A day in the life of Medical Director Jeevan Sekhar

6:30 am – Roosters start crowing. Then the donkeys start braying. They sound like somebody is killing them. The cows start mooing. I curse them and go back to sleep.

7:20 am – Alarm goes off. I curse it and hit the snooze button. It comes on again. Another whack on the snooze button. Then at 7:45 am, I extricate myself from the warm confines of my bed, emerge from the mosquito net, and stumble out into the wider realm of my bedroom.

7:45 am – I take my malaria prophylaxis and afterwards perform the morning hygenics.

8 am – Morning prayer by the Kenyan staff. Someone starts off in song, the others participate. Then there is an actual prayer done in Dholuo (the language of the Luo people). Despite the different denominations, everybody here is Christian and is happy to praise Jesus for their circumstances.

8:30 am – Go to the PSC (Patient Support Center – just a reiteration for those of you who may have forgotten the acronym explained in the earlier entries), warm up the computer and await the patients.

9 am – Often on a Monday, we are dealing with the critically ill who have stayed away from the clinic until the weekend has passed. I guess they don’t want to inconvenience us during our time off with their acute attempts to die. (We are indeed open at all times for emergencies. Few people avail themselves of those extended hours.) Some we send to the hospital, others we manage on our own and get them from unable to sit to sitting or unable to stand to standing and then they go home. We don’t have inpatient capability.

10:30 am – Break time!! The Kenyans have chai. I have a Coke and brownies (compliments of Joyce).

11:00 am – Back to work refueled and rejuvenated.

1:00 pm – Lunch time! We usually eat in about 20 minutes. I use the rest of our hour break to have a nice little Siesta. Ha! – you didn’t think there would be much European influence here outside of British colonization did you…?

2:00 pm – More work. The afternoons are generally slower, as the patients tend to cram themselves into the morning. As a result, with the new streamlined approach to patient care that we devised, we can theoretically see 50 patients a day with the current staff we have.

4:30 pm – End of work. I usually do my e-mail at this time or study snippets of Go that I can glean from the net.

6pm-8pm – The time to communicate with my family in the States depending on the day. Done either by chat via internet or phone (assuming the network is working).

8pm – Eat dinner, read.

9pm or so – Evening hygenics.

10 pm – beddy bye…