Going to the hospital in the middle of the night

I have noticed that living in Nairobi is actually quite expensive, I feel like I am food shopping everyday. I have started to get used to all the zeros, 1000 Kenyan shilling is about 9 Euros or a 100 Sek and before having a feel for how much you get for your money it was easy to spend them. Saving time is here, well not really but why pay double the price for something?

Locally grown fruit and vegetables are really cheap and so are flowers. Beef filet has become or new "kenyansk falukorv" (a Swedish type of sausage)and we eat it frequently so that we'll get sick of it before moving back, in Sweden you just can't get fine meat that cheap. A liter of yogurt is about 1.4€, a 500g package of Kellogg's Cornflakes is 5€ - super expensive, I am not buying that again! Hold on it gets worse a package of Kraft's Philadelphia cream cheese is 7€, when my friend told me I thought she was kidding, by the time I got home to have a look at my receipt I was crying.

Now we also know the cost of going to the hospital, last night it was time to go and see a doctor again. Some time after midnight I felt something wasn't right with Noah because he was having a restless sleep, tossing and turning. I put my hand on his forehead feeling he was really hot, we took the temperature and noticed he had 39.3 degrees Celsius. Back home this would be of no concern to us but since we've just come back from Lamu, malaria infested area, where we despite insect repellent and mosquito nets got bitten every night, we thought we better check it quickly.

Children that age are much more vulnerable and in case of malaria, it is easier to treat it the earlier it is discovered. We had to call and wake the driver since he had taken our car home and we probably wouldn't have found our way to the hospital on our own in the middle of the night anyway. The poor fellow got there 20 minutes later and we took off. Nairobi is not known for being the safest place during night time, not only because one can get car jacked but more because people drive like mad and often after having had quite a few drinks. Only the night before 28 people were killed in a severe accident where a bus hit a truck at 1 am in the morning. Have a look at this terrifying photo and you'll know what I am talking about. Nairobi bus crash








Luckily the roads where more or less empty but for a few cars and trucks. At nighttime, Nairobi looks surprisingly Western, it must be because one only sees the lit up buildings and petrol stations while the wooden shacks remains hidden in the dark.

We reached Nairobi hospital around 1.30 am and I suspected it to be packed with people but it was nearly empty. We signed Noah in then paid 1200 Ksh (12€) at another counter and were then showed into a room where we waited to be taken care of. The doctor, a young fellow turned out to be as friendly as the doctor we met on Lamu, in Sweden they are usually quite uninterested and stressed. Noah's temperature was taken and it was decided that a few test were needed to decide the cause of illness. I had to go to the counter again to pay another 2920 Ksh (29€) and was then given a voucher to bring to the lab, funny system that must be very time consuming especially during busy hours! Anyhow, the test were taken, Noah who knows exactly what people in white coats do, behaved very bravely, his mother again had to look in another direction when sticking a needle into his vein.


1 hour later, around 3 am we received the results, no malaria, what a relief! It turned out to be a "normal" infection and we could all happily go home and sleep.