Have you ever wondered how your actions have impacted people? People you’ll never see again? I do. I wonder it all the time. Did I have a positive impact? Did I scar them for life? Gosh, I hope not. But, it happens. How about how others have impacted you, or what you thought was an innocuous event, turned out to be a bit more impactful? The above painting was purchased from a man my husband and I met while doing some work in Kenya. It had all started when we donated some money to our church for the building of a well in a remote area of Northwest Kenya our church had visited. If I remember correctly, there were about five couples that joined that effort. A year or two later, we were encouraged to visit this area to ‘see’ the well. We were told it was important to the local people. We thought it was a lot of money to spend to travel half way around the world to see a well. We thought maybe we should donate that money to the village for the school that was there, or for food. It seemed extravagant to us. Not that we didn’t want to meet the people and see Kenya, but to go over to see a well was a different story.
Eventually we set off with a small group from our church. We saw the well. It was pretty impressive in that it was solar powered and was contained in a small hut that someone slept in each night to prevent any thievery. That well, we were told, supported an entire community. People would walk miles just to get fresh water. We were told the well had already saved countless lives by providing clean water. The thought of walking miles to obtain water had never crossed my mind as a westerner from the US. Impact. That trip was the beginning of a long journey for us with a small Kenyan community. While we were there, we came across a man one day in a nearby village who was an artist. A year before, one of the men on our current trip, Micky, had been to this area and met him. Micky was also an artist. Micky would draw on a white board for the people as a bible story was taught. One of my fondest memories was seeing Micky sitting on a bench under a tree surrounded by children, drawing away then quickly erasing to draw the next scene of a story. The kids were captivated. I often wonder how those children were potentially touched by those drawings? Did it make a difference in anyone’s life? It did mine to see this man so easily draw stories out while they were being told by another. Bringing them to life in such a beautiful way. It was his gift and he was using it in a far away land. Am I willing to use my gifts no matter where I find myself? Impact. This year, Micky had brought with him some artist supplies for the man I mentioned earlier, having met him on a previous trip. I forget his name now. Micky handed him those simple artist supplies so he could continue his trade of making pictures. His artwork was beautiful to me. One of them is pictured above this essay. To be in such a different land amongst a different culture - where there was usually no electricity, rarely running water nearby, never in a home in these rural areas and to see the gift someone had received to draw or paint, practiced so beautifully was powerful to me. Impact. My husband and I purchased quite a few pieces of his artwork. This one currently hangs in my studio.
We also met a couple that was part of that community. He was a pastor, she a nurse. I was an oncology nurse who had also done med/surg nursing. I was interested in her practice. She went to rural villages providing health care. She was looking for a financial partner so she could continue her work. The government would give her vaccines for the children if she could prove she had the financial backing to continue her work on a monthly basis. She said she’d done the paperwork and was already to get started. My husband and I agreed to financially back them. That was the first year we went…the ‘well’ trip. A couple years later we went back to the remote villages she was visiting. We had brought a bit of a medical team. Three nurses, including myself. My husband and the husband of one of the other nurses, for crowd control. You see, when you pull into a remote village in Kenya with any source of help, people will walk for days to meet you to get help for what ails them. We’d also learned our program we’d supported had such an impact that food had become an issue because more children were living due to the medical care they were receiving from the monthly visits of the nurse and her medical team. Impact. We set up shop with the male nurse, Alan, seeing the men, me seeing the women and our friend, Jill, who was a former NICU nurse working with the children. In the US, nurses don’t diagnose. We’re technically not allowed to do so. We may be correct in our assessment, but it is always the physician who offers up a diagnosis, right or wrong. But, here in remote Kenya, we were doing the diagnosing. I was way out of my league in a country that has different diseases I’d never encountered and only a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff for tools. Many had worms. Some had injuries that were basic first aid. Many of the women I saw had complaints of pain. You see, women are the ones that haul the water and the firewood on their heads, raise the kids, grow the food, feed their family etc. They literally do the heavy lifting. I wanted to diagnose them as overworked and prescribe a vacation and some yoga classes. The men had somewhat similar issues as far as worms and general first aid and yet, most were asking for Viagra. It is common custom there for men to have multiple wives, with subsequent wives being younger and younger.
We traveled quite a bit to get to these remote communities. We weighed children in scales hung in trees. One of the men in our group gave a woman who was convinced she was going blind, a pair of reading glasses. She began shouting and exclaiming it was a miracle! She had simply needed reading glasses to read her bible. Impact. Our friend the NICU nurse had a much harder time than Alan and I. I don’t remember the exact issue, but I believe there was a baby with a cardiac issue. This child would most likely die without medical intervention. Medical intervention available throughout the US and other more developed countries. This child most likely died simply because it was born in rural Kenya. Impact.
On another day, we were called to a small village. A young woman was in labor. They told us it had been a week. It just couldn’t have been. She had had no water because that was not part of the custom when in labor. She was wandering about looking exhausted and dazed. The Kenyan nurse took this young lady inside her own small hut to exam her. I stood nearby. She asked if I’d like to examine her. What? No! I was an oncology nurse. I’d never examined a woman internally, much less a pregnant woman to assess how many centimeters she was dilated. This young woman lay on the mud floor of her hut, her membranes having already ruptured. Everything in my western medical mind was screaming, “NO! This is not safe!” But, there it was right in front of me. The nurse had an old fashioned fetoscope, something I’d only seen in textbooks. She listened for the heartbeat. Then, she examined her. That was when I noticed her female circumcision. I held in my gasp. How on earth was she going to deliver a baby? I will never forget that moment. Impact. You see, the mothers circumcise their daughters before they get married. And, after they’ve removed the external genitalia, they sew them up ‘tightly’. The nurse told us she frequently had difficulty performing a simple exam on some of these young women. The nurse told us on the wedding night, a young girl/woman is usually held down and her first consummation of her marriage is more like a rape. It was determined this young woman would need a C-section and was taken off over the border to Uganda to the closest medical facility. When I turned from that hut, I saw her husband standing there. He looked to be about 70, but it’s hard to judge accurately when the life lived is so hard. At any rate, he had gray hair, was a bit stooped over with his dusty suit jacket hanging from his frail shoulders. I wept for the young woman, possibly still a teenager. She would never know the thrill of seeing her beloved approach her and have her heart skip a beat. No, she was chosen and had no choices at all. Many young women there don’t. I asked how she would get home. They told me she would most likely walk home with her baby after a short recovery. I pray they were telling me lies. Rural Africa is not always a friendly place. Impact.
While we waited at the missionary house for the Kenyan nurse to return with our vehicle, we experienced more unimaginable scenarios. One was of a young Kenyan woman asking me and Jill to help her baby. She was a very young woman and didn’t speak English, so we used a male interpreter. She showed us her newborn’s bottom. It was covered in blisters. We were stumped. In a country where there are diseases we will never see, we were really lost. We asked her to show us where she lived so when the nurse came back, we could bring her to assess the baby. She turned and began walking towards her hut. She was two days post-partum and walked easily through the doorway. I am not a large person, more lanky than curvy. Jill is petite and we both had to turn sideways to get our hips through the door. That was when we saw a second infant laying on the ‘bed’ in this hut. She left this baby alone to come find us with the other baby. She had had twins two days earlier! She invited us in. This was when I sat and deliberately took in the moment. I was sitting somewhere in Northwest Kenya near the Ugandan border in a mud hut with a woman I didn’t know and her two infants on mud ‘beds’. No linens were observed. Maybe a pillow of sorts. One bed on one side of the small hut, the other one across from it. One was for her husband. Her larger bed was for her and all her children. She allowed us to hold her babies. There is a bond between women that transcends language and culture. We just sat there and smiled and I spoke possibly the only English words that baby would ever hear. I told her how precious she was, she was beautiful and I offered up a silent prayer for her life, knowing the chances she would go to school or experience a career or choose anything in her life, was pretty slim. Impact. I also understand the things I thought might be important for her may never be so to her. That’s what happens when we bring our culture and values with us. Sometimes they’re lost.
Soon after this incident, we were again at the missionary house when we saw a young woman approaching us with her toddler. She was seeking help. Her daughter had had diarrhea for days. Her daughter was listless. This is not a good thing in a place where we had no medicine or IV’s with us, as the nurse had taken the vehicle with the medical supplies to bring the young, pregnant woman to Uganda. Children can quickly get into trouble when they get dehydrated. I clearly felt like I was looking at a young one that may die soon. Jill, Alan and I began putting our heads together. Then Alan used his cell phone to get on the internet (Yup! I kid you not. No electricity or running water, but cell service…yes indeed) and find a recipe for homemade Pedialyte. We found sugar and salt and added it to clean, bottled water in its proper proportions. We were told the mother wouldn’t give it to her child because Kenyans know the value of clean water and might not trust ours was clean. We found some mango juice and added a tablespoon or two at the interpreter’s recommendation. Mom was able to get that little girl to begin drinking it. When we asked what she had been giving her daughter to drink, she showed us a green sippy cup so dirty, most Westerners would’ve thrown it away. She had been giving her daughter chai with this cup. Their chai is black tea, milk and lots of sugar and boiled all together, as I remember it. We cleaned the cup the best we could and gently tried to do some teaching on invisible things that can get into us through dirty cups and make us sick. We sat with that mom and within an hour that little girl had turned the corner and had perked up. We sat and talked via an interpreter to this thankful mother and beautiful daughter who promptly stood up and peed right there in front of us. No one responded. This is how things are in these areas. It’s simple in a beautiful way. Impact.
On a less serious note, we were staying in that old missionary house that an American had built years earlier. It was a two story home. It had windows with an occasional curtain but no screens. There was no running water. So, water had been drawn from the cistern for us to ‘bathe’ with. My husband and I were given a 5 gal bucket with some water and soap. We both went into the ‘shower room’ (I believe they did occasionally have running water in this house, but not this trip for us) and washed the important things you wash when you have 5 gallons between two people. The ‘toilets’ were outside. There was the long drop, as they’re called. This is a structure with two doors on it, for two different stalls and about a 4”-"6” hole in the dirt floor of each stall and two mud ‘rails’ running on either side of the hole. I couldn’t figure if you were supposed to stand on these or put your feet on the outside of them to prevent splashing on your ankles and feet. I think I would take the latter approach. When I say this was one of the grossest things I’ve encountered, I’m not joking. Let’s just say it looked like a blind caravan of people with dysentery went through and used the long drop. I guess I could say my college microbiology class and petri dishes came to mind. The other ‘toilet’ was a somewhat classic outhouse. It was a plywood structure with a plywood box inside with a hole in the top. Placed precariously on top of the hole was a regular toilet seat. It was white. There was something akin to a hanger holding some toilet paper nailed to the wall. The smell was as noisome as the long drop. Here, all I could conjure up were visions of deadly snakes like the ten step mamba and just as scary spiders lurking below in this hole. Have I mentioned I have true arachnophobia? Oh, dear Lord, it’s bad! So, being a rational woman, I decided I would not pee until we got back to our base…which would be the next day and included an 8 hour drive. There would be the hope the van would stop and let us out to pee. Women on one side, men on the other. My husband told me I was crazy. “I. Am. Not. Going. To. Pee. Out. There!” “OK”, was his reply. Then around dusk, I came to my senses. I was not going to make it. If I waited until dark, said snakes, spiders and quite literally lions may be roaming about if I attempted the ol’ tomboy pee behind a bush plan. Nope. I would have to venture into one of those two death traps. I elected to go to the plywood toilet. I begged my husband to come with me. He did but was adamant he would not be joining me in the outhouse. I got in there and was so freaked out in the fading light, I could not come to put my backside on that toilet seat. Every childhood nightmare and adult irrational thought was racing through my mind. “Oh gosh! I can’t do this!” I exclaimed from inside the death trap. “You don’t have too many choices, hon”, came the calm reply. So, I sucked it up, crawled up on top of that plywood box, crouched over the hole and took the best aim I could in the near dark. I thought I was going to die, but surprisingly, I survived. I’m not a squeamish, prima donna girly type. But you throw real world deadly spiders and snakes at me from the depths of a hole you can’t and don’t want to see in, well, yeah, I guess I’m a bit of a fraidy cat. We laughed. We then stopped and looked up into the now dark sky. The Milky Way was so bright in the expanse of the Kenyan sky, you could almost touch it. It is etched into my mind as one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever encountered. No light pollution. No Walmart or Home Depot off in the distance with the glaring lights of their parking lots blocking out the night sky. No, this was like nothing else I’ve ever seen before. Impact. I went to bed that night praying no mosquitoes with malaria would fly through our open windows.
After this part of our trip, worn out from long days of seeing throngs of people at the medical clinics, minimal food, unfamiliar customs, we headed out in the morning still impacted by the things we had seen. Some of us more deeply than others. Our friend, Jill, the NICU nurse was silent for the long drive. It was a lot to think so many people were relegated to a life that to us was incomprehensible, especially the women. That little baby with the heart issue…what happened to that little one? It seemed cruel to have to endure a fate like that just because of where one is born. There are questions in life that are hard to reconcile in our minds that often demand justice. All we could offer was care and compassion and prayers. Impact.
We ended our trip with a safari. It was a special treat that these trips didn’t normally do. I think God knew we maybe needed it for our souls. That afternoon we arrived at quite a posh safari lodging. We had heavy canvas tents with queen beds, running water and a hot water bottle tucked under the sheets before we retired for the night. Our only real instruction was to ensure you closed the tents tightly so the monkeys didn’t get in. We went on a late afternoon safari. I’m not sure I can find the words to describe what we encountered. Elephants, lions, zebras, leopards, giraffes out in the wild, just meandering about doing what wild animals do: hang out, sleep, check out their surroundings, eye us suspiciously and go back to their apparent lazy afternoon. Now, I know animals in this situation aren’t really lazy. They just aren’t rushed. They don’t have schedules as we know them. The landscape was expansive. The horizon off in the distance beckoning to explore what waited there. The gorgeous acacia trees, some of them looking like something out of Dr. Seuss were captivating against the late afternoon sky. They sky was turning towards evening with its rose colored streaks amidst a background of brilliant oranges, above still deep blue. It was striking. I sat with my mixed emotions from the days of medical clinics. My mind could not make sense of the beauty of this place and the stark reality of babies and others suffering simply because they were born here. The stunning beauty of what we were seeing, the smell of being outside amongst the grass and dust, the various smells being carried on the gentle breeze was intoxicating. We would go back to camp and have a wonderful dinner and a time of beautiful fellowship with those we’d spent the days with. What of that little baby, probably in its last few days or weeks? What of all the young girls that will not be able to go to school and are relegated to a possible life of being chosen by a substantially older man in exchange for some goats? Some girls are able to marry someone their age, but most will share that man with at least one other woman in the future. My heart was full of joy and grief at the same time. It was strange. I prayed and offered up a gentle question: How God? How can this be the way it is? Softly came the answer: Sweet child, I own all of it. I am in all of it. See the beauty and enjoy it. Hold those who suffer, knowing I know their plight and will never leave them. Love those in your path. I will take care of the rest. Impact.
Touching, poignant, moving,!
I loved reading about this trip! The way you write is so introspective, reflective and thought provoking...and the "IMPACT" points really drive that home....thanks again for another great essay!