Naivasha Clinic

The Kijabe Hospital has a small clinic in Naivasha. Naivasha is a town just west of Kijabe. It is near Lake Naivasha. The area has many large cut flower farms around it. The people of the area work on these farms. The farms are very similar to large greenhouse operations in the US. The majority of the cut flowers harvested here are flown out of Nairobi into Amsterdam (the location of the worlds largest flower auction) and then on to cities throughout the world. Many of the cut flowers sold in the US come from this area. HIV/AIDS is a real problem in this area. The Hospital has targeted this area because of this reason. During the post election violence in Kenya, Naivasha was very devastated. Many of the people have not recovered fully from the destruction and violence.
Throughout the year the Hospital has campaigns at various locations. These campaigns involve free exams, free prescription and evangelistic outreach. This past Thursday through Saturday there was one at the Naivasha Clinic. I volunteered to go on Thursday and Saturday. I did not have any preconceived ideas as to what to expect. We met at the Hospital on Thursday morning to travel to the Clinic. Naivasha is about 45 minutes away from Kijabe. As usual I had a full car of nurses, interns and clinical officers (similar to our Nurse Practitioners). When we arrived the crowds had already started to gather. We spent the first hour or so getting set up. The exam rooms were about the size of a bedroom. We put two desks in each room. There were a total of 6 rooms set up this way. Each room would have two patients in it at a time. We then sent up Coleman Tents around the area to be used as testing and counseling rooms. After the set up I was directed to the pharmacy to help fill prescriptions. The pharmacy consisted of a desk with several bottles of medicine stacked on it. I was working with two Hospital employees who had done this before. We filled prescription bags with medicine. Instead of bottles they use very small bags for dispensing medicine. We started with Amoxicillin 500mg tablets, putting 12 in each bag. 6,000 pills later we moved on to the 250mg tablets. If you’re wondering, Amoxicillin comes in a maroon and yellow tablet. I was looking forward to the 250mg thinking the color would change, it didn’t. Thankfully the next medicine was a different color. We did this all day.
I was looking forward to returning on Saturday, thinking that all the medicine would be dispensed and I would be assigned another duty. To my surprise they were still filling prescriptions. I was once again assigned to the Pharmacy. I was later told that because I was the accountant they thought I would be good at counting pills.
The gates were closed at noon on Saturday and the last patient received their prescription around 4:00. All those who helped the entire three days were very tired, yet they all joined together and danced to a few praise songs. If you ever visit you will see that most praise songs are accompanied with some sort of dance.
Over the three days there were over 3,000 patients seen by the Hospital Staff. The entire time the clinic was open there was a worship and praise team singing and sharing God’s word with those waiting. It is truly amazing to see how God draws people together for His Glory.

This was the Pharmacy set up. As you can see there are many people waiting for their medicine.

During the clinic mothers were able to get 2 kilos(approx 4.4 lbs) of porridge. The mothers here carry their babies on their backs in a piece of material called a canga.

This is the outside of the examination rooms. The rooms are in the background.

Here is where we filled the baggies. As you can see there were many bottles of pills to be counted.

This is the pharmacy from the outside.

This is the part of the evangelistic team. All through out the day the team sang and gave testimonies for those who were waiting.

Part of the outreach team distributed Bibles. Here is the area where the Bibles were being handed out. The people were very eager to get one.

This is also a picture of the Bibles being handed out.

Tents were set up to shelter the people from the sun while they were waiting.

More people waiting.