Day One at Lea Toto

First off, Happ Birthday Dad!!! I love and miss you very much :)

This morning John and Mimi picked up four of us for a meeting with Lea Toto, whom we will be working with this summer. We drove to Kangemi, an informal settlement (slum) in northwestern Nairobi, and met with Francis and Nicholas. They gave us an introduction into what Lea Toto is all about and what they do. Then, John gave them an idea of what Leslie and I are interested in and how we might contribute this summer. I am interested in social determinents that may hinder someone to not seek medical help, be it micro or macro. We decided that I was best suited for Kangemi and working with Francis. Also, interesting and exciting news is that Lea Toto has just started collecting longitudinal baseline data for all their clients. I would love to be involved in that and running some preliminary regressions to look for connections or trends in the data. We shall see if they let me :)

After our meeting Leslie and I got a ride down to the actual Kangemi clinic where I will be working. Met some amazing people and I am excited to get to know them better this summer.

Then, Leslie and I got a ride to Kawangware, where Leslie will be working this summer. Took slightly longer meeting everyone because I am pretty sure that we got our wires crossed about a meeting time. But it all worked out in the end and we got a tour and had some awesome conversations with the staff there.

Looks like it is going to be an awesome summer and I am so happy to get started.

Now that all the awesome things are pointed out, let me move on to the not-so-awesome things:

-Very sporadic power since Monday

-Very slow internet

-Water outages since Monday, and when we do have water it is brown. No shower since Monday morning, I think. But I still smell reasonably good!

-Realized that we don't get access to Netflix, Hulu, or Pandora here.

-The supermarket does not have macaroni and cheese...

That is the end of my rant. Other than that, things are splendid! We heard that the water should be back to normal tomorrow!

Stay tuned for more!