We were bound to have a tougher day and that came
today.
During the night the rainy season officially started with a
big storm, complete with rain, thunder, lightning and some serious wind. We lost power, which caused Grace to
wake up because she was so hot, which caused Noah to wake up because he always
wakes up when she screams. From
2:30 to 4 am Grace was in our bed, where we were hot and sticky and not
sleeping. At 4 am the power came
back on and we persuaded her to sleep in her own A/C. Even though the power went out again at 6 am, she managed to
sleep until 8. But I was tired
from all the opening and closing of windows (more labor intensive in our house
than you would imagine) and coaxing of children. We should now have a few weeks of rain and then a cooler
season starting in April.
When Grace officially woke up, she complained of stomach
pains. Her complaints worsened
along with her symptoms. Noah has
had diarrhea since Thursday (after his brief fever) and she started with it
today. By noon, we were at the
doctor’s clinic. A blood test*
indicated that Noah just has a virus, which he has seemed prone to his entire
life, but Grace actually does have a bacterial infection and was started on
antibiotics. We also learned that
Noah’s “heat rash” is really a fungus.
Awesome. I did like the
doctor, a German lady, and thought she was good with the kids. Obviously trained in tropical medicine,
she knows her stuff. But the
clinic is not just for kids and is pretty much the only place for anyone to go,
so it really busy with lots of waiting.
I guess that’s just something we have to get used to. At least it is only 3 minutes away,
unlike our 20-minute drive to Dr. Nesbitt in Nairobi. I am hoping that both kids getting sick the first week is
not indicative of how often they’ll be sick in the next few years.
The reality of living here is setting in a bit more, as the
doctor told me, “You’re not in Nairobi anymore!” She was referring to the water and how we have to be WAY
more careful because the water is just full of parasites and bacteria. We thought we were being careful, but
somehow Grace got infected in just a week of being here so obviously we weren’t
careful enough. We are trying new
strategies now, and we are probably going to install a fancy water filtration
system in the house to help us keep vigilant.
When we got home from the doctor’s office, our generator was
working! Mr. S’s son came to tell
me that he bought a certain amount of diesel for it but that I should buy more
because who knows how long this outage will be and it is already
dwindling. I left the sick ones
home with Rose and brought one of the shamba boys, Emmanual, with me to search
for diesel (something I never actually had to do in Nairobi, even though lots
of my friends had to do it). The
gas station I went to was out of diesel so I ended up going right back
home. This was an interesting car
ride because Emmanual doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Kiswahili (unless
we just wanted to say and goodbye to each other over and over again). We were pretty quiet. At home Mr. S’s son knew another place
to try so he came with me this time and taught me how to go about buying diesel
for one’s generator. Never
something I thought I would know how to do, but lets it add it to my
expat-resume. When we got home, he
had the boys poured the diesel into the generator, but they spilled some which
caused a shut down and now it is not working exactly as it should. Of course! So tomorrow the company will come back. PRAY that it gets us through the night
because it seems there is no end in sight to this power outage.
Before and after the diesel drama I made two different trips
back to the doctor with samples from the kids. So it was kind of a crazy day. Thank God for Rose.
Both kids in bed now, neither feeling 100% great but hopefully on the
mend. And I am hoping tomorrow is
less eventful.
LMW
*Note the difference between G & N, each getting the
same finger-prick blood test. G cried
before, during and after for about 5 minutes in total. Very dramatic. When the lab guy pricked Noah’s finger
he smiled and giggled. It was the
highlight of my day I think!
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