To Hell and Back

1/30/2010
Day 23

So our time at Kijabe hospital has come to and end. We had a fantastic send off by the Kenyan interns Friday night. They hosted us for a feast of traditional Kenyan food (so good) followed by an international dance party. We filled our bellies with chapatti, rice, chicken stew, mixed vegetables, sukuma wiki (sauteed spinach and/or kale with onions and tomatoes – the literal translation is “push the week” because it is supposed to last you the whole week long). Then the music came on and we cut a rug to an eclectic mix of Nigerian salsa, Congolese Lingala, Kenyan music, Tracy Chapman, Elvis, Chris Brown, and Rhianna. My back was sore this morning from the effort! Of course we “took tea” later on in the evening and then said our goodbyes around 12:30 am. Those Kenyans know how to party. We were all looking a little bleary eyed at 7 am this morning when we arrived in the hospital for rounds.

After our morning rounding (business as usual on the peds team: new admission, very sick kids), we headed to Hell’s Gate National Park. It is near Lake Naivasha, about 1 hour away. The park is a geological spectacular of sheer cliffs and strange stone towers formed by past volcanic activity. It felt a little bit like the Grand Canyon meets northern California meets Africa. We rented bikes and rode 8 km to a ranger’s station where we descended into the gorge. Along our bike route (a “road” of partly rocks, partly sand – a challenge for even an experience cyclist, not that we are, and also made more interesting by the dilapidated, tread bare tired mountain bikes) we saw zebras, impala, buffalo, waterback, and baboons. The scenery was awe-inspiring.

At the ranger’s station we paid for the “medium” tour of the gorge (the long being 3 hours, medium being 2 hours of hiking) and headed down into the depths with our Maasai guide. The gorge was gorge-ous, but about a quarter of the way into our hike we were informed by our guide that we’d have to remove our shoes, wade through stagnant pools of water knee-deep, and hike barefoot the rest of the way. To be clear, we weren’t exactly informed but more simply shown where to leave our shoes. The rest of the hike to a cave was a barefoot scramble up rocks and tree branch ladders, through pools of water and over mud strewn with thorns and monkey scat. Both Julie and I simultaneously wondered if our trek was more painful than childbirth. The dramatic scenery was a bit dimmed by my constant fear of tropical water borne disease I was contracting, while Julie was preoccupied with the terror of breaking a bone. Both Ben and Matt hadn’t a care, though admitted the experience was most certainly some form of Wazungu torture.

We made it to the cave and back relatively unscathed (I’m sure it’ll be at least 3-4 weeks for whatever parasites I have now to incubate). Then we hiked along another part of the gorge (with shoes – seemed a real piece of cake after the barefoot jaunt) to hot springs. Our group was a little shaken by the whole experience, but we made it back to tell the tale. We are now back home in Kijabe after a dark drive home (our first – even scarier than driving during the day as you can imagine), exhausted, sunburned, and ravenous, though much richer for the experience. Tomorrow is another big day – Mt. Longonot anyone? I sure am glad the blood bank didn’t want my blood (turns out I’m AB positive, and AB blood here is rarely used). I definitely used my red blood cells today! On to the next adventure….