Tuesday 1 October 2013

Any clues on where exactly September went…???

I keep neglecting to blog, work’s been so incredibly busy, that when I’m on the computer in the evenings and not working, the last thing I think about doing is typing. However, keeping a blog, is like keeping a record of what’s happening here. And, my goodness… a lot’s happening!!!

Where to start?

Today – I’m running the joint clinic at the Vihiga EARC this morning. It’s a quiet morning, and I’ve spent it playing ball with a cute 4 year old called Bob. In walks this beautiful, confident little girl. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The last time I’d seen her she couldn’t walk as a result of spending 5 years in a constricted, spasm state. She could talk when I last saw her, having just started speaking again after 5 years in an almost vegetative state…Maurine. I’d written about Maurine on my blog when I was here last year, from the despair at having to tell her mother that there was nothing we could do, apart from support her feeding, and as she was at such a high risk of aspirating, we were really waiting for her to die… to the miracle of hearing this beautiful little girl speak again after being not being able to for 5 years… to the thought of her going to school. Incredible. And there she was, coming into the assessment centre with her mother to get the letter needed for her to be able to start in the mainstream school… So proud and inspired by this little girl. I’ll be following up as she starts school – I promise not to be the ‘typical mzungu’ and cry when I see her there.

Conference:
I was incredibly fortunate to attend the 5th East African Conference on Communication Disabilities in early September. 120 people attended from 16 different countries, 7 of those were African. It was an inspiring 4 days full of people with so much interest and passion in developing speech and language therapy in East Africa, sharing knowledge and ideas, and pushing forward as a profession here.

I was so nervous as the Yellow House crew: me, David and Martin, were up to present on the Thursday morning. Our presentation was all about the challenges in building a multidisciplinary team within Western Kenya… We were to talk about the positives and negatives of what’s happened with Yellow House over the last 18months, what we’ve learnt from it and how, as an organisation we’ve moved forward. We received a lot of wonderful praise and comments after our presentation. I think we broke down some of the barriers organisations traditionally put up when talking about themselves; as we spoke honestly about some of the hardest things we’ve had to deal with, which most organisations don’t tend to talk about.  It was a really special conference, and I’m already looking forward to the next one in 2015, both in terms of where Yellow House will be as an organisation then, but more importantly, where speech and language therapy will be as a profession in East Africa.



Patients –

Did a bit of maths a few weeks ago, at the moment David and I are offering on average 200 appointments a month – that includes school visits, hospital appointments, ward rounds, community visits and assessment days at the EARCs. Our target budget for 2014 for our project costs is $200 a month (for the 2 of us). $1 an appointment… It literally blows my mind.
Shameless plug – I know many of my family and friends have already supported my work here, but if this is something you feel you’d like to support further, please visit our website: www.yellowhousechildrens.org

I would say around 50% of the people we now see for an initial assessment come back for therapy. This is compared to over 90% of the people we saw last year who DIDN’T come back for therapy. Huge breakthrough for us as a service, but it’s also a bit mad, as it means we’re both extremely busy.

Edna – my little star – continues to do well and we were really lucky to have specialist AAC (assistive and augmentative communication) speech and language therapist, Joanne Fry, come and work with us for a couple of weeks in September. She met with Edna and her family to start the process of developing a communication aid. I’m excited to carry on and develop this work further… Especially because I know what a cheeky personality she has, and I can’t wait to help her use a communication aid to show this off to other people.
Her mother Florence starts to work with Yellow House this month as our Mentoring Mum. Her role at the moment is to help set up, and then run a mum’s support group in Kisumu, demonstrating the importance of positive interaction with their child, attending therapy, making medical and educational decisions and knowing where to access the support. This role will be developed during next year as we hope to get the funds to be able to offer this service across our other projects in Vihiga, Kakamega and Mumias.


Timothy – a charming 60 year old man who had a stroke in 2012. What a hard working and dedicated gentleman… He comes to therapy EVERY week, he carries out the work I set him and as a result, this man who spoke jargon and had severe word finding difficulties, can now have a conversation, has the confidence to be seen in his community and shout out ‘hello’ to his peers when he sees them from a matatu (and then laugh at my obvious shocked and impressed face as I sit next to him and observe…)… I loved it a few weeks ago when his physiotherapist, who (through no fault of her own) has absolutely no idea what I do with my patients, apart from look at pictures, make them do silly face exercises and make random noises…. observed Timothy speaking to me and said “you made him talk”… Wonderful.