Wednesday proved to be a VERY productive day for all the projects. The Fire Academy got outside for most of the day, deploying hose lines, working with Johnny O's beloved ropes and conducting search drills inside a newly constructed building at the Training Center.
The AHA team completed ACLS and ran full on into PALS without slowing down. Our Paramedic team worked out a baseline schedule and finished the admin side of running a program.
As the afternoon moved on, we in Nairobi (and we found out later that Kevin and John saw the same thing) noticed that clouds were rolling in and the wind had picked up. Now, in NYS, it's fairly evident that, when the clouds roll in, and wind shifts, rain is coming. Both the Nairobi teams and the Thika teams mentioned to our Kenyan counterparts that we thought rain was coming. The unanimous response was: "It won't rain here again until September." We respectfully nodded our heads and waited to see what happened.
Well, what happened was the sky opened up and the rain came in torrents. It didn't drizzle, or mist, a deluge of water cascaded form the sky, immediately flooding the roads, limited sidewalks, all the exterior walkways at the hospital were covered in water. The picture below shows the hospital staff using brooms to push the standing water out of the hallways and walkways. Earlier in the week we had questioned the large concrete troughs that run along the exterior walkways and were told that they are for when it rains. We all remarked that that was bizarre...until we actually saw it rain.
This late afternoon storm just happened to coincide with our departure from the hospital. I had mentioned in an earlier post how "interesting" driving here is. This day we got to experience that same harried experience in the face of nearly 8 inches of running water on every roadway!
Kevin, our hyperthyroid driver, left the hospital and entered the highway, his nerves seemingly more taxed than normal. I haven't really spoken about Kevin. He is a young, private car driver (think car service driver). Kevin is possibly the most cautious driver I've ever seen...on any continent. His hands NEVER leave 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. He WILL NOT change lanes without signaling. He drives like he has a car full of hemophiliacs and an open box of razor blades in the back. To be clear, although Kevin is the definition of a defensive driver, he is the ONLY one in this part of the country. He is surrounded by aggressive, offensive drivers, and despite our deepest desires, no one changed their driving style because of the rain (except Kevin who put his flashers on and slowed to 20 mph).
To further complicate the situation, we needed to stop at the Nakumatt to pick up a few things. Kevin didn't know where the Nakumatt we wanted to get to was and decided not to tell us. SO rather than making a simple stop half way to the hotel, we drove around in circles for an hour trying to explain to him how to get to where we wanted to go. But each time we left the highway to turn around, we were confronted with huge puddles of water, streams flowing across the roadway up to 8 inches deep and crowds of pedestrians and other vehicles attempting to navigate the traffic circles that are found at the bottom of every off-ramp in the highway system. Imagine if you can, 100 cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles (yes, they ride their motorcycles in monsoons too), with about 1000 pedestrians running, wading and doggie paddling in, on and around the vehicles.
After an hour, and one minor auto-pedestrian accident, we arrived at the Nakumatt. For the record, Kevin only "tapped" the young lady crossing in front of us. She was not knocked to the ground and honestly didn't even seem upset that she was just hit by a car. In the US, she would have been writhing on the ground, screaming about neck and back pain and demanding an ambulance and a lawyer, and not necessarily in that order.
After the harrowing experience, a long day and way too many odd chicken dishes, we decided to purchase pizzas and chicken wings to bring back to the hotel for everyone. There's just nothing better than pizza wings and beer after a hard day of teaching, snorkeling and endangering public safety!
Here are a couple of pictures of the amount of water flowing everywhere:
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| Driving through a monsoon |
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| Water flowing off the overpass |
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