Training Day

September 11, 2012

Today was Training Day, the day when the Kenyan Imani Project volunteers come to the hotel to be instructed on the activities of the next two weeks.  Because the bins of supplies didn't fly with us yesterday, we had to delay the start.  Without the supplies, we couldn't organize the medical supplies or prepare for assembling the health kits.  We were forced to enjoy a leisurely morning (against our wills, of course). 

All the bins arrived about noon, so our fears of not getting the hard-prepared supplies were relieved.  We had an hour to unpack a few things before the volunteers arrived.

We have about twenty Kenyan volunteers. Many that we worked with last year have returned, but there are many new ones, too.  It was good to see Henry, Jackson, Pheny, Helen, Constance, Jonathan, and the others again.

 

The Kenyan volunteers are assembled

Marlene greets everyone, with Fondo translating

 

Rodgers and later Francis gave their welcome statements, and all volunteers introduced themselves.  Marlene described the schedule of clinics and gave an overview of who would have what responsibility.  Francis went through all of the medications that had been purchased and explained their use and dosage. 

Francis, Marlene, and Fondo review the medications

 

I gave my contribution by photographing and videotaping throughout.  We took a break for an excellent meal cooked by Elvina.

 

Elvina serves the lunch

 

After eating, Cindy went through the TB training, Earline reviewed the diarrhea and ORS training, and Diane described all of the materials in the health kits that we brought.  (We decided that "health kit" made a better name than "first aid" kit, since the kit also contains the ORS spoon and two condoms.)

 

Cindy demonstrates how to wash hands to prevent spreading TB

 

Earline describes how to use the ORS spoon

Diane shows off a health kit drawstring bag

We then split everyone into two assembly lines and filled the cloth bags with the health kit supplies.  Because we were delaying in starting the training, we were fighting sundown to get them completed.   We almost made it, falling short by 30-40 before we shut down the assembly. What a great time saver it has been to have the volunteers assemble the bags!

Happy workers on assembly line 2

Handing off a bag on assembly line 1

Over 700 health kits are assembled!

We ran out of a few supplies, so we sat down to rest and worked to do a quality control pass through the health kits to remove duplicated items and ensure everything needed is in each kit. We were quite tired by the time we hit our beds!

 

(Happy to report no further animal incidents today…)