First Expedition to Nutrition

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 12.12.35 PM

Children at the Lishe Bora Mtaani Nutrition Centre
Image via Carolina for Kibera

It is Friday morning, and I am walking an unfamiliar route along the Kenya-Uganda railway that bisects Kibera. A big, jovial man named Francis is acting as my guide this morning, chatting with me and stopping to greet various friendly faces along the way. Francis is a Community Health Volunteer with CFK, who goes out into the village of Kianda and educates households about proper hand washing, hygiene, and maternal and child health. He was chosen for this role because he is a prominent and well-respected member of the local community – “I’ve lived in Kibera for 30 years,” he tells us proudly. The Community Health Volunteers also assess the nutritional status of children under five, and refer those who may be malnourished to the CFK Nutrition Centre, where we are headed now.

The building is a one-story wooden building with two offices, three playrooms, and a kitchen around the back. We walk into the closest playroom, where about fifteen young children between the ages of six months and three years are waiting for me. A nutritionist named Esther, wearing a large CFK logo-emblazoned apron, is setting up a scale to begin the children’s weekly weighing. She invites me over to help out. Many of the children are unable to stand, either because they are too young or because their developmental milestones have been delayed from malnutrition. Esther has me stand on the scale and hold the child in my arms. Meanwhile, Esther takes the child’s left arm and measured their mid-upper arm circumference – a tool that gives a good idea of how thin or “wasted” the child is. The information is recorded in a little notebook, and the process is repeated with another child.

The children spend the majority of the day in this little playroom, most of them napping away on large spongy mats strewn about. Other more adventurous ones go for strolls around the rest of the centre, or watch the educational children’s videos playing on the television. The day is interspersed with snack times, wherein the children are fed various therapeutic foods including Plumpynut, a peanut butter and sugar concoction to help them gain weight. They also get a big delicious Kenyan lunch of ugali, spinach, and chicken.

After lunch, a little girl named Isabella* who had been napping for most of the day woke up. Veronica, one of the centre’s early childhood educators, asks me to give her some porridge. I pick her up, and am amazed by how light she is. Her arms and legs are so small that I can wrap my entire fist around them. She looks like she’s about six months old, but to my shock, Veronica tells me that she is nearing her first birthday. Stunted growth is a very common effect of chronic malnutrition, and many of the children in the centre look much younger than they actually are. Isabella has a good appetite, though – she wraps her tiny hands around the cup and eagerly drinks all the porridge without any complaint.

Isabella’s mother stopped feeding her breast milk after two weeks, because of a pregnancy with another child. (In the mother’s culture, breastfeeding while pregnant is believed to be detrimental to the developing fetus.) Instead, she started feeding Isabella warm water and cow’s milk, which has led to her becoming underweight and suffering from multiple nutrient deficiencies. The hope is, though, that after the prescribed eight weeks in the in-patient program Isabella will be back at a normal weight. Furthermore, her mother will have a better idea of how to take care of her and her future sibling – the parents of the children enrolled in the program receive training sessions, where they learn about young child nutrition and how to keep their babies healthy.

The Nutrition Centre is a relatively recent initiative by CFK, having recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. Although the program has been touted as a success so far, they are still in need of a lot of help – mainly, with organizing the massive piles of data they have accumulated since the centre’s opening. That’s where I come in. Over the next few months, I will be organizing the data in the centre and tracking individual children’s progress, as well as creating documents outlining the procedures of the centre. These documents will help ensure the long-term success of the centre, and allow the CFK staff to more effectively care for children along their road to recovery.

Alright, and maybe I’ll end up playing with adorable babies sometimes, too.

*Name changed to respect patient’s privacy

Posted in ISL

First Expedition to Nutrition

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 12.12.35 PM

Children at the Lishe Bora Mtaani Nutrition Centre
Image via Carolina for Kibera

It is Friday morning, and I am walking an unfamiliar route along the Kenya-Uganda railway that bisects Kibera. A big, jovial man named Francis is acting as my guide this morning, chatting with me and stopping to greet various friendly faces along the way. Francis is a Community Health Volunteer with CFK, who goes out into the village of Kianda and educates households about proper hand washing, hygiene, and maternal and child health. He was chosen for this role because he is a prominent and well-respected member of the local community – “I’ve lived in Kibera for 30 years,” he tells us proudly. The Community Health Volunteers also assess the nutritional status of children under five, and refer those who may be malnourished to the CFK Nutrition Centre, where we are headed now.

The building is a one-story wooden building with two offices, three playrooms, and a kitchen around the back. We walk into the closest playroom, where about fifteen young children between the ages of six months and three years are waiting for me. A nutritionist named Esther, wearing a large CFK logo-emblazoned apron, is setting up a scale to begin the children’s weekly weighing. She invites me over to help out. Many of the children are unable to stand, either because they are too young or because their developmental milestones have been delayed from malnutrition. Esther has me stand on the scale and hold the child in my arms. Meanwhile, Esther takes the child’s left arm and measured their mid-upper arm circumference – a tool that gives a good idea of how thin or “wasted” the child is. The information is recorded in a little notebook, and the process is repeated with another child.

The children spend the majority of the day in this little playroom, most of them napping away on large spongy mats strewn about. Other more adventurous ones go for strolls around the rest of the centre, or watch the educational children’s videos playing on the television. The day is interspersed with snack times, wherein the children are fed various therapeutic foods including Plumpynut, a peanut butter and sugar concoction to help them gain weight. They also get a big delicious Kenyan lunch of ugali, spinach, and chicken.

After lunch, a little girl named Isabella* who had been napping for most of the day woke up. Veronica, one of the centre’s early childhood educators, asks me to give her some porridge. I pick her up, and am amazed by how light she is. Her arms and legs are so small that I can wrap my entire fist around them. She looks like she’s about six months old, but to my shock, Veronica tells me that she is nearing her first birthday. Stunted growth is a very common effect of chronic malnutrition, and many of the children in the centre look much younger than they actually are. Isabella has a good appetite, though – she wraps her tiny hands around the cup and eagerly drinks all the porridge without any complaint.

Isabella’s mother stopped feeding her breast milk after two weeks, because of a pregnancy with another child. (In the mother’s culture, breastfeeding while pregnant is believed to be detrimental to the developing fetus.) Instead, she started feeding Isabella warm water and cow’s milk, which has led to her becoming underweight and suffering from multiple nutrient deficiencies. The hope is, though, that after the prescribed eight weeks in the in-patient program Isabella will be back at a normal weight. Furthermore, her mother will have a better idea of how to take care of her and her future sibling – the parents of the children enrolled in the program receive training sessions, where they learn about young child nutrition and how to keep their babies healthy.

The Nutrition Centre is a relatively recent initiative by CFK, having recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. Although the program has been touted as a success so far, they are still in need of a lot of help – mainly, with organizing the massive piles of data they have accumulated since the centre’s opening. That’s where I come in. Over the next few months, I will be organizing the data in the centre and tracking individual children’s progress, as well as creating documents outlining the procedures of the centre. These documents will help ensure the long-term success of the centre, and allow the CFK staff to more effectively care for children along their road to recovery.

Alright, and maybe I’ll end up playing with adorable babies sometimes, too.

*Name changed to respect patient’s privacy

Posted in ISL

Akinyi’s Home Life

It has been a little over a week since I first stepped off the plane into the Nairobi sun, and many things in my life have changed as a result. I have begun to get used to being perpetually sweaty thanks to the 30-degree weather. I have begun to accept the fact that my mug in the morning will likely be filled with milky tea instead of coffee (although this acceptance hasn’t stopped me from seeking out caffeine wherever possible). I have begun adapting to communicating with my loved ones and scheduling interviews in accordance with an 11-hour time difference.

The biggest change, however, has been adjusting to my homestay. After living on my own for almost four years, being back in a house where I needed to answer to an authority figure was a bit of a shock. That being said, my homestay experience has been awesome so far, and I wanted to use this post to give some insights into my home life in Kenya.

On Sunday, our trusty cab driver Peter pulled up to my new home in Ayany, the so-called “middle-class” area of Kibera. From outside, the house looked pretty modest by North American standards, but was far and away more than I was expecting from a house in a slum. The building standing in front of me was a three-story grey stone home, with a ten-foot blue gate blocking the front door from sight. I lugged my ridiculously large backpack out of the trunk and was led up to the second floor apartment, where my new Kenyan mama was waiting.

“Mama Mary”, as I call her, was sitting in her living room watching music videos on TV in Swahili, but when she saw me standing in the doorway she leapt up with joy and ran over to envelope me in a huge, warm hug. “This is my new daughter!” she exclaimed to Otto with happiness. “Karibu, karibu. You know what ‘karibu’ means?” I replied with the standard, “Asante sana,” and she squealed, wrapping me in another hug. “Come, let me show you your new home.” The interior of the house was small but comfortable. The living room, where we had entered, was painted a bright orange colour. Two couches and two matching armchairs flanked the sides of the room. In the corner, next to the large TV, was a mini-shrine covered with trinkets and pictures of her family. Mama Mary pointed out the people in the pictures excitedly, and told us that her son and grandson would be coming over to visit later. I had a bathroom all to myself, and a shower with hot water – an amenity I had definitely not expected in Kibera. My room faces the east of the house, with two twin beds framed by mosquito nets, a huge closet, and a window overlooking the rooftops of Ayany. “If you ever get sick of one bed, you can switch to the other!” Mama told me.

Mama Mary is absolutely hilarious, always joking around, dancing, or making silly faces. She is in her sixties, a retired primary school teacher who has lived in Kibera for many years. Her husband lives up-country, but she loves Kibera so much that she stayed here when he moved away for work. She loves watching ridiculous game shows on TV, and will teach me Swahili words during the commercial breaks. She constantly tries to urge me to eat more at meals, piling food onto my plate when she thinks I’m not looking. She also belongs to the Luo tribe, which is one of Kenya’s 42 diverse tribes and the third most populous in the country. In accordance with Luo tradition, Mama Mary gave me a name according to the time of the day at which I was born. Since I was born early in the morning, my name has become Akinyi (which she often calls me since, like most other people I’ve met, she has difficulty pronouncing my name). Last night, Mama had a friend over whose Luo name is also Akinyi. She was so excited to meet her namesake that she spent the rest of the night trying to convince me to marry her son.

One of the things I had been most afraid of before coming to Kenya was the food. Being a notoriously picky eater, I worried that I would spend the next four months with a growling stomach. This hasn’t been the case in the slightest – the food I’ve had so far has been absolutely delicious. I have fallen in love with a type of bread called “chapati”, which is like the heavenly lovechild of tortillas and naan. Other staple foods are ugali, a spongy, moist bread, and kale, whose name in Swahili means “push the week” since those with little income often eat it all week to fill their stomachs. We eat most of our meals with our hands, since, as Mama Mary says, “You have two perfectly good forks at the ends of your arms!”

However, one thing I haven’t quite gotten used to is being waited on constantly. It is very common in Kenya for people to have live-in help, and Mama Mary is no exception. She has a young Luo girl named Cynthia working for her who does the dishes, scrubs the floors, washes clothes, and takes care of pretty much any other task you can imagine. As someone who has been doing all of these things for myself for years, it’s been tough getting used to someone preparing my food and cleaning up after me. To help combat this, I’m trying to help out around the house as much as possible, but I think it’s just something I’ll need to accept while I’m here.

Overall, I am so happy to be living in a homestay during my time in Kenya. Despite the perceived lack of freedom, it is giving me a great introduction to Kenyan culture and customs. I have learned more about values and tribal relations through conversations with Mama than I ever could have through online research. Furthermore, living in the place where I am working, rather than just leaving the slum at the end of the day, has made me feel more connected to the community, which I think will improve my ability to contribute in the workplace. These are some of the reasons why I wanted to participate in this experience – it is not simply a volunteer trip. I am participating in a true cultural immersion program, and I think that I will come out of it with a better understanding for Kibera and the people residing within it.

Posted in ISL