Kenya

 

 Last Sunday was a super exciting day.. after waiting since April Corina joined me in Ethiopia!!! She was only on the ground for about 24 hours before we took off for a quick trip to Kenya.  We spend Monday afternoon resting at the Mennonite Guest house in Nairobi (her recovering from jet leg.. me enjoying the garden and the green after a full 2 months without leaving Addis).  The next morning our tour guide picked us up, we picked up one more guy who was also on the group tour and we set out for the 7 hour bone jarring drive to the Masi Mara Game Park.

Looking out on the Rift Valley

 The lovely tented camp where we stayed just outside the park.  It is the start of low season here so everything was rather quiet which was lovely

 First wild life that we spotted on our game drive... also the first of many babies!!

 

Giraffes were my favorite!!

 

Super excited to see some Cheetah brothers hanging out

 Gorgeous Sunset on the Masi Mara... obliging wilderbeast in the foreground

 We headed out early Wednesday Morning for a full day game drive.. these hippos chilling in an oasis

Then it was up the hill for our first pride of lions for the day- This was a mix of female and young males lounging in the sunshine

 Zebras everywhere!!!! loved them to. though if you look to closely at their faces it makes you crosseyed!!

 This makes 15 countries on 3 continents with this amazing friend

Not all the animals were huge.. these little lizards were pretty cute

 Gorgeous Leopard.. these guys are super territorial (only 1 per square 100km) so rare to see them

 2nd pride of lions.. this one was smaller but had this huge guy standing guard

 3rd Pride of lion was a bunch of females hanging out under a tree

 Pulled over for a picnic lunch.. no lions in sight.. just a curious giraffe who kept close watch that we didn't steal any leaves from his tree for our lunch... this is Chris our driver and our trusty van

 

We saw a few families of elephants but they were pretty shy and didn't come to close.. and they are one species that you keep your distance from .. but look at that cute little baby

 The rangers have controlled burns of some parts of the plains to encourage new grass growth.. this road was the fire break

 This little baby Topy was so new he still had its umbilical cord

 Wilderbeast and Zebra

These are the lazy resident Wilderbeast.... millions migrate south to the Serengeti in August but these guys cant be bothered and just stay and eat dry grass.

 Early morning game drive Thursday morning before driving back to Nairobi

 WaterBuffalo.. pretty much just the cows of the Masi Mara... note the birds on their backs...

 Just on the way out of the park when we heard on the radio about these sweet guys.. mama lion and three little cubs!!.. hard to spot in the grass but cute as can be

 Mama was not to happy with all the company...

 

Changes Here

Hey All I know I have not posted for a bit here but the end of August the first three weeks of September were quite a time of change here. The work that I originally came here to do - working with nurses at St Mary's hospital, developing systems and policy for the hospital and providing HR leadership and management kind has come to a close. The hospital and its supporting body - the Coptic Mission due to lack of funds, leadership and ability to retain physicians has been temporarily suspended here in Ethiopia.  At first I was very disappointed at perhaps it seems like everything Nicole and I had worked for the past 5 months had been in vain.... yes there was a lot of good- 20 AV fistula formations, a bunch of successful surgeries, the linkage of a few of the Hope for Korah beneficiaries to acute care services and specialists that they may not have seen previously but all of our other work... where was it supposed to endup.  But then we realized through meeting with other contacts as well as the health ministry that all that we had learned and the multitude of documents and systems we had worked on creating were unique here in Ethiopia.  The government hospitals especially, have on paper, very high standards they are to meet as well as a vision of how they should provide services but the professionals here themselves lack experience with the practical application of these guidelines and standards.  So Nicole and I have been working 4-5 days a week with nursing and hospital leadership at several government hospitals with leaders who are a passionate about wanting change and quality care in their facilities.  We have been working with them on a multitude of things -document creations, developing policy and protocol, educations strategies for their nurses as well as hospital wide things such as mass disaster planning.  All of this not possible unless we had spent the last 5 months integrating World Health Regulations, Ethiopian Standards and well established Canadian standards into workable solutions within the healthcare/resource setting. So not what I set out here to do but interesting exciting work non the less. 

You may notice the lack of photos... my phone unfortunately was stolen two weeks ago - on it all my photos from Ethiopian New Years, the time I learned to pluck a chicken and more. .... but that is life... Aside from work life here is going good.. spending time with friends- expat and local alike on the weekends starting to look forward to the team from Abbotsford joining us shortly