Hello!

I am sat writing this as thunder rumbles round and rain is looking likely. For 99% of people in this country this is very good news as there have been months of draught, very high temperatures and all this has led to soring food prices and increased poverty for your average Kenyan family. For me this rain is likely to mean some serious mud driving, no power and getting very wet, but don't feel I should moan too much given the circumstances!!!

In other news I spent most of Easter running a dental clinic (yes! I am still a physio and no! I was not pulling teeth out!!). The dental equipment was finally installed at the end of 2010 and this pilot clinic is the first time the rooms have been used. It shows a great need for dental services in this area and for good oral education. We are running a follow up clinic next month and then aim to employ a full time Kenyan dentist, so part of my role for the coming months is to find funding for this. Dental work is expensive and tends to need some element of funding to make it accessible to the local community. Next week "sees" the start of eye camp (number 4 since April last year-I can't believe how quickly a year has gone!!) I am aiming to run a camp that will allow 100 operations to be done over 3 days at DMCC and will hopefully allow about another 100 people to be treated for other eye conditions. It is big undertaking given that we normally have 12 inpatient beds max! If you'd like to see a short DVD about the last eye camp please go to

http://youtu.be/A_MEOgKeM6Q

The other news from DMCC is that medical outreach is nearly running itself-which is great as it frees me up for other things. It still requires some time but far less than 6 months ago. It is happening twice a week and so far this year has seen a good number of patients. The physio clinic is moving along in a slow but steady fashion. We have some funding for wheelchairs so are hoping to link with a Kenyan organisation called APDK to provide a few wheelchairs to some of patients that most require them. It is amazing and the need is huge, despite Wheels for World giving out a huge number of chairs in this area in the past, we could probably give 500 more without problem. The oxygen training and first line management of acutely unwell patients that we did with the DMCC staff before Christmas has proved to be vital. We have had a good number of patients who may well have not managed the long transfer to the nearest place with oxygen prior to DMCC having it. It has made a huge difference and hopefully will increase the survival rate of those who present that are very sick.

Otherwise Mike and I are very well, Mike is doing many funding applications and project proposal to try and allow IcFEM to be sustainable in the future. He has almost left the sports department and spends a large amount of his time in meetings or in front of a computer. I will let him tell you more about his work!

Our chicken population is growing, in fact today 8 new chicks hatch before I left for work, so cute! it is shame to think some will be dinner in 6 months' time!!!! The garden looks lovely and is particularly nice as we do none of the work to make it look nice!!- I don't think our garden in the UK will ever be able to match up to what we have here!

We also want to say a huge thank you to Matt (my little bro) and his friend Innes who have made it all the way from London to Barcelona on a bike to raise money for our landrover-thanks Matt and Innes.

Right enough of my rambling! I will try and upload some dental photos so you can see the progress DMCC is making.

Much love, do drop us an email we love hearing from you.

Becky