A Wheelchair for Evans & Pizza Night

Such a full day at Tenwek and beyond yesterday, which is why the blog post for yesterday is a bit late!  The morning started off with a special needs PT clinic that they have every Friday morning for children with Cerebral Palsy, Spina Bifida, ALS, etc.  This allows the clinic to get out all the necessary equipment and hopefully provide a more welcoming atmosphere with other children there.  

Dean saw patients and Truman, McKinley and Zander helped assemble wheelchairs.  Melissa and some others on the team were on hand to bring toys, bubbles and balloons to help distract the children and make PT as fun as possible for them.  It was a very special and emotional moment for Melissa to see a little girl at the clinic who received Arya’s AFOs, almost immediately after Melissa had donated them the day before.    

Truman, Zander and McKinley help Solomon and Mercy assemble wheelchairs at the clinic for children with special needs.

Dean works with a patient from the special needs clinic who has acquired one of our very special balloon hats!

These are the feet of the little girl who received Arya Davenport's AFO (ankle foot orthosis), practicing walking with a walker and kicking a ball.

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While this was going on, Angela, Lesli and all the younger kids made a trip into Bomet (the nearest town, about 10 minutes drive) for an ATM, a few groceries and to get SIM cards for Lesli’s and Josh’s phones.  To do the SIM cards, you must present a passport.  After initially being told we could not purchase SIM cards with a foreign passport, we were redirected to the Safaricom Customer Care center where we waited for them to process our transactions.  

While this endeavor was not quick by any means, we did finally get SIM cards and loaded some cheap data packages onto our phones which should make things much easier!  Victory!  Word to the wise:  if you are coming to Kenya and don’t have an unlimited data plan, or service with Sprint, you should strongly consider just purchasing a SIM card as soon as you get in the country.  Sprint seems to have the best coverage over here, with Verizon coming in second and AT&T dead last (like terrible).  Check with your service provider first to make sure your phone is unlocked and can accept a different SIM card.  

Walker with our box of groceries (not diapers) from the store in Bomet.  Most groceries the Manys have to get whenever they are heading into Nairobi at their big supermarket, around three hours away.  The local "grocery stores" really do not have much of what is needed.  But we got some chips and cookies--and the girls got ice cream!

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A Wheelchair for Evans

During the afternoon, Dean, Lesli, Walker and Truman accompanied Solomon (head of PT) on an outing to deliver a wheelchair to a child about an hour’s drive from Tenwek.  The wheelchair was one Truman had assembled the day prior, so he was glad to get to see it delivered.  The child’s name is Evans and he is 13 years old with Cerebral Palsy.  He contracted meningitis when he was three years old, which developed into CP, but before that he was completely normal.  

Walking into this family’s home, seeing Evans on the sofa of their mud hut living space, watching as his father lifted his small, limp frame off the sofa and carefully placed him into the new wheelchair, adjusting his little body, I couldn’t help but notice how tiny his legs were compared to Walker’s, who is only a year older.  He had no muscle control, no eye control, no speech.  It took a while for Dean and Solomon to get Evans upright, fastened in and comfortable in the wheelchair.  It made me ache.  Not crying as I absorbed that sight took everything I had.  

This family invited us into their home with dirt floors and newspaper for wallpaper.  It was neat and tidy as could be.  Irene, the mother, was very sweet but quiet and made us all chai tea in two different thermoses—sugarless and with sugar.  She gave us her ceramic mugs and served her own family with tin mugs.  

We went around the room and introduced ourselves to the family and told them how honored we were to be there.  Solomon thanked the mother and father for caring for Evans.  They’ve parented and cared for him for the last ten years as a child with Cerebral Palsy, which is not easy for any family, but in this culture, so many of these children are hidden away and it is assumed the family has done “something” to bring hardship upon themselves.  And they have chosen to bring Evans for care at Tenwek.  They’ve done everything they can do for him.

Solomon prayed over the family and asked God to strengthen Evans, to bless this family, asking Jehovah to provide for them.  The father made faint grumblings of affirmation after every statement in the prayer.  My eyes were wet by the end of it.  

The family asked us if we liked bananas and avocados and then proceeded to bring us a bag full of avocados from their tree and a giant stalk of bananas from their banana tree.  We could not believe they were giving us these wonderful gifts!  We brought the children toys, lollipops and a soccer ball, which thrilled them.  They gave us a short tour of their farm where they mainly grow tea and potatoes.  When it was time for us to leave, they walked us out to the road, stopping to take several photos with us.  They could not have been more gracious.  Please pray for sweet Evans and his family.   

Our family with Evans and his family.  Pictured from the left is a man who is the village elder (an official position in the local government), Evans's siblings, Irene (Evans's mother) and Alex (Evans's grandfather).  

Evans's siblings holding their gifts from us.  We also gave Evans a teddy bear and they used it for a pillow behind his head while he was in the wheelchair.

Solomon and Evans, showing the difference between Evans's old wheelchair which only allowed for him to slump down in and his new wheelchair which holds him upright, is adjustable and allows Evans's body to relax more.  

They brought in a bag of avocados THIS BIG.  We thought they were just showing us the avocados and it wasn't until we started to leave that we realized they were giving us the entire bag.  

Soccer--the universal language!

Evans's cute brothers.  The tree in the center is the avocado tree.  Huge!

Evans's parents and brothers with Dean, Lesli and the bag of avocados!  The sweetest family.

Evans's family also gave us this huge cut bunch of bananas from their tree.  

To compare, the large avocados with the regular sized ones we usually find at our grocery.  Also to the right, those are "lemons" which look very much like limes to me.  Heath says some people call them lemons and some call them limes.  Either way, they serve as a tart citrus and will be handy for guacamole making.

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Other activities back at Tenwek during the afternoon included making balloon animals for those in the pediatric ward.  The team noticed how much this meant, not just to the children, but seemed to truly delight all their parents as well.  The power of balloon animals!

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We ended the evening with a much-anticipated homemade pizza night dinner at the Manys’!  Angela had pizza dough out, ready for homemade sauce and toppings, which was fun.  She even had salad--a rarity during our time here!!  

Pizza and brownies were followed by the balloon animal-making contest and the winners were McKinley and Kate, who won themselves a massage at the Fairmont when we go on safari!  It was very close between the winners and runners up, Brooke and Caroline.  The boys did their best but they seemed to lack the elite balloon animal-making skills the girls have acquired this past week as they’ve been practicing.  Sorry, boys.