The missionaries at Tenwek

The people that work and live around here are the real heart of this hospital. Tenwek has a variety of missionary volunteers including physicians, nurses, engineers, social workers, teachers, and laboratory support staff. Each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, us short-timers are invited over for a meal at the long-timers houses. Each has a unique path they took to Tenwek and will share these stories with us over lunch or dinner.

One group is three couples who arrived about four months ago. There are four physicians--an ophthalmologist and an OB/GYN who are married, a surgeon, and a internist, both who have non-medical wives. They met in medical school and became friends while attending the same church. They all just finished their respective residencies and wanted to travel overseas together as a group. Tenwek was the only mission hospital that could handle four doctors at once for their two-year commitment. They live communally, living in a triplex, sharing a car, a washer and dryer, and childcare responsibilities. Eventually, they want to set up surgical services at a hospital somewhere that has less physician density than Tenwek.

Another couple, who are both family medicine trained, run the Casualty department and have been here about 18 months. They have two daughters who have adapted to Kenyan life without pause. Most of the families here have young children and they are communally home-schooled until about 8th grade when they go off to Rift Valley Academy, a boarding school that mostly has missionary kids (MKs) and some local East African kids. There are probably 30 kids around the compound at any given time who play, learn, and grow up together.

The guy with the most time here currently is Russ White, a general and thoracic trained surgeon from Brown University. His wife, Beth, and their five children have been here for almost fifteen years and have served in a variety of ways from medical director to residency program coordinator to endoscopist to hospital administrator. They are planning on going back to the US for 6-9 months furlough this summer to be on faculty at Brown and raise support for the next 4 years.

The individual stories and unique calling to the mission field could fill many more pages of space. Although not all of us are destined to serve long-term, the opportunity to be a relief team member for short-term service is a real blessing for everyone involved. People who come over for a month or two help with the overwhelming workload including call, preparing conferences and lectures for the residents and students, and allowing the long-term doctors to have some much needed time off. When I arrived with a group of other residents including pediatrics, medicine, and neurology, over half the long-term staff left for a two week conference on the coast. The two Kenyan chief surgical residents have been on their required anesthesia and endoscopy rotations since I have been available to cover the surgical service. Short-term visiting staff also allows for specialty services like neurosurgery, joint replacements, pediatric surgery, and open heart surgery---the Vanderbilt team will be arriving next week just after I leave. All of these individuals, both career and visiting volunteers, create a dynamic and comprehensive medical staff at Tenwek that I am fortunate to be a small part of.