I’m Kakuma Refugee Camp! I’m staying with the IRC (International Rescue Committee) in the NGO compound. It’s kind of like sleep-away camp – each organization has it’s own cafeteria and cooks and stuff, but everyone kind of lives intermingled. I have my own room and my own bathroom! And running water and electricity! I’m here with one other girl from my program, Yuliya. We took a plane from Nairobi Wilson Airport to Lokichoggio (on which I threw up…first time in a while!) and then hung around Loki town for a bit, and then took an armed convoy to the camp in the afternoon. It was pretty cool.

It’s really pretty out here – flatness leading out to mountains in the horizon. It hasn’t been too hot yet (fingers crossed), and it’s pretty much been raining torrentially for half an hour (ish) each day, which is good because it’s supposedly been rainy season for like a month now, so hopefully it’s finally going to rain enough to alleviate a little of the drought and famine in Kenya. It’s pretty dry here, and they have crazy big and funky bugs. The IRC people have been great. Today we got a security briefing and met with the Clinical Services Manager, who is basically second in command for clinical services. Tomorrow we’re getting an orientation and hopefully meeting someone from every sector in IRC. Oh yeah IRC is basically in charge of health in the camp. The Lutheran World Federation does water and sanitation and the World Food Program does food, but IRC runs all the clinics and stuff. There are a bunch of other organizations working here, too, but I’m not sure yet what each one does.
We have to be in the NGO compound between 6pm and 6am, and there’s lots of guards around at night. I don’t live next to Yuliya, but very close. It’s actually probably safer than Ayany (where I live in Nairobi) where we’re not allowed out at night at all except to walk ten feet to a taxi.


Since I wrote that I have been to the hospital. I went this morning and got a tour of the place, which includes a male ward, female ward, maternity ward, and pediatrics ward. They do basic lab tests there, and their lab is awesome because it's air conditioned. Today I mostly observed and asked basic questions about how many people they admit and so on, and hung out with the doctors while they were doing consultations. It's bigger than my hospital in Ghana, but still small by American standards, especially considering they are in charge of 50,000 refugees. There's 2 clinics, too, and they refer cases to Kakuma Mission Hospital which is like a ten minute drive away.