movin' and shakin'

i got thrown up on today. which, as life would have it, makes me pretty happy. i discovered an orphanage about a 4 minute walk from my apartment. similar to the sally test center from yester-year, as a mzungu i can go in and hold babies and sit with them and feed them bottles and help change them for bed. it's nice and comforting (and selfish) and it gives me something to look forward to at the end of the day. just a little unassuming love and some cuddles. and some throw up, of course. but i will look forward to spending time there, sitting and listening to the kenyan women gossip in Swahili.

today at the CDC was good though. i got out of the office and went to the IOM building and met with the Chief Medical Director for Sub-Saharan Africa and IOM's chief medical data person. It felt formal (we got a ride in a CDC car and needed a visitor's badge to be allowed in) and everyone couldn't have been more welcoming to me, the graduate student visiting from Washington. We discussed surveillance options for catching data on illnesses as refugees are in transit and various other seemingly important buisness.

We went back to the office to eat lunch (i made pasta! with vegetables! oh my!) then took another CDC car to the transit center. it's a big building near the airport where all refugees pass through for 5 days before flying on the U.S. or Canada. it was super interesting to me. i have heard stories of the transit center from refugees while working at the IRC and it was so awesome to see it, just something else i now may know a little bit more about. We arrived as a group of 35 Somali refugees were ready to leave. They were sitting in the courtyard with their suitcases, the children were dressed up in little suits and plenty of people were wearing their gifted red, white and blue sneakers. Some men had t-shirts with American flags and women were carrying bags with cheesy pictures of the White House and London on them. Everyone was excited. (Sadly, I think taking photos in such a place would make me look like a starry-eyed amateur.) I tried to tell a few people that South Dakota and Minneapolis are cold and they may want to swap out their flip-flops, but they were too overwhelmed to care.

It looks like i may be working on a surveillance database to examine the importance of the transit center. It's all quantitative stuff--not usually my cup of tea, i'm more of the behavioral, social, bleeding heart breed--but I figure I should learn about databases and collecting quantitative data while I have the opportunity. Refugees get examined for fevers, diarrhea, rashes, etc. to determine if they are "fit to fly." Some horror stories involve people that get stuck at the transit center for weeks, months or a year while they await treatment. We spoke to the doctor there and met with the Operation Staff that handles all the logistics. I hope i get to spend more time there. They do cultural orientation for 3 days at the center and i want to go back and sit in on and observe how refugees are taught about traffic lights and ATM machines and being on time to appointments. Ultimately, it's an exciting, bustling place; the first real step to starting a new life in America. Everyone's smiles were too genuine for me to tell them that the next year may be even more difficult than the last. At that moment they didn't want to hear that America is expensive and cold and jobs are scarce and bus routes can be complicated. They were certainly operating from their belief that this was the first day of the rest of their better life. And, in many ways, they are right. The 4-year old boy in the suit may be a high school soccer star someday and get to go to medical school in America.

In other (superficial?) news, the other day my water bottle opened in my backpack. My iPod was an immediate causality, which bummed me out. But! huzzah! I put it in a bowl of rice for 2 days and it works. Crisis adverted, I know you were worried for me. After that triumph, I did 30 minutes of my yoga dvd and am motivating to clean my room. I also found out that the CDC observes American and Kenyan holidays, naturally. That being said, I get MLK day off. Good excuse to play with babies and work on my tan (err, freckles).

Otherwise, this weekend will be great. I'm heading back to Eldoret and can't wait to see some old friends.