The Rongai Clinic

Today was yet another rainy day in what is supposed to be the dry season of Kenya! The red mud seems to flow from the most unlikely places. But today, besides the extreme traffic caused by the rain, was a great day. Leann and I took off for a town outside Nairobi to go visit a friend, Brenda, who works for Beacon of Hope. She is a nurse working at a clinic in Rongai. We pulled into the compound and was fascinated by how developed their facilities are! Brenda says that Mondays at their clinic are usually busy but today was not for some reason. They have a couple of departments including a VCT which counsels HIV positive patients and does testing for 50 shillings (about $.50). We got a tour of the clinic and the rest of the compound and was given a little introduction to the 6 year old organization which has grown extremely fast! They are a Christian-based organization mainly supported by churches in the States.

So we followed Brenda around and got to see her lance an eye-cyst which was not too bad haha. We also got to see their impressive pharmacy and lab. After meeting pretty much the whole staff, we were led to the VCT and asked if we could be tested for HIV! The reason we decided to do this is because if we are encouraging others to visit a VCT and get tested then we should be willing to do so as well. So we each paid 50 shillings, went into a counseling room together and got our fingers pricked. The test is fairly simple. They take some blood, stick it on a strip and if there is one line you are negative; two lines positive. After waiting in anticipation, with 99.99999% certainty we were not positive, we received our results: each with one single line! Bwana Safiwe...this VCT sees hundreds of HIV positive patients and is truly a blessing for those people and their families.









The last half of our visit there at Beacon of Hope was spent in the lab. Leann has some experience doing lab work and Jared, the technician allowed us to watch him perform urine analysis, whole blood tests, typhoid testing, and ulcer testing. He would draw the blood from patients who needed testing and then eventually gave us permission to test for certain conditions! Here is a picture of Leann looking at a slide of a TB positive patient. Here is also a picture of Jared giving us instructions. It was so much fun learning about how the machines work and what the results indicate! I realized how much I don't really know, but it was a great experience.
I am still praying about my future including nursing. The past couple of days I have been looking into maybe community health as a possible future career...but we will see. Thank you so much so for continual prayers! God is doing great things and I can't express how grateful I am to have this opportunity :) Sending much love to you all the way from Kenya!