At last, our time in Nairobi came to an end for now. We would be back towards the end of trip, but for now, we were finished there. We were driving down to Makindu, a rural town in the Makueni County, south of Nairobi, situated on the Mombasa Road, about halfway between Nairobi and Mombasa. We were seeking out the Makindu Sub-County Hospital, a public hospital where we have contacts that we wanted to speak to, that are associated with JHPIEGO's Safe Surgery program.
The drive was nice, it took about 3 hours. The Kenyan countryside is noticeably very flat and open, with the occasional mountains on the horizon. We tried to see Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is just over the border of Tanzania, but it was too cloudy to see. The soil is also incredibly red, since it has a very high concentration of iron.
We stopped at a restaurant recommended by Eugene, and it was very nice. There were five stray cats hanging around our table as we ate, they seemed hungry, so we fed them a little bit.
After lunch, we arrived at our new hotel, the Hunter's Lodge, to drop our luggage, and then we continued on to Makindu hospital.
At the Makindu hospital, we met Dr. Mary Muthengi, an OB-GYN resident and Technical Lead of the Obstetric Safe Surgery in Kenya of JHPIEGO, and Sanyin Kikoli, a clinical manager at JHPIEGO. We met briefly with the hospital administrator to plan our visit tomorrow, and then we drove with Dr. Muthengi to meet the rest of our contacts at their hotel.
We met Dr. Daisy Ruto, an OB-GYN who is the technical director of OSS in Kenya at JHPIEGO, and Freda Nyaga, a manager of the OSS program in Kenya. We talked about our work and research thus far, and they explained what they have been doing and kindly offered us access to their resources and contacts for our research. We talked while we had tea and chapati. No matter how many times I have tea and chapati, I never tire of it, it is such a tasty bread, I need to find it back in the United States when I return!
Once finishing our tea, we returned to our hotel to call it a day. We will be in Makindu until Saturday morning, when we leave for Mombasa. But I know that we will have a lot to do here, and access to the JHPIEGO OSS team is going to be invaluable in our research and project. Makindu has left a great impression thus far, I can't wait to learn more here!