Exploring volunteer placements - MAKWK clinic

I will now backtrack a bit and let you know what we have been up to for the past couple of weeks:
I had mentioned we were linked with a new NGO (non-government organization) called UMaY (Uplifting Men and Youth) because our original placement, KENWA (Kenyan Women with AIDS), now charges volunteers to work there (?!?). The "issue" with UMaY is that they are so new, that they are not fully functional just yet. So what we did was spend a couple of days with 3 different organizations that have partnered with UMaY. The hope being that we would feel passionate about one of the placements and decide to stay with them for the duration of our stay.
On Thurs and Fri (FE 18 and 19), we helped out at a clinic in Korogocho called MAKWK (This is a swahili acronym, so I can't translate - we have decided that Kenya is the acronym capital of the world!!). The staff at the clinic are a group of caring and concerned individuals who just want to help. They work 10 hours a day - 6 days a week, and earn at most 5000 Ksh/month (= $65 USD). Most do not have any official schooling in the fields they are working, but have been trained by certified people.

Kevin worked in the office doing data entry with Marcy, Purity and Sandra - a great group of girls! MAKWK is trying to get all their patient information into a database system for better control. Definitely a step in the right direction!

Louise worked at the intake station with a nurse (Scolastica) who is more like a nurse practitioner or physician - there are no doctors at the clinic. She assesses, diagnoses and prescribes.

They called Louise "Doctora Mzungu" (the white doctor) and even had her doing injections!! When the patients knew english, then Louise would ask them questions and perform the assessment. Although she enjoyed the "promotion" to Doctora, she didn't enjoy giving injections and making little kids cry, so on Friday, she switched to the pharmacy. The pharmacy shelves are pretty much empty! Everyone gets Paracetamol (similar to Tylenol) and maybe cough syrup - it is a sad state of affairs.




I worked in the medical laboratory, transcribing test results into a ledger.

The lab technician (Maxmilla) wanted me to assist with the tests, but my 5 years of lab experience was doing chemical analysis - not biological - so I stuck to administrative duty (I was not terribly excited to work with "poop" and blood!) The majority of the patients were diagnosed with malaria, typhoid fever, cholera or worms (the last 3 being caused by consuming feces-contaminated water). The frustrating part about these illnesses, is that they can be avoided by just boiling water, but the majority of the people cannot afford to buy the fuel (coal or wood). Sadly, we were also told that many who can afford the fuel, just don't bother!


While we were there, we found out that every Wednesday afternoon, there is a young women/young mothers' group that gets together. Because Louise and I had brought male and female condoms (donated by the AIDS committee in Thunder Bay and the Sexual Health clinic in Acton), we offered to lead the next meeting (FE 24) and demonstrate the use of both condoms. The meeting was quite a success. Many of the women had heard of female condoms, but had never seen them. To be honest, neither had Louise and I - so it was a learning experience for all! Although shy at first, by the end of the 1 hour meeting, the 7 women were quite engaged and were asking a lot of questions about family planning, contraception and STI prevention. They then asked if we could come back the next week and talk about nutrition.

Neither Kevin, Louise nor I were terribly thrilled with the administrative work we did at the clinic. I talked to Louise about the documentation kept at the stations she worked at and we confirmed that there was a lot of duplication, and sometimes triplication of the information recorded. Since then, we have talked with John (the director of the clinic) about streamlining their process by developing a standard form that will be passed from station-to-station. He is very excited about this! We will start developing the form and work with the staff at the clinic to ensure it meets their needs. We hope this will reduce their workload, as well as better control their records. John sees this as a huge advancement!
Louise and I felt like we actually had a positive impact on the women in the Wednesday meeting, so our Wednesday's are now booked  - now we have to figure out what we are doing the rest of the week!