Hujambo kutoka Kenya

At long last...Greetings from Kenya and many thanks for following us on our yearlong adventure! After nearly 24 hours of driving and flying, we can hardly believe we're finally here and moved into our new home in Eldoret! Lauren "Harry Potter Marathon-ed" and Cody - in classic form - slept almost the entire way here...all-in-all a fairly solid trip.

On the ground at Eldoret Regional Airport

Eldoret is a periurban town with a population of nearly 260,000 in the Rift Valley Province, Western Kenya. It is home to Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and the Academic Model Providing Access To Healthcare (AMPATH), where we will serve as research fellows for the upcoming year. Lauren will be working with Dr. Laura Ruhl on a variety of Pop Health and Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) projects, including the Chama cha MamaToto/BabaToto and Adolescent Reproductive Health programs. Cody will be working with Dr. Wendy O'Meara and the Duke Malaria team on a variety of diagnostic and rural laboratory capacity-building projects. You can learn more about AMPATH and affiliated projects here: https://www.ampathkenya.org/.

Downtown Eldoret

We're living in a large communal house (Hilltop) with 6 other yearlong North American research fellows just a few blocks away from Moi University's Health Sciences Campus. A few minutes after our arrival, we met Brody (who incidentally looks just like our dog Zoe!) and considered this a good sign we'd quickly find a home in Eldoret.

Cody meets Brody, the Hilltop House pup

Though the final leg of our journey was uneventful, the road to Kenya was undoubtedly filled with many ups and downs. We're forever grateful to the family, friends and mentors who supported us through obstacles and gave us the resilience to continually pursue this lifelong dream. We're thrilled to finally be here, but are already missing our awesome family, friends, and sweet pup, Zoe, who's at home in Durham with our close family friends, Jill, Pete, Andrew, Campbell and Ollie.

Zoe holding down the Nelsonado fort in Durham (pc: Pete)

We're so excited for the year ahead and are glad you're joining us along for the ride. We'll do our best to provide weekly updates filled with stories, snapshots, Swahili snafus and the like. Sending all our love and big hugs to everyone back in the states!

Stay tuned for more to come and tuonane badaaye (see you later!)

Lauren & Cody