Clavicle debacle

Sorry again for the long delay between posts, things have been really busy here and it left me little time to think about writing let alone actually taking time to write. Add to this and unfortunate event that occurred on September 19th when I fractured my clavicle while playing soccer with some colleagues and some Kenyans. A truly painful event, but fortunately I had doctors around me who were quick to help and get me the proper treatment.*  The fracture has put my right arm in a sling and I'm to stay in this predicament for about six weeks.  Being in the sling forces me to type most things with one hand, and let me say for the record, that one-handed typing is no fun. All-in-all,  I have been in no mood to write.

My Broken Right Clavicle

* A work on Kenyan health care.  I didn't spend much time in the system, there are enough Western Doctors here that they were able to diagnose and get me the proper X-rays.  We also sent the copies of the film to Orthopedic Surgeons in the US (both in Indianapolis and New York) for additional consultation.  I will say one thing, I have had three X-rays taken here and so far I've spent less than $20 US for all three. Actually, I spent less than a co-pay for the X-rays.

The timing of the fracture was unfortunate, I was starting to write the ISC strategic plan. Given the difficulties with typing I decided to look into dictation software for the Mac. I was well aware of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but I was not sure if the folks at Dragon produced a similar title for the Mac. Fortunately, there is Dragon Dictate for the Mac and as a bonus I could buy electronic version and not have to worry about having a CD or DVD shipped to me.* Of course, as with many things in Kenya, actually getting the software and the necessary equipment to make everything work was not going to be an easy thing.

* Having things shipped from the US to Eldoret is nowhere near as easy as having something shipped from Indianapolis to New York. First off, it could take upwards of a few weeks for anything to arrive via international shipping. Then there are always issues with customs here in Kenya and that can cause further delay.** Finally, once the item has arrived in Kenya and cleared customs, there is still the challenge of getting the item from Nairobi to Eldoret and the additional issue of getting the item to where I live. With the last part, you should know that street addresses, though they exist to some degree, are not as formalized as they are in the US. There are street names here, but I have been unable to figure out if actual address numbers even exist.

** We recently have some android phones shipped out from Indianapolis via DHL. AMPATH is being helped by the folks at DHL, whereby DHL will help ship items to Eldoret for little or no cost. They also agreed to help deal with customs related issues to help us move equipment and supplies fairly quickly and with little hassle. Unfortunately, in practice this doesn't always work out as planned. The phones that were shipped took less than four days to move between Indianapolis and Nairobi and have been stuck in the customs process for more than 10 day.

The first step in getting dictation software was actually being able to download the software. As I said, I purchased the electronic version of DragonDictate and I hoped to simply download the software even if it took a few hours to do so. Unfortunately, it seems like the folks at Dragon block downloads to certain places like Africa. So, I had to enlist the help of a colleague at the Regenstrief Institute to download the software and posted up on one of our temporary download server servers.  I next had to transfer the software to one of the AMPATH servers and finally transfer the software to a USB flash drive.*

* The Internet service that we currently have is incredibly slow, I'm talking mid-90s modem slow. To transfer the software directly to my laptop at home would have taken close to 15 hours. I do understand that the file size was fairly large (1.5 GB), but it only took three hours to download the software to our AMPATH server.

So now, with software and hand I had to overcome next major hurdle. And that was to find a suitable headset to work with Dragon dictate. This proved to be pretty much impossible, though some stores sold computer headsets, none of those headsets were quite good enough for what I needed. This resulted in me having to order the proper headset, have it shipped to Indianapolis and then make arrangements to have it transported here to Eldoret. I was faced with having to wait at least 2 to 3 weeks for the headset to arrive and see my productivity shot to hell. Fortunately, a colleague happened to have a headset that met specifications, let me borrow it and now I am able to get some work done. I'm using Dragon Dictate to write this blog, I've not yet mastered it, but it does generally work beyond my expectations.

Things are not always easy here, and quite often, to quote the Rolling Stones, “you can't always get what you want.” Fortunately however, the rest of the lyric (“if you try sometime, you find, you get what you need”) also holds true.

For now, I will spend some time learning the software, hopefully catch up with my work, and get some more time to write about things here on this blog.