The Children of Mukuru

As our bus pulls into the dirt paths in Mukuru, the children come to life.

We've been there six days and every day is the same. They come running out to the street with great big toothy smiles, waving furiously and chanting "How are you?....How are you?"

Some of the boys run alongside the bus and try to stay with the bus until they stumble or run into a cabbage cart.

In the clinic, the Kenyan children are soft-spoken, especially the girls. They are well behaved and respectful of elders. Outside the clinic, they happily run and play like children anywhere else.

The girls wear dresses. During the week the schoolchildren are dressed in their uniforms. Each school seems to have a different color scheme - blue, green, red, etc. The uniforms typically consist of checked shirts, solid sweaters (yes - in the African heat), and solid skirts or shorts.




We've seen girls as young as 8 or 9 carrying babies on their backs.

The Kenyan children, and the Kenyan people as a whole, are physically beautiful.

In the midst of such astonishing poverty, these children are generous in their smiles and waves. I can't help but to think of that as an reflection of God's grace!

Days 5 and 6

The eye clinic has seen about 600 children in the past 2 days.

We improved our testing of the children that are faking the vision screening to get glasses. We now have "magic glasses" which look like normal glasses but have no prescription. If one of the docs has scoped and determined that the child has little or no refractive error, and still the child can't see the big letters on the eye chart, we put on the magic glasses and miraculously the child can see 20/20.... they're busted!!

Interestingly, we have seen 3 albino children in the past 2 days. Albinos typically have very poor eyesight because the lack of pigment impedes the development of the eyes. They also are very light sensitive which is not a good trait to have in equatorial Africa. We were able to give these albino children prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses as well as several pairs of large sunglasses that fit over regular glasses. I suspect that there is quite a stigma for an albino child in African society as it appears that the very dark African mother has given birth to a white child.

Another intereting case we saw was a younger child ( about 10 years old) who had cataract surgery when young but did not receive a lens implant and received no glasses. He has essentially been blind since the surgery without having glasses and glasses will improve his vision to at least 20/40. This will make such a difference in this child's life!!

The Slum of Mukuru

As you enter Mukuru you are struck by the poverty.

The slums consist of sheet metal and wooden shantys, squeezed together side-by-side separated by narrow pathways and small, unpaved heavily rutted streets.

Every home/shanty seems to have a business of some kind in front - selling tomatoes, cabbages, butcheries, hair salons, selling plastic bottles or fried dough to name a few. Every "shop" has a sign with a unique name, mostly in English. One of my favorites is "Waka-Knife the Butcher".

Plastic garbage is everywhere. The paper trash is burned and the roaming goats eat the organic waste.

The slum is filled to the brim with people. Some are busily walking, some manning the storefronts, others just sitting and watching. The children are emerged in dust, stagnant water, and trash.

There are rows of sheet metal outhouses that serve as latrines...nothing more than holes in the ground with a little privacy. Those fortunate enough to have private latrines keep them padlocked for their own use. The less fortunate use plastic shopping bags which are heaped in large piles. These are often called "flying toilets."

The air is filled with many smells. The most prominant smell is that of dusty stench. As you pass by different areas of the slum you may smell the frying dough, or 2 day-old fish heads that are for sale, and of course there are the latrines and flying toilet piles.

Goats and chickens roam the streets among the mobs of people. Handcarts are the main transportation system within the slum, transporting anything from cabbages to plastic jugs of kerosene.

It is surprising the density of people in this slum, especially with the expanses of open land surrounding Nairobi.

Tuesday - Thursday

It's hard to believe but days 2, 3, 4 are in the book!! On Tuesday we saw about 300 children in the eye clinic, 350 yesterday, and about 250 today. Many children are able to pass the initial screening for vision and do not have to see the eye docs.

Today was an early finish because we have been invited to a reception by the US Embassador and needed to get cleaned up and out early to beat Nairobi rush hour.

The entire count at our location which includes the medical, dental, and eye clinics has been roughly 1700 children seen per day! Every child is getting medicine for de-worming.

In the eye clinic we have seen some interesting diseases , but surprisingly this popular of children have pretty good eyesight as a whole. We have also had to deal with a number of children "faking" poor vision in order to try to get glasses. This makes it harder for us because we need to make sure that there is no health concerns that is making it so they can't see.

Nonetheless, the children are very well behaved. They also are soft-spoken, which is a little tough in the noisy clinic building.

Traffic in Nairobi

First of all, sometimes my posts may be a day or so behind. The 'small internet cafe' at the hotel is actually 2 slow computers in a closet. With 60 some volunteers staying at the hotel, getting internet time has been difficult.

Traffic in Nairobi is terrible. There are no freeways in this national capital and all traffic flows around 'round-abouts' or traffic circles. Obviously, this system locks up during rush hour. We have altered the times we start and end our mission work each day to try to avoid rush hour as much as possible. Yesterday we sat still, waiting to enter a traffic circle for about 15 minutes.

The roads are very primitive also. The buses bounce around unmercilessly. There is no such thing as a smooth road and often people are scooting around on the brim of the road since there are no lanes. They drive on the left side of the road like other British colonies.

The 'road' through the Mukuru slum is dirt with many deep rutts. Driving through a Lancaster County cornfield would be smoother. The path through the slums is essentially 1 lane. While there are few vehicles, there are thousands of people walking or riding bikes on the same path way.

First Day of Mission

The local rooster woke us up at 5:30. There are no alarm clocks in the rooms but the rooster is very dedicated...and he has no snooze button!

We got off to a slower than expected start. The mission has 3 different locations which involves coordinating the delivery of supplies and medicine .. and people to the right location. Monday morning was a little chaotic, as we didn't get away from the hotel until after 11 am.

The Eye Team is serving in the slum of Mukuru which is also the location of the medical and dental parts of the mission. The other 2 sites are in other slums and are only dental.

The initial trip into Mukura was very eye-opening. The poverty and living standards are incredible. I'll write more about that later.

Our first day involved mainly figuring out how to set up our clinic and training the non-medical volunteers on how to assist with checking visual acuities, registering children, etc.

We saw only about 30 children on the first day. My first child was a 4 year old who complained of a hurting right eye and I found he had a small gnat-like bug in his lower cul-de-sac which I easily removed with a little anesthetic and swab.

Greetings from Nairobi

Jambo means hello in Swahili. We left York on Friday morning at 10:30 am, drove to JFK, flew to London, flew to Nairobi and then arrived at our hotel just before midnight on Saturday night. Nairobi is 7 hours ahead of Elizabethtown. It was indeed a long journey!

On the way from the airport we saw a heard of zebra grazing by the road the way we see deer.

Today we are organizing our equipment and we will set up our eye camp tomorrow morning. Everyone is very excited to get started!

Article in England newspaper...

The following article about Peter Sotheran, our mission coordinator, appeared in his local newspaper...

Mission to help thousands of Kenyan families
Sep 4 2008 by Mike Morgan, Evening Gazette

TEESSIDE Rotarian Peter Sotheran is banking on a crash course in Swahili as he prepares to support an international aid mission to Africa.

The long-standing member of the Rotary Club of Guisborough and Great Ayton has been selected to take part in a mission to Kenya, where most of the locals speak Swahili.
Peter, a past president of the club and well known for his involvement in charitable causes, travels out to Nairobi in Kenya in five weeks’ time.

His job is to co-ordinate a 70-strong team of doctors, dentists and opticians [optometrists in USA] at three campsites in the slums of Nairobi. He said: “My job is to integrate the international volunteers with local voluntary help and many of the locals will have limited command of English.”

Known as a health and hygiene mission, the aim is to screen and treat several hundred young people each day, targeting 12,000 in the two weeks of the mission.
Patients from infants to 20 years of age, plus young mums will be checked and treated.
Two dental clinics will be set up in schools on the edge of the slums, and will be geared to treat around 200 patients a day.

The optical team is equipped to examine up to 25 patients an hour, will produce prescription spectacles within the hour and treat minor eye infections.
“Restoring a patient’s vision restores their independence and enables them to contribute to the family and community,” explained Peter.

Special attention will be given to children in local orphanages, most of whom have lost their parents due to Aids.

Working alongside each of the teams will be a specialist HIV/Aids counselling and treatment unit.

More than 25% of the population of Nairobi (850,000 out of 3.2m) live in the timber and tin-sheet shanties of the slums.
“So many infants are born with Aids-infected blood, we need a massive intervention to try to create an Aids-free generation,” said Sally Platt, a Rotarian from Marietta in Georgia (USA), who is leading the mission.

The project is the pilot of a five-year programme that is funded by the US Government and a host of international corporations.

The 70 volunteers converge on Nairobi over the weekend of September 20.

A great confluence!

Rotarians from 10 different countries will be converging on Nairobi to make this mission happen - United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, India, Denmark, Nigeria, and Kenya.

The mission team members from the United States come from Pennsylvania, Georgia, Massachusetts, Colorado, North Carolina, Texas, and the District of Columbia.

Fast Facts about the Mission...

Nairobi is home to one of the largest populations of children orphaned due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Most of them live in extreme poverty in child-headed or adolescent-headed households or with grannies who have no means of supporting them.

Education is the only way out of poverty, but unless they are well enough to attend school, that opportunity is lost. As well, many of these children have only one meal a day, which they receive at school. Thus, keeping them in school is very important.

During this mission, the children will be screened and treated by pediatricians, dentists and eye care professionals. They will also receive health education, including proper hand washing, tooth brushing and HIV/AIDS prevention information.

I will be part of the eye care team. I hope, but won't be sure until I get to Nairobi, that I will be able to keep you informed of our mission via this blog.