[I had notes on my daily activities in Kenya stored on my iPod, which had been out of commission for the past few weeks due to repair after an unfortunate incident (see Day 3/May 29). Now that it's back in action, I can finally give some account of events that took place May 28-June 22, 2010.]

Day 1/May 27: After a 19 hours of flying, not including layover time, I arrive at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. My luggage does as well, supposedly, but it’s nowhere to be found. A sign at the airport says “Smile, you’re in Kenya.” My normal reaction would be been to smile, and perhaps take a picture of my travel companion, Safari Pooh, with the sign. Alas, SP is in said MIA luggage, thus I am in no mood to smile. I don’t use this phrase very often, but my only sentiment can be described as “FML”. The upside is that I somehow had the foresight to pack overnight toiletries, some spare clothes (that wouldn’t fit in my suitcase), and 48 kids Clif bars* in my hand luggage. The downside is that, well, I am luggage-less. [*My main thought when packing travels snacks is "What would I need to survive if I were lost in the wilderness?" Apparently kids' Clif bars is my fuel of choice in survival mode.]

Day 2/May 28: Since I am the first of my group to arrive in Nairobi, I spend the day solo wondering where my luggage could be and checking out the hotel TV channels. One channel shows nothing but people dancing 24/7. Not just dancing, but dancing in front of random superimposed (over that blue screen) backgrounds like ones you see in karaoke places. Hips gyrations in a babbling brook? Why of course! Tribal boogie on a giant flower petal? Coming up at 1:15pm! A couple channels over, I find a show called “Desperate Singles”. Is this the Kenyan version of Jersey Shore/Real World? If only American shows were this honest and forthright about their content. The rest of the group arrives in late afternoon; I proceed to introduce them to Kenyan television entertainment.

Day 3/May 29: We visit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust where they raise orphaned baby elephants and rhinos. The elephants are pretty darn cute, but an equally interest attraction is the large group of Kenyan kindergarten kids also visiting the center. All neatly dressed in uniforms, they gently push and shove to be in the front, where they are both terrified of and fascinated by the baby elephants only a few feet away. Babies watching babies – I feel old, even by elephant standards. The white tourists (and 1 Asian – yours truly) take as many pictures of the human young as the animal young. Later in the day we also visit a Nakumatt, the Kenyan equivalent of Wal-Mart, to stock up on necessities. While in the fitting room of a nearby clothing store (to remedy my shortage of clean clothes, or any clothes, for that matter), my iPod touch casually slips out of my pocket and onto the hardwood floor. Of course it happens on the only time I don’t secure it in my purse. I am now luggage-less and unbroken-iPod-screen-less. Later, while stepping back into our van, I ram my head into the sharp corner of a horribly placed first-aid kit. I thought first-aid kits are meant to save people, not possibly seriously injure them, but what do I know? I’ll let your imagination run wild on the string of very, very foul language that ensues.

Day 4/May 30: It’s Sunday and we attend church with J, a Kenyan working for our school. Mavuno Church (meaning “harvest” in Swahili) is a large church of mostly young professionals with multiple televised services. I’ve never attended a mega-church in the States, but being one in Kenya is an interesting experience. The programs, the lingo, the music – everything is eerily similar to the typical contemporary American church. The only immediately noticeable difference is the amount of dancing involved. I look towards the back in the AV production area and see a white guy with short, spiky blond hair, black t-shirt, and rectangular dark-rimmed glasses – typical look for an American AV guy. Seriously, where am I?! We talk with someone from the church after service, and she tells us that the church is planning to construct a multi-million Shilling auditorium to accommodate the large number of service attendees. I’m conflicted about this news (as a possible sign of the Western mega-church culture). Nevertheless, I’m glad to have experienced the service and am overwhelmed by the warmth and hospitality of everyone we meet.

I really like this picture. Don’t worry, this isn’t some lame self congratulation for an underwhelming photographic achievement. I like it because it captures a moment when it especially struck me that we ain’t in Kansas no mo’, Toto. (Not that we really needed reminders of where we were…) Margaret, the woman who started House of Hope, sent us 4 Americans students to a nearby public school so we could talk to the students about some health topics and get a better pictures of the local community. On the way, we crossed paths with these 2 girls, each no more than 12 years old. They had likely walked many kilometers of unpaved road to bring back water that might, or might not, be safe to drink for their family. I had always heard of people needing to walk far distances for potable water, but something about seeing these girls made an impression on my mind. My immediate reactions were 1. that we were ungrateful punks for complaining about the 30-minute walk to the school (it was hot…) when we weren’t even carrying jugs of water on our backs, and 2. that their lives probably make the lives of most girls their age in the US (my life, even, at the ripe old age of 23) look like complete farce. I couldn’t decide what to do with these thoughts, except to quit complaining about the heat at the moment. Even now, I still don’t really know what to do about reaction numero dos. Maybe sharing this snapshot with you is part of trying to make sense of it all…

A while ago we got on a discussion about how to figure out “God’s will for your life”. I cringe at that phrase. There’s something so burdensome, unforgivingly authoritative, so…church-y about that it that I have to do the finger quotation marks every time I use it, lest anyone think that I, with all my postmodern and irreligious thoughts, would be caught seriously using such a phrase. People threw out their various 2 cents, myself included. I think I said something about “doing what you love and what’s meaningful to you, and you will find God in it.” I don’t know; there was more elaboration and it sounded pretty good to me at the time. And then someone said that “God’s will” (there I go again, with the quotation marks) isn’t a destination; we’re continually living in God’s will. Our day-to-day lives and interactions, the decisions we arrive at and turn away from, the relationships we make and break – God’s brought us to all of it. I find that incredibly beautiful and profound. Too often I hear “God’s will” spoken about with such finality, as if one day there will be a booming voice or little tugs on your heart strings, and you’ll suddenly know exact where and who you should be. Does that mean a profession? A place? A person? So what am I suppose to do in the meantime? I love the thought that God’s invited us not to a destination, but to a journey and a way of life that is lived out with small glimpses of redemption and reconciliation, contributing to the grander story that he’s crafting.

I know I keep promising different people that I would eventually get around to writing, but as it turns out, the best motivation for me to write is a long list of lectures and readings that I haven’t done for school. (Big surprise there.) That, and the 12.5% ABV dessert beverage I’m currently consuming. (Big surprise #2? Liquid courage/kick in the pants, hah.) Regardless, the point is that I’m here. Writing. Finally.

Let’s do a bit of a recap, in reverse chronological order.

This morning I got in touch with my inner youthfulness by showing 11 high schoolers “what med school is like.” This essentially meant that I fell asleep alongside them through a couple lectures and asked them a lot of medical questions to which they didn’t really know the answers. I wasn’t just being cruel with the questions or on a power trip; I swear we were suppose to do it. (Okay, it felt pretty good being the question asker instead of the dumbstruck-face-giver for a change.) Welcome to my life, kids. If you’re ever in the position to teach high schoolers the physiology of diabetes, forget about it. I especially enjoyed the part when, after our Dean of Admissions gave a 30-minute talk about med school admissions (MCAT, taking classes like organic chem and biochem, etc… basically things you worry about in college.), one of the students asked, “So… what are we suppose to get on our SAT?”  Dean of Admissions: “Umm… I don’t know. Do the best you can?” Which roughly translates to “No one will give a hoot about your SAT the second you walk across a stage in a goofy cape and square cap.” [Side note: it's funny that our lives can be divided neatly into inscrutable but powerful acronyms of standardized tests: TAKS, SAT, MCAT, USMLE.] To be young and worry only about the SAT! Oh fleeting youth!

5 hours later, I was compensated with 50 bucks for being a glorified babysitter – not a bad gig at all. Admittedly, I was pretty skeptical about having to deal with high schoolers – I told E that if any of them gave me any sass or some too-cool-for-school crap attitude, I would open a can of whoop-ass on them. (Maybe not physically, but emotionally? Intellectually?) Fortunately for everyone, the kiddos were good kids and gave me some hope for the state of American teenagers. (They followed my rule of not mentioning anything related to “Twilight”. However, one of them did bring up the Jonas brothers… I chose to overlook it and blamed it on the 8-year-old diabetic patient in our discussion case. Fact I learned: Nick Jonas has diabetes. Fact I did not learn: Who the other JoBros are and why they’re famous. I may look “18, no more than 19″, but I have the Disney channel knowledge of a 68-year-old curmudgeon who could give a rat’s ass.)

[Rewind some more.] This past weekend, I had the great pleasure of watching Despicable Me. If you haven’t seen it and are planning to, stop watching the trailers/clips! My initial response to “Let’s watch Despicable Me” was “Despicable what?” Not that my fellow moviegoers did not enjoy the movie, but after a discussion over some delicious Chipotle, it was decided that watching too much of the trailers/clips will reveal too many scenes as to render the experience to be less than maximal satisfaction. Whoever first said “Ignorance is bliss” is a genius.

Most importantly, can I make clear how awesomely delicious I think Chipotle is?! The nearest Chipotle to my current location is 45 minutes away, and this distance has been bumming me out especially much lately. I’ve had some serious gustatory delights in my 23 (not 18, you high schoolers) years of life, but there’s a special place in my heart for Chipotle. Say what you will about chain restaurants blah blah blah (I’m one of them haters), but those chicken burrito bowls just make me weak in the knees. </love ode to Chipotle>

So I was gonna get around to my activities this past summer, but man, look at the time!

I’m a believer in the power of words – that eloquently and beautifully composed ones can move you at a particular time and evolve with you so that they are infused with new layers of meaning each subsequent time you encounter them. One of these instances is this. I’ve been meaning to write something about Kenya (and I will still), but re-reading the sermon “The Weight of Glory” just blew my mind about the way I thought about the people and stories – both the beautiful and the heartbreaking – I encountered there.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

- taken from C.S. Lewis’ “The Weight of Glory“

Things I have learned:

- Best/Cheapest breakfast tacos/hole-in-the-wall in Galveston = La Estacion. Of course, my biggest revelation would be about food. My faculty facilitator treated our small group out for lunch here, thereby sealing his status as my favorite faculty member. (My loyalty/favor is easily bought with good food, in case you’re interested in attaining similar status.) Dr. C and La Estacion, where were you the first 7 disappointing months of my medical education? If you’re interested in visiting La Estacion, there isn’t an actual sign on the outside; look for pictures of an astronaut next to a palm tree next to a train. (If there is a theme in the window decoration, it’s completely lost on me.)

- Sometimes you have to sort through a lot of headache-giving, hypertension-inducing, high-strung people to find some real gems to save you from the insanity of it all. (Non-med school people are also highly instrumental in the restoration of sanity.)

- Eye twitches are generally benign — good thing because I was starting to get real worried about the one that wouldn’t go away in my left eye for weeks… Studying brain tumors at the time definitely didn’t help to alleviate my paranoia.

Things I still have not learned:

- How the hell I will get through second year. Around February of second year, there’s a kick-off party for board exam preparation (“Step 1″ of 3), which is essentially a not-so-subtle hint/kick in the pants for you to start devoting most waking hours to studying. The word on the street is that if they – the elusive puppet masters pulling the strings our medical education – don’t think you have a good chance of passing the exam (i.e. you score poorly on practice exams), they’ll ship you off to some camp in Iowa for a few months where you pay thousands of dollars for them to make you study and learn everything, lest you fail the real deal and skew the school’s Boards passing rate. This is all hearsay so far, but second years tell me that there have been a few students who didn’t study enough, then mysteriously disappear for a while. (I’d like to imagine second year as a Vaudeville show, then a cane yanks someone off stage because they suck. Except here they yank you off, and you pay them an exorbitant amount of money. Hey, I didn’t say the logic was perfect.) It’s never a good sign when it’s past midnight on a Friday/Saturday, and you see MS2s still studying. The future does not look bright for yours truly…

- How to stay awake during 8am (gave up on that) 9am (that wasn’t happenin’ either) 1pm (hey, cut me some slack–it’s after lunch) lectures.

- On a more serious note, how the health care/insurance system really works. However, this story gives me heart that good, albeit slow, changes are coming our way. (The fact that it was ever okay for insurance companies to unilaterally cancel policies once the policyholders actually got sick blows my mind, and not in a good way.) Power to the little people! *fist pump*

Oh, I guess I also picked up a few things about medicine…

Sorry to disappoint, gentle reader (that would be mostly you, S), but school’s been riding me like a city-mouse college student on her first John Deere, so I’ve been resorting to cop-out posts. Unfortunately, this is another one of those cop-outs, but it’s a really good one because the link is stellar. Behold: Shit My Dad Says. The content is exactly as the title implies. A sample:

“Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.”

As I am well known for my maternal instincts, this website especially resonated with me. I can only hope to someday be as wise (and crass?) as Papa Halpern. (And let my children know if my grandchildren are a let-down. “Wow… I hope she’s funny.”)

For your enjoyment: Shit My Dad Says

p.s. In case you haven’t gathered, there’s some explicit language involved. Viewer discretion is advised.

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous, that you realize just how much you love them.”
— Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

via Slaughterhouse 90210

p.s. Please excuse the constant theme change; my indecision is pathological.

Since the school did not deem spring break to be a necessary part of medical education (an erroneous assumption), I’ve taken the liberty to instate my own spring break, starting…. now. Greetings from Gypsum, Colorado! Time to hit the slopes tomorrow, Shaun White-style. (Please say a quick prayer that I don’t break any limbs in my Double McTwist 1260 attempt. And by “Double McTwist 1260″ I mean slowly making my way down the green circle slope, most likely spouting obscenities and trying not to wipe out innocent bystanders, such as 7-year-olds fearlessly zooming by… Damn young’uns.)

Auf wiedersehen, G-town. See you next Tuesday!

I think it’s pretty safe to say that my purchase of Safari Pooh at Disney World circa 2003 was a sure sign that I will one day go to Kenya to try to do something useful. No? You don’t think so? Well, let’s just agree to disagree then.

I’ve been toying with the idea of taking Safari Pooh with me to Kenya, a la the Traveling Gnome, so that the accoutrement he’s been wearing for the past 7 years (at least) will not have gone to waste. (Canteen? Check. Safari hat? Check.) Will I look like the ignorant, culturally insensitive American that I am? Possibly. But that’s a risk that I just might be willing to take.