on thursday we went to another mobile clinic an hour and a half away in maasailand. the maasai are a tribe that raise livestock and essentially subsist exclusively off meat, blood and milk. apparently this diet contains everything needed for good health, as they consistently live to be over 100 years old. they live in makeshift homes of sticks and mud that they pack up and move around when their livestock need some fresh grass. they also stretch their earlobes out as far as possible with progressively larger loops - some have earlobes that dangle so low that they hang them over the top of their ears to keep them from getting in the way! they also always wear a lot of red. the boss on the clinic trip was a dr. thor - a large, very high decibel, door slamming (not because he’s angry, but because that’s just the way he is) kind of guy. he also falls asleep at every opportunity. he is really cool. we saw some interesting cases; a lot of malnourished kids and some with rampant iss (medical code in kenya for hiv/aids). i also got to inject an elderly lady in the buttock with some pain medication (i know that probably doesn‘t sound too appealing, but it was my first injection and it got my adrenaline going!), and I learned how to find someone’s blood pressure the old-fashioned way - with a stethoscope, hand pump and stopwatch.
the next day I went with peter and isaac (the medical students from chicago) to the home of a really nice maasai guy named givan to kill and eat a goat. after arguing for about an hour on the way there with the sneaky but persuasive car driver about how much the trip should cost, we finally reached an impass and he offered to let me drive, maybe just to try to appease us. it was great fun, heading out across the savannah, shifting with the left hand, not allowed to slow down because the dust on the ground was so deep that we would get stuck if we drove too slow. when we got to the “village” (3 houses), the maasai folks let all their goats out of the pens, and we watched/”herded” them for a while. then we drank some chai (tea) that was made from the fresh goats milk. almost as good as chai with cows milk. we then selected a goat. when they kill it they hold it down, basically dissect its entire neck while its still alive, and then cut its corotid artery and collect the blood (to drink fresh). then they hang it from a tree and open er up. when they found the kidneys the little children got all excited and immediately ate them raw! we roasted the meat over a tiny little fire (some of it got cooked) and ate it in its entirety. well, us and the millions of flies, and all the random maasai folks that showed up after they must have smelled the dead goat. either that or someone called them on their cell phones, which they all remarkably seem to have tucked under their robes somewhere. needless to say, we ingested a lot of protein, and undoubtedly a lot of other random creepy crawlers that live in raw meat too. what couldn’t be roasted, like the lungs and stomach (including far more than necessary of its partially digested contents), were thrown into a pot to be boiled and then we ate that too. this meat eating saga lasted the entire day, and it was truly epic. and considering that the only side effect was above average toilet paper use for the next few days, it was definitely worth it!
next day we took a matatu (small van that serves as public transportation) into nairobi. they are extremely overcrowded - people sitting on laps, in the 8 inch wide "isles", etc.. and hanging off the back bumper too. each matatu has a name - like "jawbreaker", "the last ride you'll ever take" and "jesus of nazareth is the king of kings and lord of lords". they are known for being almost entirely responsible for kenya's position at the top of the list of road accident deaths per capita - all the doctors in the hospital have stories of times when there were matatu accidents and the casualty was flooding with dozens of trauma cases in the middle of the night - presumably these dozens were all stuffed into (or on top of) one matatu when it crashed. but actually the trip wasn't too stressful - in fact i think i'm going to start using them as much as possible! we went with a kenyan intern who took us to the craft market downtown. we were solicited for our money (which i don't even have) so much and so heavily that i almost lost my mind. this is one thing i don't like about it here - have they never seen a white person before? (i know they have). has it ever crossed their mind that i might be more likely to buy their stuff if i could actually look at it rather than their frantic face 3 inches from mine, making sure again and again that i understand they they have the best deal in the city (which they most assuredly don't). and then when you try to leave they grab your arm and you literally have to run faster than them and never go back. forgive me, i rant. we then went to a restaurant called the carnivore, which serves crocodile and ostrich meat, but unfortunately their grill was closed so we ate burgers. we would have stayed until it opened later on, but apparently there is a significant risk of getting carjacked after dark on the road down to kijabe, so we wanted to catch the last matatu home before sunset.
the next day I went with peter and isaac (the medical students from chicago) to the home of a really nice maasai guy named givan to kill and eat a goat. after arguing for about an hour on the way there with the sneaky but persuasive car driver about how much the trip should cost, we finally reached an impass and he offered to let me drive, maybe just to try to appease us. it was great fun, heading out across the savannah, shifting with the left hand, not allowed to slow down because the dust on the ground was so deep that we would get stuck if we drove too slow. when we got to the “village” (3 houses), the maasai folks let all their goats out of the pens, and we watched/”herded” them for a while. then we drank some chai (tea) that was made from the fresh goats milk. almost as good as chai with cows milk. we then selected a goat. when they kill it they hold it down, basically dissect its entire neck while its still alive, and then cut its corotid artery and collect the blood (to drink fresh). then they hang it from a tree and open er up. when they found the kidneys the little children got all excited and immediately ate them raw! we roasted the meat over a tiny little fire (some of it got cooked) and ate it in its entirety. well, us and the millions of flies, and all the random maasai folks that showed up after they must have smelled the dead goat. either that or someone called them on their cell phones, which they all remarkably seem to have tucked under their robes somewhere. needless to say, we ingested a lot of protein, and undoubtedly a lot of other random creepy crawlers that live in raw meat too. what couldn’t be roasted, like the lungs and stomach (including far more than necessary of its partially digested contents), were thrown into a pot to be boiled and then we ate that too. this meat eating saga lasted the entire day, and it was truly epic. and considering that the only side effect was above average toilet paper use for the next few days, it was definitely worth it!
next day we took a matatu (small van that serves as public transportation) into nairobi. they are extremely overcrowded - people sitting on laps, in the 8 inch wide "isles", etc.. and hanging off the back bumper too. each matatu has a name - like "jawbreaker", "the last ride you'll ever take" and "jesus of nazareth is the king of kings and lord of lords". they are known for being almost entirely responsible for kenya's position at the top of the list of road accident deaths per capita - all the doctors in the hospital have stories of times when there were matatu accidents and the casualty was flooding with dozens of trauma cases in the middle of the night - presumably these dozens were all stuffed into (or on top of) one matatu when it crashed. but actually the trip wasn't too stressful - in fact i think i'm going to start using them as much as possible! we went with a kenyan intern who took us to the craft market downtown. we were solicited for our money (which i don't even have) so much and so heavily that i almost lost my mind. this is one thing i don't like about it here - have they never seen a white person before? (i know they have). has it ever crossed their mind that i might be more likely to buy their stuff if i could actually look at it rather than their frantic face 3 inches from mine, making sure again and again that i understand they they have the best deal in the city (which they most assuredly don't). and then when you try to leave they grab your arm and you literally have to run faster than them and never go back. forgive me, i rant. we then went to a restaurant called the carnivore, which serves crocodile and ostrich meat, but unfortunately their grill was closed so we ate burgers. we would have stayed until it opened later on, but apparently there is a significant risk of getting carjacked after dark on the road down to kijabe, so we wanted to catch the last matatu home before sunset.
