Hi Everyone,
No we are not in Africa, but we are here in the States trying to make Africa a better place to live for so many people. We will be taking another team in March 2013, pray for us. If you'd like to support us with words of encouragement or donations, please come to our annual Fun(d)raising event on November 10th at the Comedy Sportz Club in Milwaukee at 6 pm. Tickets are $25 and will be available for purchase soon. If you are interested, please email Julie at hopewithoutborders@yahoo.com and I will send you an email when the tickets are available.
Julie

Saying Good-Bye

Friday morning a van of volunteers set off to Mukuru slums to finish de-worming over 500 school children as well as treating many for ringworm. We also did 1 home visit to Mary Waluga who is the nun that runs St. Mary's Clinic. She was in a lot of pain and was unable to afford her blood pressure medicine, we were able to help her with pain medicines and BP meds.
Tonight we said good bye to the rest of the team. Most were exhausted and eager to get home to see their loved ones and to scrub off the thick African sand that we have everywhere.We were excited that besides 2 people with heat exhaustion everyone remained healthy. Well, we do have quite a few team members with a "mystery" rash and sores that were found to be from a certain fly bite.Most of us are looking forward to American foods and have learned new words such as TIA (This Is Africa), Pole-Pole (Swahili for slowly, which is how everything runs here) and time is said with "ish" attached. For example; "We will leave at 9 ish" this could mean we will leave sometime before 10:30 -if possible. I believe everyone got a "Taste of Africa" and many would like to return. So good bye to all who have read our blog and enjoy the pictures and stories you will hear.......

Bumpy roads

The morning game drive was awesome. The hyena we saw nursing the night before gave birth. We have thousands of pictures of amazing animals. We took the "short cut" to the Ostrich Farm and the roads were so bumpy we thought it would shake our teeth loose. We went up to the Tanzania border. The Ostrich Farm was fun and many were able to ride the Ostriches (which is not easy) and we have many funny videos and pictures. Some were feeling tired, but we enjoyed Ostrich burgers and "fries" and headed home to an inviting pool. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.....

Wednesday

Today we had a long drive to Amboseli National Park in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. We saw amazing animals and everyone will be sharing their pictures. We saw zebras, lions, giraffe, wildebeest, baboons, other monkeys, lizards, birds and many hyenas. All in all we had a wonderful game drive and the food was delicious. We are happy to say most of us remained very healthy, We are looking forward to the 6:30 am game drive.

Hakuna Matata

 No Worries. Sorry for the internet silence. We are all fine, we were just extremely busy.

Kibera - a life changing experience

Today we visited Kibera, one of the poorest, and largest, slums in Africa. The people weren't as friendly at first, as they were in Mukuru, not as many waves or smiles. The school children greeted us when we arrived at the site, smiling and touching our "white" arms. To get to Kara Kibera Kids Center we had to trek through allies of garbage, crumbling houses, and streams of human waste. Three guards accompanied us during our walk, as well as our Kenyan Team, and we arrived to a school filled to the brim with children. The children welcomed us with songs and dancing followed by speeches and prayers by the teacher, John, Duncan, and Lance. Shortly after we began setting up our medical stations and prepared for the 160+ people we were going to see. The whole experience was surreal, and we, again, learned a lot of new things about mobile medical treatment centers. The environment these people live in is indescribable and my hopes are that we have made, even if small, some type of difference in their lives. On the drive back to Lukenya Getaway we saw zebra, giraffes, wildebeests, and gazelle, which everyone enjoyed seeing. Most of us jumped in the pool and talked about our experiences as the sun set. Afterwards we played an African game called "pick" that went on for hours but was a lot of fun.

Healing the sick...

We are becoming more adaptive to Africa time. As someone once told me "Westerners have watches and Africans have all the time". We got to the Slums and had the camp up and going by 10 am. We saw about 100 people. It was a slow day as it was a work day, but it was nice as it gave us more time for teaching and seeing the patients. We had one patient who was positive for typhoid and another one who had malaria. At the very end a 8 month old was brought in with a 102.9 temp, nasal flaring grunting, rhonchi and an ear infection. She did not look well. She had no head control and she could not fix and follow. Hopefully she will be better in a few days with the antibiotics she received. We also sent several patients to get tested for TB and HIV. The team worked wonderful together.
Our next stop was a soccer tournament that we sponsored for the local children. The team had a blast with the kids. We all left dusty and dehydrated and grateful to have a pool to jump in when we got back to our hotel. We saw 7 giraffes near our hotel and herds of zebras and wildebeest.
Tomorrow we hope to go into Kibera slums to 2 local churches/schools to see sick children and de-worm the whole school. Kibera is the largest slum in Africa, and just like today we will have several armed guards with us (who love to pose for photos with their AK-47's). We also learned you can never have too much candy for the kids..

Greetings from Nairobi :)

Today was a very adventurous day to say the least. We had the opportunity to cross quite a few things off our bucket list, including things we never thought we would want to do... That's right everyone, today we had the unique chance to get up close and personal with, that's right, you guess it--giraffes and elephants! First of all I must reiterate the term "up close and personal" because I feel like the phrase does not give the experience justice. We were able to feed the giraffes and for those of us brave enough, even balance food on our faces to receive a big, wet, and sloppy might I add, kiss (no worries fellow readers, it turns out that giraffes' mouths are antiseptic). One word--amazing! We were also able to travel to the elephant orphanage and see multiple elephants ranging from 2 months to 4 years old, eat, play, be mischievous and overall crawl into each and every one of our hearts. We also traveled to the Ya-ya marketplace where we were fully enthralled in the Nairobi culture.

I know what you're thinking--are we actually doing any work, or is this all just fun and animals?! Well my friends, rest assured--We were up til 0200 yesterday morning bagging the multiple antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals and any other "anti" pill known to man in dose packages for our medical camp tomorrow (have I mentioned I can spell and dose Biofulvin with my eyes closed because I wrote it on so many bags?). We have researched, studied and became knowledgeable of the diseases and treatments that are native to this population.We are expecting to see, diagnosis and treat an upwards of 500+  men, women, children and babies tomorrow am. In addition to all of the previously listed tasks, we will be conducting research for our organization in order to continue to and further improve our assistance here in Kenya. So take that everyone, we are on mission, and we are ready to rock and roll! Wish us luck as we embark on this amazing (and challenging) opportunity tomorrow am--We are sure it will be nothing short of life altering.

Jena, Jenny and Erica -- Out.

Hello everyone. Today was another beautiful day in Kenya. We learned a lot about African time. We had a wonderful conference today that was scheduled to start at 9:30 am and started about 11 am. No one seemed too bothered. It was a Community Development Conference that brought together Kenyans that are doing their best to change their community. We discussed the struggles they all face and they came to realize they had the same issues as each other. In the end they formed their owned Co-op which is what we had been hoping for. They are incredible people that do so much with so little. We were all humbled. At lunch we had a wonderful goat feast. The team has been very adventuresome about trying new foods including the ever popular "mystery meat".
The late afternoon brought about a nice walk and then we hosted a birthday party for 22 orphans. Everyone was touched by their good behavior and joy! They were each given presents and many many hugs were exchanged. They was not a dry eye in the house when they sang for us and danced in their soothing African harmonies. We hated to see them go. We will tell you more storied when we all return. But today will not be something we forget.
Tonight the team is busily packaging meds. It is almost 10 pm and they are incredibly busy even at this time at night. They are all soaking in the warm sun and culture and I have not heard a single complaint.
Tomorrow we are off the Church in the morning, followed by a visit to the Elephant Orphanage, lunch at an Ethiopian restaurant and then off to the ostrich races. We have chosen a few members on our team to represent us riding and ostrich in the races. Apparently they can only carry about 140 lbs, nothing heavier.
Well, it is late and if we want to get any sleep before the 5 am rooster crows we better get to bed ( we are all tempted to eat him)..

Arrived

The team has arrived safely. Seven of them are here at lukenya the other ten should be here in about ten minutes.

We arrived safely in kenya and got to our hotel about 10:30 pm. Customs did not check any of our bags which was nice or we could of been there for several hours. It is about 95 degrees today. Lance, jeremiah, Josiah and Duncan went to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Water and Sanitation today. I stayed behind as I have the "American flu" and did not want to get the Kenyans sick. Last night after leaving the airport we saw some zebras with our headlights, they quickly scattered. Jeremiah wanted to go running and our driver suggested that at night the leopards are hunting, so jeremiah and Lance ran this morning and then took a cool dip in the pool. Last night we were serenaded to sleep by the chirping of many bats outside our windows and were awakened by the birds. The birds here are brightly colored and the bees are the size of hummingbirds. Jeremiah was fascinated by the large praying mantis that greeted us over the door of the reception area. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the rest of the team tonight.
Jeremiah just called me from the med warehouse and was able to buy de-worming medicine for about 8 cents a person!
The team was able to get our  luggage through for less than $300 dollars. We are so thankful for all your prayers. We will do our best to keep you informed as much as possible about our wonderful adventure!!!

Hi Everyone,
We made it to Amsterdam (Julie,Lance, Josiah and Jeremiah). We had a rough go at the Milwaukee airport and they would not honor their previous commitment of $65 per bag and instead were going to charge us $200 per bag (we had 25+ bags). Good thing we got there 3 1/2 hours early. We had to call people to come get our luggage and am deeply grateful to Jenny, Scott, Adam, Laura, Mr. Gottschlich, Scott and Sharon. The rest of the team (17 people) will be checking in today and they will have to bring the rest of our luggage. Like we said, this is an adventure and it starts in the airport! We wish all the team safe travels, rest up and we will see you in Nairobi on Friday. Please keep us all in your prayers.
Julie

Last night we received our Vscan from GE. We will be sharing it with other organizations but we are excited to have this opportunity to share it with the clinics in Africa (and around the world). It is a handheld portable Ultrasound used for OB, abdominal and vascular systems. We are so excited to be able to use this for the first time.Thanks to all our generous donors, we couldn't do it without your support.
Well, I better get packing as I leave tomorrow morning with Lance, Josiah and Jeremiah. Pray we all sleep well tonight and have a safe journey.....
Julie

3-10-2012 - Packing Day!!!

Well, in 3 weeks all 21 of us will be in Kenya. Please share this blog with your friends and you can go on our journey with us!