Kome Island by Amisadai Monger

Dark green trees in the distance. Small wooden shacks on the shore. Crowding people peered through a large fence and stick gates. The late afternoon sun beat down on the island of Kome, the second largest island in Lake Victoria. Tin roofs glinted in the sunshine. The children stared as the ferry docked. Roosters crowed. The mill groaned as it worked. A narrow dusty dirt road ran down to the market.

 

Boats on the shore

The people of Kome are friendly but curious. They stared at my white skin and tugged my blond hair. Many of them are farmers or fisherman.  The farmers might have an acre or two to grow crops like cassava, potatoes, beans, and kunde. It is difficult to farm maize (corn) because of monkeys which come and eat it. The fisherman catch tilapia in the day and Nile perch at night. The fishermen’s small boats are made out of either wood or woven reeds. 

Fishing boats on the Lake

Close to the shores of the lake, there is an old guesthouse which has now been made into a little clinic. It has a small office, 4 beds in separate rooms, a room for giving birth, a lab, a medicine room, and an area for patients’ family to cook. In the lab, there are trays of glass slides, a shelf of medicine bottles, a counter for their microscope, samples of stools, urine and blood and a sink. Dr. Bernard Makori started the clinic and Dr. Isaac runs it.  The most common illnesses on the island are malaria, which is from mosquito bites, and parasites such as amoeba and worms resulting from dirty, bad water.



Kome Clinc

Down a small dusty path through small hair salons and shops selling flip flops, through wooden stalls of tomatoes and onions and tables of smelly fish, through puddles and fields and straw-roofed huts there is a group of people sat in the shade. The leader shouts “Wee!” and the group replies “Waa!” This group of men and women join together to save money which they can then borrow for their businesses.  It is called a Village Savings and Loans group. There are about forty men women in this group. They meet every Tuesday and all pay 500Tsh (40p) into the group money pot.

The Village Mamas Savings Group

 

The Group Mamas (with their children) with friend, Naha and us

Kome Island is just one of Lake Victoria’s many islands. I would like to visit some of the other smaller islands. I wonder how far away they all are and what work we might do there. We were only on Kome Island for a few days, but in that time I found out many new things.

See how life for kids on Kome Islands is compared to kids living in the UK!

	Name	Food	Language	For fun	Chores
Kids in the UK	Mia, William	Sausage, mash and peas	English	TV, reading	Tidying rooms
Kome Girls	Upendo, Jema	Rice, spinach and fish	Swahili, Kisukuma	Dancing, sit and talk	Cooking, sweeping, washing clothes and dishes
Kome boys	Amani, Saidi, Yusufu	Ugali, papai, Avacado	Swahili, Kisukuma	Play football,  running	Herding goats, fishing

 

Results of "Daylight Hours around the World"

Thank you for taking part in my survey! I got results from 66 people from 16 countries! Here are my results averaged out. We found out that of the countries represented, the country with the longest day this week was New Zealand and the place with the fewest daylight hours was in north of England.

Location	Daylight Hours	Sunrise	Sunset
	Feb. 18-19, 2014
USA
WA	10:31	07:08	17:39
MINN	10:40	07:20	18:00
PA	11:00	06:45	17:45
FL	11:18	07:04	18:22
CA	11:06	06:29	17:35
PITT	11:00	07:00	18:00
UK
UK South	10:14	07:08	17:22
UK North	09:52	07:24	17:16
CANADA	10:26	07:08	17:34
(BC, Ont, Nfld)
SA
Montagu	13:10	06:18	19:28
J'Burg	11:35	06:10	17:45
Pretoria	12:50	05:56	18:46
NZ	14:03	06:35	20:38
AUSTRALIA	12:56	05:34	18:30
DUBAI, UAE	11:40	06:50	18:30
CHINA	10:34	06:36	17:10
HONG KONG	11:30	06:52	18:22
MALAYSIA	12:15	07:30	19:45
ITALY	10:40	07:06	17:46
GERMANY	10:19	07:21	17:40
ALBANIA	11:30	06:00	17:30
GAMBIA	12:00	07:21	19:21
TANZANIA	12:11	06:57	19:08
MALAWI	12:15	05:45	18:00

With all the results that came in from all over the United States, we graphed the differences there in daylight hours. Here are the differences in daylight hours on Feb 18th, 2014:

I also compared daylight hours throughout the year in Tanzania (near the equator), England (northern hemisphere) and Australia (southern hemisphere).

Dr. Louisa's Clinic Report

We went to Kome Island last week and visited Dr Bernard’s clinic with Dr Isaac. We signed the visitor’s book and three lines above we saw that a Dr. Louisa had visited! We had a tour around the clinic and Dr. Isaac taught me how to do lab tests and what the shape of an amoeba is under the microscope. Parasites like amoebas and worms and snails are a big problem on the island because of bad water and because they don't have good places to go to the toilet and wash your hands. I would like be a doctor when I grow up. Here is my doctor report  from my time at the clinic.

Lab Work

Dr. Louisa’s Clinic Report

February 13, 2014: In the lab I tested for amoeba in the patient’s stool. He brought the stool in a small matchbox. A bit of the stool was put on a glass slide under the microscope. The stool had the schistosoma mansoni ora (the egg of a long thin, sucking worm). This is what I saw:

 

Learning about the schistosoma mansoni egg
(Stool sample in match box)

There were also samples of blood to test for malaria and there were urine samples that had to be checked. The urine test was clear.

In my office I checked Mr Isaac’s heart with the stethoscope. He was healthy.

Health check for Dr. Issac



Kome Island Clinic