Ruuju Women's Clinic

By: Danaiet Teame, Gloria Smith, Danielle McConnell, & Hannah Hughes

This week we had the pleasure of returning to the Ruuju area to hold a clinic for the Ruuju women’s group. We hadn’t been to the Ruuju area since our first week in Meru, so we were excited to go back and re-assess the women. With 47 women in attendance, we assessed 15 more women than during our first clinic in June. Most of the women brought their health cards that we gave them in June, and some even came with the cards that the nursing students gave last year. We offered the same assessments as for the Muchuii Women’s group including: Blood Pressure, oxygen, blood glucose, height, weight, BMI, waist circumference, and HIV testing. The forty-seven women gathered at the school and chatted and waited patiently as we made our way through all of their assessments, which took us 3 hours. As we began our assessments, Dorcas began educating the women on HIV and the importance of being testing. We weren’t exactly sure what she was saying but she had the whole place in laughter! Every woman was tested for HIV and they expressed a strong interest in having us come back to offer testing for their husbands.

When we were all finished, one of the older women taught us the handshake of a happy woman, which she did with each of us. All the women gathered outside as we were leaving and sent us off with a song and dance!

This week we also picked up 25 nursing scrub tops from Ester, one of the Muchuii women who is a seamstress. We picked out a bunch of different Kenyan materials and brought them to Ester with one of our scrub tops from Canada which she used as a template to make the Kenyan scrubs. We are very happy with how they look; they are so very nice! We plan to bring them back to PEI to sell and to return all money raised to help fund some of the Muchuii women's group projects.