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Cross-Culture Ministry in Kenya, Part Seven

© Jim McCoy (Kisumu, Kenya)

Another source of Typhoid is food sold by street side vendors. Some vendors are carriers who don't wash their hands before preparing the food and transmit it to the customer. Most toilets are pit latrines. In fact, most Kenyans prefer them to inside toilets because it is what they are used to. Pit latrines have no toilet paper or place to wash your hands. If you are finicky about hygiene, Kenya is not the place to come. It has been the hardest aspect of living like a Kenyan.

Jamie, Sean, and I prepared an American dinner last night and several of our new friends came. We celebrated the 4th by giving them a brief history lesson about America. We sang the national anthem and said the pledge of allegiance. They sang their national anthem for us. We cooked fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, frozen corn, coleslaw, and fruit salad.

There is a grocery store in town that stocks many different things. We were able to get a water melon and apples, something most of them have never tasted. They have never had chicken fried with flour breading. I think the meal went over well. They ate every last bit of food and nothing was left over.

The grocery store sells ice cubes made from filtered water so we made iced tea. They had never tasted iced tea. It did not go over as well. They still have a strong British influence here and prefer their tea hot with milk.

Sean, David and I are preparing all the meals on Friday to give Mary a day. We made reservations at ATP where the catering school is for lunch and will come back and prepare dinner.

I came down with bronchitis. I have been coughing ever since I got here. It started before I left home in June. It suddenly got worse so I went to see a doctor at the private hospital in Kisumu. He told me to take a course of Cipro and gave me two bottles of an expectorant cough syrup. It is better already. This doctor is very good. His name is Dr. Alibuoy. He is an adjunct professor at a medical school in Ohio and goes every 2 years to lecture on tropical diseases.

He is Indian and has very good bedside manners. Dr. Alibuoy had become the doctor of choice for missionaries. There was a Finnish missionary and her son waiting to see him too. It cost about $6, less than the co-payment to see my doctor in the USA.