Kenya Day 6

I was told to be ready for 6:30 and therefore made it out of bed just after 5:30 to shower, get breakfast and read. It turned out that we left after 7:30, which meant I could have delayed my breakfast as I knew later in the day I would be hungry. I was travelling to a small village 44km outside Kisumu to provide medical aid to hundreds of people who couldn’t afford to get treatment in a hospital.

We would be working with an Australian charity called Hands of Hope who had provided the drugs etc. A number of doctors, dentists and nurses had been organised to give the villagers a proper assessment. I started the day in the Pharmacy dealing out scripts although most of the people could only speak the local language ‘Luo’ and I was forced to rely on the nationals to translate. We stayed in the village for around nine hours and saw to over 1500 people – a successful day!

The charity consisted of eleven Australians who were all around my age so it was nice to have a different source of conversation and I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Having contact with other internationals makes the culture shock a little easier as I was able to share my experiences and difficulties. The Australians would be moving into my apartment the following week for ten days and I am excited about this due to the fact it will act as another source of company.

I was happy to take this opportunity on my day off and be of some use because I have come here to serve people and that is in no way confined to legal practise. Today I feel happy and very much appreciate this experience – one never really grasps the difference between the UK and Africa until they see it with their own eyes. Most people here earn enough to cover the basics and anything else is unknown. And when I say basic, I mean mostly substandard of how we see life.

I arrived back at the apartment around 9pm and made a banana sandwich which was a taste of home, before climbing under the net.