOR THE PRESIDENT. Surgery day was cut in half today so they could clean up the area, we can’t admit any patients tomorrow, rounds have to start early cause he will be here around noon – it is literally crazy. I think they should leave everything messy and let the President see how sweet the hospital is but how it could use some work and throw some money at it, but that is not how they do things around here! I was supposed to go to a rural clinic today, but the doctor was leaving super late so I helped out on the pedi ward instead. There is this huge wing called Bethany Kids Hospital that is just for the hydrocephalus kids…and I think spina bifidas/encephaloceles etc – there were like 20 of them! I saw the craziest hydrocephaluses EVER. Poor little kids. Loved the kids though! They were precious – I wanted to give them all silly bands, but I was afraid they were too small and would eat them.

Good thing I registered with UT Systems on this international travel site before I left because now I get all these great emails about things going on in the path of my travel. Turns out Kenya Airways – The Pride of Africa – had decided to go on an indefinite strike because of an unresolved wage dispute, oh when is that supposed to happen – oh the day I am supposed to fly out of Kenya. Did Samantha buy insurance on her ticket when she booked through Expedia. No, no of course not. Mom and sister are being amazing today and trying to get me out of here! I mean, I would stay – but pediatrics in Austin prolly wouldn’t appreciate it so much. Maybe I could get to the President tomorrow and see if he will help me out. I hear he has more guard peeps than the US President though, and they have been all over this week scoping out the area making sure it is safe so that may be hard to pull.

Tonight I had coffee and played scrabble (or WordPower) with a couple Kenyans and a couple Americans. So not to be a bragger…but I kind of dominated both games. I think it was a little unfair though because clearly I know more English words than them. They are just so fun. Tomorrow my roomie and I are hosting “video night” and making breakfast for dinner so I’m pretty pumped about that. Then Saturday after rounds we are headed to Nairobi to see the sights, probably go clubbing, and we are staying at the Hilton Nairobi thanks to Letizia’s husband who booked this awesome hotel – and that will probably involve some pool lounging so I can come back with a tan!

I had an English muffin (deliciously homemade by lots of the residents around here and they come to your door selling them) with Nutella for my dinner tonight. So so good. As mentioned in the title of my previous post....I guess this paragraph belongs there – I am literally living on bread. English muffins (8 cents), mdazis (12 cents), chapatis (30 cents), and the cafeteria sells some delicious cornbread (price unknown – only discovered it today and not sure how much it was).

Say a prayer that I get my flight worked out and get to come back on time…or that I don’t depending on what your preference is.