The Imani Project: Kadzifitseni Clinic

September 17-18, 2012

The last two days we have been holding clinic in the village of Kadzifitseni (pronounced cod-zif-fits-enny) which translates to "go and hide" in English. The village is immediately next to the village of Pumwani (pronounced poom-wah-nee), which translates to "relax". I'm guessing that people on the run would come to Kadzifitseni to hide and when they successfully escaped their pursuers, they stayed and hung out in Pumwani to relax.

Kadzifitseni Primary School

Our start at Kadzifitseni continued a string of forgetfulness that is plaguing us. For three days in a row, we have travelled somewhere and forgotten something important at the hotel. On orphan day, a suitcase full of gifts was left under a bed, which took 45 minutes round trip to retrieve. On Sunday, Earline and Amy forgot to take a bag of medical supplies to visit Kitsao, a paraplegic orphan Earline sponsors, which took 90 minutes round trip to retrieve. At Kadzifitseni we forgot a bin with medicines and supplies, which took a two hour round trip to retrieve. Our dementia is costing us a lot of time.

Fortunately, we had two hours before the clinic started, as we set up and then taught the health kit classes and an AIDS class. We split into four groups again, with Cindy, Anya, Amy, and Earline teaching a class while I played photographer. It is interesting to see the difference from one village to the next. While people at Karimboni were very attentive and engaged in the instruction, the Kadzifitseni crowd was pretty stoic and seemingly unimpressed. Even when we took photos and tried to get them to smile, most just stared at the camera. But their eagerness to get the health kit bags shows that they appreciate having them!

Earline teaching a Health Kit class

Women who received their Health Kit bags

The medical complaints also are quite different here versus Karimboni. Karimboni seemed to be dominated by eliphantitis and swollen testicles. Although we are only a few kilometers from Karimboni, we had only a few reports of the parasitic swelling so common in Karimboni. On day 1 at Kadzifitseni, the theme of the day was chest pains and "pains around the waist". Day 2 was dominated by toothaches. Diane reported that in several cases she had, there was a really rotten tooth that needed to be pulled. On day 1, many people were anemic and needed iron. Diane prepared a few iron doses for day 2, and then had no anemia at all.

Some of the villagers don't have a good sense of what is relevant to their complaint. The first woman I spoke to on day 2 told us that she fell down while carrying firewood on her head, and it landed on top of her. Now she has chest pains…10 years after falling down. The next lady said she fell out of a tree and was stuck in the chest by a large branch. Now she has chest pains…17 years after falling out of the tree.

Some people have very serious problems, though. We had several people with jiggers -- sand fleas that burrow into the foot, lay eggs, and then burrow out when they reach the larval stage. This is a serious problem in many parts of Africa. Earline and Anya worked for over an hour to get out the worms and then dress the wounds.

A girl with many jigger wounds

Earline applying gentin violet, an antiseptic

Lots of people wanted to be seen, more than we could possibly see, of course. This trip we have a better story to tell when we have to stop seeing people. The medicines that the Imani Project has purchased are left with the community health workers, so the villagers will still be seen and get their medicine.

People waiting to be seen at the clinic

Kenyans do not use family names in the same way that westerners do. The second name is a tribal name, and so can be many different names. It is common for children in the same family to have different tribal names. That would make doing family history work a challenge! Henry has been telling me the translation of the people's names as they come through. Amani is a common name; it means "amen". We had two named Furaha, which means "happiness". Baraka means "blessings" and Zawadi means "gift". Some other names are a little stranger, such as Changawa, which means "At least". Kaingu means "a small cloud". And then there are names that make you wonder why parents choose them. Baya is a common name, but it means "bad". One woman was named "Mashaka", which means "problems". One girl had a last name of Mzungu which is the word for "white person". "White Person" would be a tough name for an African to have in middle school.

At each village, the Imani Project gives out corn flour to the children, but we have never seen this happen because we are always busy with the clinics in the afternoon. This time, Francis sent someone to fetch me so I could take pictures. When I arrived, a large group of children were sitting under a tree, and Francis had them say thank you to the Imani Project in unison (Asante, asante, asante, asante sana!" which is "thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much!") I got a video of them and photos.