Funniest sayings of the week
“My son-in-law, have you washed your hands before eating? . . I am being serious - I want to see my grandchildren”
“We Kenyans, when it comes to taking a drink or food, we give you a “choice”, like tea or coffee. There is no choice in not taking something”
Places where people have thought I come from on first guess: U.S, Italy, France, Israel, Germany, Holland.
Thursday - First ever training session!
I carried out a 2-hour training session for 13 members of staff (11 O.Ts and 2 ENTs) at the hospital where I work. I found it really difficult to try and fit into 2 hours the most basic relevant things about speech and language therapy (developmental norms, things to look out for and also some specific client groups/difficulties I’ve seen a lot of in the hospital) but it went pretty well so was dead chuffed! There were a couple of things I definitely wanted to drill into the staff concerning facts that are widely believed here that have little to no evidence behind it. Firstly, that cutting a tongue-tie leads to improved speech (I did a true or false quiz and all 13 people thought this was true) and secondly that a very strict diet (cutting out all wheat, dairy, many many fruits, nuts amongst literally hundreds of foods) leads to a reduction in autisitc behaviours. It was nice being able to talk about these things and discuss them (there were a few questions et.c.) without feeling like I was insulting the way things are done here by clearly stating the facts/evidence and comparing for example the very limited research on the role of diet in children with autism in the U.K and Kenya (at times completely opposite!). At the end I asked for feedback as this was the first time I;ve done anything like this and whether true or not one lady said it seemed like I’d been doing training for years and another commended me and gave me some ideas for the next session which was awesome. The guy who helped organise the training, Wesley Snipes look-a-like Winston (see previous posts) is so keen and motivated for me to do as much as possible and stood up at the end to give thanks and that anytime I want to do training “we are in” before saying how important they feel it is given the lack of service and knowledge here. It’s so so so great to have someone like Winston in my camp, someone genuinely interested and passionate about not only my area but special needs in general and I am unbelievably thankful for that.
Friday - Oromotor stuff and Hospital tea
As mentioned, working with swallowing difficulties is something I’m doing a lot of here and for some unknown reason to me I’m massively fascinated and drawn to this area of speech therapy. Whether it’s the fact that there is a risk to life involved which makes it seemingly more important, whether it’s because it’s fairly medical based or whether it’s due to the fact I love food so much that I have a passion for people to enjoy and be safe when eating/drinking food it’s definitely an area that at the moment I want to train further in. Many of the children I see have limited tongue movement so oro-motor stimulation/movement is something that may be of use both for the act of eating but also making a variety of speech sounds and this week I saw a child of 7 who had no difficulties receptively, excellent non-verbal communication (gestures, pointing, facial expression) but could only make bilabial sounds (b, m, p) and vowels. Although there is nothing in the case history I took that would account for this lack of movement, it seems likely to be one of, if not the reason the child cannot say any words other than mama, baba, pi (water). As I’m newly qualified and not specifically trained in any areas yet, I gave my supervisor a ring as this is an area she has lots of training and experience in and rather than giving some generic ideas to promote tongue stimulation and movement I was given some straight forward basics that are part of an entire oro-motor program which hopefully we will follow through with the client and fingers crossed maybe see some results :)
After a fairly normal day at the hospital I took tea (that’s how everyone says it here and it’s rubbing off on me!) with a few of the staff and talked about life in general. Similar to above, one of the O.T’s, David is so passionate about his job and special needs that he has a stipend for travel and lunch but essentially volunteers EVERYDAY at the hospital, leaving his house (which is miles away) at about 5am to start by 7.30. Winston on the other hand has a paid job at the hospital but as he is supporting a family of 3 (fairly small considering we are in Kenya) he works most of the time at the weekend doing private work to earn more money - as Winston put it “Kenyan’s don’t relax when it come to the weekend, they hustle”. After hearing from my supervisor at the EARC that many teachers in special needs are not passionate/bothered/care about the area but have just trained in it because the pay is better it really is lovely and encouraging to find people such as those who I work with at the hospital who care about their clients and genuinely enjoy working with them.
Weekend - Properly relaxing!, a night out and surprise surprise footy!
For most of this weekend I have been a bit of a lazy bugger but doing a lot of needed chilling out, reading (1984 is pretty awesome - who would’ve known non-comic reading could be fun haha) and spending more than my normal measly budget on some delicious western foods including one of the nicest chocolate milkshakes I have ever had which I practically inhaled. Saturday a.m awake and at 'em by 7am to meet the kids and walk to town for our final game of the season - ended up a pretty fair 0-0 which makes us finish 3rd for the season. As I've said everyone takes footy so seriously here and I subbed off 3 kids in the second half so as many of the kids as possible could play in our final game. I wasn't quite expecting a little backlash by a couple of sulky kids who were taken off even though I explained to them why I was taken them off - not cos they were playing badly but because we are a team and everyone should take a part in the last game of the season. Children need to be children out here I feel sometimes and many are grown-up before their time due to the amount of independence they have or responsibilities they have at home/within the family. In addition to all of this, the seriousness that people take football makes matches a bit of a pressure cooker where I think fair enough we want to win etc.. but these kids are under-10 and should be enjoying it first and foremost rather than anything else! Saturday night I was invited out with my new best mate - who am I kidding, my only mate in Kisumu - to meet a load of peace corps volunteers who were in town for a night out. Was slightly taking aback when stepping into a room full of white people(!) but after a few drinks and being the only non-american/peace corps person it was pretty easy to regain all the social skills that have run away from me over the past 2 months - ended up going to a bar/club til 2am chilling with beers and chatting the night away - only my second time out since getting here pretty much so was real nice to do something a bit different J Annnndd up-to-date today, Sunday, been continuing my new found love of reading non-comic material, watching a bit of footy, embarrassing myself by thinking I saw the biggest avocado in the world which was actually a papaya and writing this! Looking forward to a skype with the Fagan clan tonight as it’s been a while! Just hope electricity continues it’s good form for the evening!
Have a wonderful week everyone and thank you for continuing to be bored enough to read my ramblings,
J xxx
For more information on the teeny speech and language charity I’m working under please check out: http://www.yellowhousechildrens.org/
Top 3 Itunes songs on shuffle whilst writing this:
1. The same old innocence- Architecture In Helsinki
2. La - Old Man River
3. Don’t stand so close to me - The Police
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