As an emergency medicine resident in 2002, I arranged a 6 week rotation through the Nairobi Hospital, which is where the who's who of Kenya receive their care - presidents, expats, business people, tribal chiefs.
My mentor during my time there was an American-born cardiologist, the private physician to then president-for-life Daniel Arap Toirotitch arap Moi. It was a formative experience, and one of the reasons I opted to pursue an international emergency medicine fellowship.
A side trip during the rotation was to Lamu, a quietly beautiful island on the Swahili coast with a picturesque old town.
A friend recommended I stay at the Peponi Hotel, overlooking the Indian Ocean. The owners cut me a deal to spend the night, as it was the off season and I could not otherwise afford the luxury hotel. I enjoyed a lazy afternoon at the pool, reading and alternating my gaze between the dhows sailing the coast and the boa coiled comfortably in the banyan tree branches overhead. Peponi is the Kiswahili word for paradise.
The old town, which I later learned was the site of filming for a TV spinoff series about the young Indiana Jones, was full of sweet, friendly young guys dressed in hip hop attire, astride donkeys, an unusual juxtaposition of urban style with rural reality. Cars are scarce on the island.
One of these guys sold me a couple of bead necklaces for $1.50 each. I've worn one around my neck ever since.
Fast forward to last week. I cared for a patient 15 years older than me who had some unexpected findings on a CT scan. Going to bat for her, I performed further testing to exclude a more serious cause of the abnormal findings.
When I returned to discuss her second set of results, she expressed relief, and than asked me to take a seat on the chair beside her gurney. "I have something I want to show you, honey."
She proceeded to locate a video, handed me her phone, and pressed play.
It was a video of the patient, decked out in bright purple roller skates, proceeding to dance her way up and down a sidewalk in a residential area like the former disco queen she must once have been.
I was utterly charmed, and she erupted in a delighted laughter watching my response.
"Doc, when I saw that necklace, I could tell you were groovy and I knew we were gonna be great friends."
When I love this job, I really love this job.
Comments 5
How awesome is this story?!
Author
Be honest, Mrs. T – were you a disco queen back in the day?
LOL, far from it! I did, however, spend a large portion of my youth on rollerskates 😀
My son did a rotation in Tanzania and his experience was not quite as glamorous. He contracted typhoid and noted that the hospital was so low on antibiotics they were using raw honey on some patients’ wounds. He did get to climb Kilimanjaro in a horrendous blizzard while still 20 lbs underweight from the typhoid experience. He also got to go on a photo safari so it wasn’t all negative. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a similar neckless.
Author
Steveark,
I highlighted the positive, but there were plenty of non-unicorn/non-rainbow moments. I spent time at Kenyatta Hospital, the large public hospital, where there were commonly two patients to a mattress experiencing some of the more extreme suffering I’ve seen.
I was on the antimalarial malarone, known for a side effect of causing “vivid dreams” which is the manufacturer’s euphemism for nightmares.
Rotations abroad are complicated, and I plead guilty to falling for romantic tropes. For an incisive critique of such writing, you can’t do better than How To Write About Africa by the late Binyavanga Wainaina.
Fondly,
CD