kenya.

Kenya-
Last week was a trip to Kenya. Mostly to get visas but also to meet up with Janika who is an American married to a Kenyan . she lives in Nairobi with her husband Martin and their 2 children. Janika works with Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) in the slums of Nairobi and we were able to go visit the slums and teach her valuable hands on skills since she is still in training to be a midwife. The first 2 days I was working out visa stuff with the Bangladesh embassy so I was only able to see one TBA the last day we were there. when we visited the largest slum in East Africa. We walked through poop and dirt and children excited to see white people…up down and through rickey homes till we finally arrived in the dark, quaint home of the TBA and what most people would call pieces of scrap metal put together to create 4 walls and a roof, they call home. It was quite dark inside seeing as there was no electricity or windows. we sat down with her and talked to the TBA how she was trained and how many deliveries she does monthly. She seemed like she was trained quite well bc every question we asked her she knew the answer thoroughly and seemed to take the right steps through a delivery. She had been working as a Midwife since 1982 so we figured that she had done 1800 deliveries up till now. It was an amazing experience.
As far as the visas go, Bek and I spent 3 days running from embassy to embassy trying to get visas approved. I only had one full page left in my passport and was hoping it would be good enough for my Bangladesh visa but when we crossed the Kenyan border they put a stamp that covered my last page. Bad news for me, but good news that they had an American embassy in Nairobi bc the 2nd day I had to run over there (2 hour drive) and get more pages put in my passport. After 3 days of running from Bangladesh to America to Bangladesh again..i got my pages..and everyone going to Bangladesh got their visas. Praise the Lord! Then we drove the 12 hour bus ride back to Dar Es Salaam and passed Mt. Kilimanjaro on our way back down. Africa is a beautiful place with beautiful people.