3 Midwives and 2 nurses on motorcycles!!

After the morning of immunization clinic and a great lunch of rice and beans and some leftovers, We all wanted to go do some home postpartum visits.

They have never been able to do home visits for the postpartum moms , because there is not enough staff, but checking on the babies and moms is so important. In a low resource country like Africa, so many babies die needlessly because no one is checking to see if they are gaining weight or if the mom has a fever that we could figure out the source.

So off we go! The roads are awful so the motorcycle which they call "boda boda" here. In Kenya they were "peaky peaky's" is really the best way to get around. We hired a few drivers and climbed aboard with our scale, newborn pulse ox, blood pressures cuff etc. This was a first for me to be on a motorcycle, but this whole year has been full of "firsts".

No helmets, and normally I might be pretty scared, but in this case we went pretty slow and I think we only saw three or four cars, several other motorcycles , 100's of chickens, maybe 12 goats, and probably hundreds of people. Ladies walking with big loads of something on their heads. Maybe another boda boda loading up lumber. Like regular full size lumber!

You pass by lots of naked toddlers and mothers bent over at the waist doing their laundry. Old ladies sitting in the yard cutting green beans and ladies out hoeing their gardens. You always see well dressed ladies with their colorful outfits. Lots of banana trees/ matoko trees. The dirt is very red and the road looks more like a river bed with the rain making drainage through the middle of the road. Little children walking right next to the road. I think that was the hardest part, being scared for tiny kids walking by the roads. The vehicle would get so close. There will be a butcher with his meat hanging off his cart, nothing covering it, or a stand of someone selling chicken or chapati.

As we pass the kids yell out "mazunga's" and they wave with a big smile on their face. As we went through a town, the driver was getting teased for having 2 jaja's on his bola bola. (jaja is grandma or old ladies)

It's mostly hot here and at times it's really hot!!! Then it rains and things cool down for a bit. So beautiful and green! There are very few misquotes right now, but we have to take malaria medicine, because there is a lot of malaria here!

Houses are make of homemade brick. You commonly see people making brick out of the red dirt and then they bring it to someone in the neighborhood that can bake them. So although most houses are small, they are sturdy. Most people hang out in their yard though, not in their houses. One African came to American and asked where all the people were.

This lady was so happy that we came to her house! She was hugging us all and so happy! She had some older children too, we asked why they are not in school and she said they couldn't afford it.

The love we showed through those home visits was worth it all, but we also found one family had worms and the baby wasn't grinning weight and one mom had an infection and went to a clinic where they had seriously over medicated her. So grateful for our adventure today that was a blessing to all of us!