Arrival in Eldoret

Yay! I'm in Kenya! Finally arrived in Eldoret and it is absolutely lovely. The weather is very mild, but the sun is strong, and there isn't much humidity. Our drive in from the airport took us through cornfields and pastures with grazing cattle, which offered a sense of familiarity to this foreign place.

The buildings are simple and brightly painted, and a steady line of people were walking and riding bikes on the red dust paths paralleling the road. The poverty is obvious - rows of bathroom-sized clay huts speckled the surrounding countryside with women cooking over outdoor firepits. Despite their poverty, the people here seem to be happy. People stroll in pairs smiling, and even those alone have a spunk to their step that I can recognize from our taxi.

After passing through two guarded gates, we entered a quaint compound with several buildings, called IU House. The landscape is lush and welcoming. Even the house dogs smiled and trotted along to check out the new guests. After greeting the some of the staff, I was shown to my temporary room for the rest of the week. I'm in the servants quarters of one of the buildings with a mosquito-netted bed and teeny bathroom a few steps away from my door. My door abuts the back of the house of the medical director & his family, whose outgoing children (Bella, Ava, Basil, and Clementine) greeted me with their small dog. Next week, it's off to the student hostel, which I'm told is not as accomodating as the IU house.

The jet lag finally caught up to me, so I took a nap before eating lunch and touring the hospital with the medical director, an oncology fellow from IU named Dr. Matt Struther. I'll talk more about the wards after I begin working there tomorrow morning. For now, I'm catching up with the other 4th year medical students who have been here the last month. They've graciously included me on an excursion this weekend to Naivasha: Hell's gate National Park, which supposedly is one of the two national parks that allows you to walk and bicycle through it, rather than be in a vehicle. (http://www.kws.go.ke/hells-gate.html)

Tonight is dinner-out night at the IU House, where everyone goes into town to a restaurant rather than home-cooked meals at the compound. The fare this evening is . . . Chinese :) We'll see how the Kenyans do Far East cuisine!