I'm glad you are enjoying the notes. I was wondering if they were too long for everyone but Mom, with the busy schedules everyone keeps.

You asked about our food...John is still getting hot cocoa in the mornings...with water instead of milk, lots of sugar and cocoa powder. He still has cocoa from the US, but the supply will only last another month or so. They drink very weak cocoa here...with water...not much sugar. The milk we buy is in a box because we never know if the power will go out. So I have given up drinking milk, though it is fine on cereal. I don't like getting my calories from drinks (excepting my brother Jim's power drink of course), so it's mostly water for us. It took me a while to get into cooking again..hadn't done it for months. But now I am back in a routine. Can't eat lettuce because of the bacteria, so we eat cabbage and carrot salads mostly (all washed in a bleach solution). John is complimentary about anything I fix, which is very nice. So I fix large amounts of food and we eat leftovers for about 3 nights in a row...makes dinner very quick, which is a good thing because we work at home sometimes late into the night. I usually fix a baked chicken and vegetables on Sunday. Chickens here are not the large-breasted hens we love in America...seem to have a thing about breasts in the USA! We had salmon once this week (exorbitantly expensive), pasta tonight with green olives, sun dried tomatoes, avocado, sauteed peppers and onions, parmesian cheese...just grabbed what was in the cupboard. The former tenants left lots of exotic condiments. One night I had tofu sauteed in sesame oil with a little soy sauce....delicious, but John wouldn't try it. Tonight I had a tree tomato, which is a tartish-sweetish fruit, but of course I guess a tomato is also a fruit. We eat lots of mangoes, small sweet bananas. We frequently eat mince meat (hamburger) which is generally pretty lean because the cattle are mostly range fed and rather scrawny. I have bought tilapia a couple of times...a local fish, along with Nile perch.

I have not had good luck with baking...yet. The first cake I fixed, for the mission tour, was a local mix fixed according to directions. However we are at 5000 ft, so it should have been adjusted for high altitude. And then the oven is in centigrades, which I have learned to use correctly now. I was embarassed by the cake I took to that mission conference; was about 1/2" high, frosted with what I had on hand...sweetened, condensed milk. The confection tasted as bad as it looked, and I kind of lost my taste for baking. We do like dessert, however and I have found a couple of Betty Crocker brownie mixes which have turned out fine. The dessert we are eating mostly is candy bars (Snickers). We also eat store-bought ginger cookies and eat them with either fruit or Nutella. We eat yogurt and fruit frequently and lots of cold cereal for breakfast.

We eat out every Saturday with the 5 other couples in our complex. They are really high caliber people, capable, hard working, compassionate, spiritual. We also have family home evening together. We have a better social life here than we have ever had, and certainly more personal interaction between John and I. Interestingly, we may have eaten together more in the last 6 months than we have in the past 10 years.

Yesterday we had a little disagreement, and I did not back down. It has been hard for John to have to take my opinion into account. He has spent 40 years making professional decisions that have been accepted without question. Having to give up his authority and medicine have been quite an adjustment for him. More change has been required of John than of me. So I was glad that he got a very warm reception when we went to the University of Nairobi Med School hospital (Kenyatta Hospital) today. The medical school is relatively young, founded in the late 60's...probably some time after the country achieved independence in 1963. We met with the Chair of Pediatrics, a very bright woman who spent about an hour with us. Her eyes lighted up when she heard that we would be here for another 16 months. There are only 3 Pediatric Gastroenterologists in Kenya, one of them is at Kenyatta Hospital, and she is trying to get John to round with the patients. John told her that we were on a mission for the Church. Her reply...many people are medical missionaries. We told her that we had been assigned to be humanitarian missionaries. She replied that there is nothing more humanitarian than saving lives. She also said that the licensing procedure would be very easy for someone of John's age and experience. So....we're thinking it might be a good missionary tool...good contacts and good inroads for medical help for members and missionaries alike. We will see what Johannesburg says about a couple of afternoons a month spent at the hospital. I know it would make John happy.

John asked one of the residents at Kenyatta Hospital how many beds the hospital has. He was very hesitant and said maybe 1200. John asked how many pediatric beds there were. He said there were 4 wards for general peds, 1 for surgery, 1 for cancer patients, and an ICU for critical patients. (We later found out that most wards have 60 beds.) The Chair told us that the hospital is usually at 300-400% capacity. One of the Church employees told us that his wife delivered in Kenyatta Hospital and had to share her bed with another woman and her baby. She wanted to come home after the first day (These are regular-sized hospital beds). The patients sleep 2-5/bed depending on need. All pediatric patients require mothers to stay with them (up to age 4), except for cancer patients. The nursing staff is stretched very thin, and we were told that the nurses were not willing to breast-feed nursing children, consequently the required stay of the mother for children 4 and under. (I'm not sure if she was kidding...about the nurses nursing). Apparently Enfamil has yet to make a strong showing in Kenya!

The pediatric patients are charged more than others because the moms have to stay with them. Patients have to pay up front, despite the fact that Kenyatta hospital is a public hospital. One of the senior couples told us that one woman delivered a baby in a hospital outside of Nairobi, and a collection was taken up for her at Church because the patients at that hospital could not be discharged until the bill had been paid. Another story we heard is that if the hospital bill of a patient who deceases in the hospital is not paid, the body cannot be claimed for burial. The body will be taken to the city morgue where they cannot recover the body until all bills are paid (including the high cost of the morgue). Maybe the cost of the health care in the US could be contained if some of these methods were used.

Fortunately we took Dickens with us to the hospital. (Dickens' father was a great fan of good literature...Dickens is pronounced Deekens here (i sounds like long e). The hospital was not far away, but he helped us find the hospital parking lot. We double parked, as did so many others, blocking in 4 cars. When we returned to the car after over an hour, the car was being surveyed angrily by 2 parking guards and a well-dressed lady. Fortunately Dickens could speak placatingly to them in Swahili and happend to have mutual friends with one of the guards. When he explained our mission, the guards were placated and thought we should park in the doctor's lot next time. However the woman continued to glare and mumble and asked what church we represented. She drove off angrily talking about wanting to get her sick child home. We found out that she is a news broadcaster. This is one instance when I hope someone forgets our Church affiliation.