I first traveled to Kenya for 2 months in the fall of 2004, and my time working on the wards of the referral hospital convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in global pediatrics, specializing in the kind of research that would improve broken health care systems in poor places. In 2006, I started spending 4-6 months of each year in Kenya, engaged in work to learn how to best provide long-term care for HIV-infected children. Although Kenya has become my second home, my parents have never previously visited the country. This was not for lack of interest; the logistics of two busy full-time jobs and serious health issues and first-time developing country travel have all created complications. But as you’ve probably gathered from the last few blog entries, my parents spent most of February in Kenya with me (fulfilling many years’ worth of birthday and Christmas wishes by their daughter.) Spending these concentrated weeks with them taught me a number of lessons, many of which I was re-learning once again… 1. Kenyan friends are incredibly gracious. Over and over, we were welcomed by Kenyan friends with hospitality and generosity and ceremony that overwhelmed us. The mother of a friend prepared a feast featuring every type of Kenyan food I have ever sampled (chicken, beef, goat, ugali, uji, chapatti, sukumu wiki, fruits, mandazi, the “special” sour milk, and on and on) and her family bestowed gifts upon each of us while they sang and encircled us. One hundred orphans sang and shook our hands and gave us flowers. In the simplest of homes, we were treated to the best of what they had. And we had more invitations than we lunches and dinners available. So, so gracious.  
2. My parents are talented. Obviously, I’ve known these people my whole lives, but I was impressed once again with their gifts and the ready ease with which they were willing to share them when pressed into action. Within a day or two of arrival, my father was fielding question-and-answer sessions with our program managers in Kenya, advising the directors of a center for street children, and giving a lecture to the local business students in an MBA program. (All at the eager request of my colleagues, of course.) And my mother was giving a recital! Not to mention engaging in activities with children on the hospital wards, making music with our young patients waiting for their HIV clinic appointments, and creating gift bags for hundreds of orphaned children (and all the adults living in our house.) 
3. HIV is heart-breaking. My parents went to several of the HIV clinics with me and saw our HIV care program in action in a number of facets, including making home visits with our Orphans and Vulnerable Children program. I kind of forget, on some level, the heart-breaking pain of what it means to know that a child is infected with HIV until I was seeing the patients through my parents’ eyes. In a child who looked pretty good to me the doctor, they still saw the sadness of a virus for which there is no cure, a virus that devastates the world’s poorest mothers and their children. 
4. My parents are tough. Because they really wanted to see my work and our programs and lots of people and because our time was limited (and maybe because we're all super-industrious worker bees?), I ended up scheduling very long days for us. We were up early and busy all day and exhausted by the end of the evening (at least I was), but my parents were troopers and they wanted to do it all and see it all. My mother has really severe allergies, and she managed to stick with our up-at-dawn-and-busy-all-day schedule despite constant exposure to all kinds of dust and things she was allergic to that left her body weak and reacting terribly to everything. Despite the physically and emotionally draining days, they were up for everything. My parents are really tough. 5. I am a good driver. My parents may have expressed their favorable impression of my driving skills more than any other sentiment in my direction during this trip. Although my skills in shifting with my left hand and driving on the opposite side of the road are fairly noteworthy, I think what really impressed them was that I managed to avoid getting us all killed during our hours on the roads. I was reminded, though, how well I have adapted to the crazy Kenya roads. 
6. Kenya is a place of extremes. The ups and downs of life in this place still overwhelms me with its intensity at times, and this was made more clear experiencing everything with my parents. For example, one day, we went from having a lovely HIV clinic morning where I saw patients accompanied by the sounds of children singing to my mother’s keyboard playing outside to facing the desperate reality of examining a newborn baby that had been abandoned in a pit latrine. From there, we were treated to one magnificent Kenyan welcome after another, to be followed by a frightening drive home in the dark with a storm. Up/down/up/down in the course of one day. The challenges of a place with such beauty and riches and yet such poverty and pain... 7. I love Kenya. And the AMPATH program. I had been cautioned that my goal should not be for my parents to love Kenya, but to help them learn about Kenya and about my life and work in Kenya. But I realized that my love is such that I want to share it. Even when it means immersion into the hard stuff. Because I love Kenya so much, I wanted my parents to see the real Kenya and to love it anyway. And touring and visiting the different aspects of the AMPATH program – the nutrition support program, the crafts workshop, the Orphans program – reminded me how much I love and believe in the work that we are doing in Kenya. I was so proud to show my parents the amazing things my colleagues are making possible. 
(Touring the one of the production farms that enables us to provide food insecure patients with fresh produce) 8. Coffee addiction is a serious business. Don’t mess with Dutch people and their coffee. As a freakish non-coffee drinker, I fail to take into account the importance of procuring good, strong coffee at regular intervals. My parents took great precautions to ensure a regular coffee supply, primarily in the form of carrying across the ocean a massive quantity of Starbucks Via packets. Thank goodness for instant coffee, the relative ease with which we could procure hot water, and the soothing benefits of the coffee infusion. (I even saw them add Via to a cup of tea!) 9. Kenya is beautiful. At the end of my parents’ time in Kenya, we got to take a safari to the Masai Mara. Oh my goodness. The gorgeousness of this country. Not that I don’t see it on my usual drives to clinic or around our house in Eldoret, but there is nothing like the golden light over the savannah plains of the Mara, where elephants and lions and cheetahs roam in the fields next to you and the vast, vast sky is beyond words. In the extremes of this country, this is a stunning one – the extreme beauty and extreme richness of this country’s natural resources.   
10. My parents love me. This was clear to me in so many ways. They were willing to spend all this time and money to come all the way to Kenya with me. They followed me to clinics all around the countryside, they came to my research talks, they met all my friends, they spent long days seeing all sorts of things that I thought might be interesting, they rode in tiny planes and rickety buses, they braved the dust and bugs and lack of roads and prevalence of pit latrines… It was crystal clear to me that I am much-loved. And I realized you are never too old to be thrilled that your parents love you.  
(They even took photos of me giving a research talk! And we all donned safari hats...) | 
