School Visits and Baby Dresses

 Today was another successful day of surgery! We began this morning with a visit to the post-op ward, where we were able to play with the children who had received surgery the day before and stayed over night. The members of the Turkana tribe were all there, including the beautiful baby girl whom everyone fell in love with the day before. We decided to first try to sew her torn up, dirty little dress but that didn’t really work out. Asking for permission from her mother first, we proceeded by going across the street to buy her a brand new dress. She looked like a princess when we put it on her. The mother was so thankful to be able to put something clean on the baby. We are so tempted to bring Bella back to the hotel tomorrow and bathe her!

We continued to rotate babysitting Bella, as well as Agnes, until their parents

Century at Moi Children's Home

Karina at Moi Children's Home

recovered. After a few visits to Child Life and Pre-Op, we headed off site to visit an orphanage and school with Afia, one of the local coordinators. First we went to Moi Children’s Home for orphan children.  The youngest child was less than 1 month old, and they keep children up to age 18. We brought lots of school supplies and a soccer ball for the children, and they were all so excited to see us. As we whipped out our bubbles, the younger kids from ages 4-7 came running at us screaming in delight. It looked as if they had never seen such a thing before. We entertained them for a while with those and took some pictures which they enjoyed also.We can’t wait to do our presentations there later in the week!

Moi Children's Home

We also went to Moi Primary School, where they taught over 2000 students…in one primary school! The headmaster was so kind and welcoming to allow us to come and present, and she did an awesome job maintaining the school, teachers, and grounds. For every teacher, there was approximately 70 students per classroom! We taught burn care and dental hygiene, and presented each child with a toothbrush and pencil. The kids were all excited because they had visitors (and because tomorrow is the last day of school before break), and they all wanted to be in every photo we took. It was really neat to see how energetic and welcoming these children were, and hopefully we will have more successful visits later this week!

            This afternoon we checked to see if we could go into the OR to observe a surgery, so we are both super excited to be able to do that tomorrow morning. It is truly incredible and inspiring to see the amount of work and the long hours all of the surgeons put in to ensure the maximum number of patients possible receive surgery this week.