AIM FOR AFRICA-CAHRE ARTISTS' RESIDENCY IN NAIROBI

A partnership between the University of Florida Center for the Arts in Healthcare (CAHRE), Shands Arts in Medicine (AIM), and the Mater Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, AIM for Africa has established the first formal Arts in Medicine program in East Africa, and includes artists exchanges, cultural events, medical student mission trips to Africa, related coursework at UF, and training in the arts in healthcare clinical practice for artists in Africa and the U.S.

CULTURAL EXCHANGES- CAHRE ARTISTS' RESIDENCY IN NAIROBI

Captains’ Log
Stardate: 10/15/06
Nairobi, Kenya

  Thankfully, Winnie has given us this day free to kind of get situated. We have seen some of the hospital grounds and took a little safari into town where we found an internet café with incredibly slow connection.
  They have put us up in a little apartment adjacent to the hospital where they probably let
patients with families stay. They are even bringing us our meals! Incredible hospitality. There isn’t internet in the apartment, so we will write our journals in Word at the end of each day and send them in whenever we get internet access at the hospital.
  Tomorrow we will meet some people from the hospital and the dancers who are part of, I believe, a contemporary dance festival that is going on this week—at least. We will also see an art studio that is made available for artists to work and will presumably arrange
some workshops for later in the week. In the afternoon, we will shop for more art supplies. We will have much more to say after tomorrow, I’m sure. Signing off for now,
Rusti

Entry # 2:
   We arrived in the dark, a cool balmy night. The airport is small and not at all intimidating; yes there was toilet paper in the bathroom. I had wonderful conversations with several guards and the cleaning woman while waiting for Rusti’s flight to arrive. Everyone showed interest in our “mission”. Faith (the cleaning woman) and I looked at the dolly mamma book that I made for a long time. She was intrigued. There is no word for dolly in Swahili, so it is great fun explaining.
   We are served wonderful meals right to our apartment. We also have a very hot shower, frig, and cooking stove. Yes and indoor pluming. It is way nicer then a motel 6. Today was to be our day of rest, we got cabin fever. So explore we did. We got a taxi and went into the downtown. The Hilton wouldn’t change our $$$$. So we found a casino that would. Our driver is Maasai and was very nice. On asking if he could return in two hours, he said that he would wait. (no extra charge) yes we gave him a good tip. We went to an internet place (we’ll find the café another time) I sent the out one arrival email (that took a half hour) then I explored the city a bit more while Rusti took advantage of having a wireless/wired (very slow) connection.
   We got home just before dark, with a lovely dinner waiting by our apt. door. Tonight we are having a quiet evening, as I bond a bit with Rusti’s lap top. Looking forward to our tomorrow, I trust it will hold much excitement and many stories. p.s. the ‘Marshalls’ is not clothing, it is a car dealer.
Exit madeline

Stardate: 10/16/06
Nairobi, Kenya
   The theme for the day was shop till you drop—or at least part of the day. We started with meeting many of the volunteers that Winnie has rounded up to take part in the program. Many of them work in the hospital in some capacity. We had a good meeting where we just talked about Arts in Medicine and what each of us does and then asked for questions. When some of them said they had no questions, I shamelessly used John’s line: “If you did have a question, what would it be?” And it worked, as it always does. Then we got a quick tour of the hospital, meeting staff along the way. It looks like Winnie has really made contacts and networked before we came.
   We also got a FABULOUS visit to a place called the Go-Down: a complex of facilities dedicated to giving artists places to work—dancers and all kinds of visual arts. We had a meeting with some of the artists, again talking about what Arts in Medicine is,
what we do, etc. There was a lot of interest and very good questions. All were very articulate. There is a festival of contemporary East African dance next week and I met several choreographers who came to the meeting between their rehearsals. I will try to get contact information for them before I leave and we are hoping to see at least one performance.

THEN we got to shop. We wanted some art supplies and went to a place called Nakumatt—like Walmart! But the prices on things like markers, paper, etc. were much higher than in the States, so we are very glad that we had done most of the shopping at
the Gainesville Walmart before coming. We did digress and buy ourselves some great Indian style outfits—it was a good price. Madeline is skipping around in hers as I type. We tried to buy some beads in town and the shop owner tried his best to get us to buy more than we wanted for what seemed to be an outrageous price. We decided that we could do without the beads after all.

We are going to have an apron decorating activity sometime—I’m sure it is definitely scheduled, but truthfully I just can’t keep it all straight. Winnie’s assistant has promised to get us a printed schedule—I hope it’s soon. The rest of today Madeline will
be sewing some aprons (we were only able to find 12 ready made) and I will be working on my Dance History class on the internet.
Nairobi is a huge city of great contrasts. We have seen the western style skyscrapers and the shanties of the slums. But everywhere, the hospitality is out of this world!
Ya kuonana (till we meet again),
Rusti

Entry #2
Another lovely day. We woke early for a bowl of wimbi porridge, bananas, and an African donut. We went into the hospital at 8:30 and had a very wonderful morning of introductions. Sitting around a large oval executive type table, we were introduced to about a dozen women and two men (sounds like AIM). Everyone is charming and welcoming. Rusti and I spoke at length about the arts in medicine program, sharing stories etc. Rusti is a wonderful speaker. We spent some time with questions, then a quick bathroom break in labor delivery . Winnie toured us through the entire Hospital. I might add at this time how beautiful the hospital is. The curtains between beds are a bright
flowered print, lending an air of homey-ness, comfort and safety. Not at all austere and scary. Even the ICU has a feeling of comfort. Hymns are piped in to many of the units. It is really lovely. We were introduced to so many of the staff, they were all very welcoming and seemed
glad we were there. Winnie has been wonderful. And then lunch followed by SHOPPING. Well it is time to send this message so I’ll write more tomorrow as I am very slow.
Exit Madeline

To be Continued, please click here to download the whole journal.