Visitor Information

So we have had lots and lots and lots of recent interest in visiting us in Kenya at Yellow House Children's Services (inquiries to info@yellowhousechildrens.org please). Typically, when individuals contact us there are certain pieces of information that are helpful to know.. so.. Rachael and I put our heads together and answer some of the most frequently asked questions here:

How long should I come for?

As an organization Yellow House is flexible in the amount of time visitors want to come to Kenya for. Our visitor stays tend to range from ten days to four months. The longer you stay, the more you will get out of your experience.. but that's a good question: WHY ARE YOU COMING? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS? It is so helpful to us if you can answer these questions! 

Because of the dearth of Speech Language Pathologists and other professional service providers in the region, Yellow House works really hard to ensure that professionals who are coming are put to good use, in a sustainable way, doing projects that can be continued after they leave. What we really love is when visitors return at a later time to continue work they started.

Who do you want to visit?

Most of our visitors are professional speech language pathologists/therapists, special educators, psychologists and allied health professionals. We also host SLT students. There are very few organizations that are so focused on communication disorders. Nationality wise, visitors join us from all over the world though mostly Australia, Great Britain and the United States (in about that order). We are a registered non-for-profit in the US, so US volunteers who fundraiser for projects they wish to implement can receive a tax-exempt donation letter.

What areas are do you work in?

We mainly work with pediatric school based caseloads, but we also work in hospital clinics and with community based health organizations. There is a wide range of diagnoses that you will run into including encephalitis, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, microcephaly, developmental delay, stuttering, autism, stroke and hearing impairment. Currently we are developing a dysphagia caseload, as there are lots of children and adults here with eating and swallowing difficulties. We very rarely see individuals with mild issues. Most of the individuals referred to us have significant medical or developmental impairments. We make every attempt to take a functional approach to therapy with a focus on how that individual needs to participate in their community.

We provide services within the framework of existing infrastructure. That means, everything we do, is embedded into a community based service that was there before us, and will remain after us. 

Where is Yellow House located?

At this time we are really focusing our efforts on our projects in Western Kenya. We work in Kisumu, Vihiga, Kakamega or Mumias. If you look at a map of Western Kenya you will see Kisumu is a large town that sits on Lake Victoria. Vihiga is 20 minutes on public transport from there, Kakamega is 60 minutes from there (40 minutes beyond Vihiga) and Mumias is about 60 minutes from Kakamega. We work with the Educational Assessment Resource Centers in these places, the public schools and the district hospitals.

Where do your visitors stay?

All visitors self-fund their own trips. For budgeting purposes, we estimate that monthly living costs (accommodation, meals, laundry, transport) are approximately at $500 if you stay in one of our houses, $1000 if you stay at a guest house.

 If you plan to run a teacher training or workshop while you are in Kenya, the trainer usually covers these costs, which include lunch and transport costs for participants. Roughly, it costs $100 to train 50 people for one day. We help organize the logistics of this.

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Don't hesitate to email us with questions but it is easier to consider your visit if you know when you are coming and for how long. 

In the meantime we recommend you buy a lonely planet/rough guide to Kenya and read it! Seriously. 

Also, read books and watch films set in Africa. Try and get a bit of historical and contemporary perspective on the country. Kenya has a long history of colonialism that you should be knowledgeable about. The better informed you are about the history and socio-politics of the region the more you will get out of your time in Kenya and the better you will understand the context of service delivery! 

Below I have listed some titles by some of my favourite African authors. 

Great reads:

•    “I Laugh so I Won’t Cry: Kenyan Women Tell the Story of Their Lives” by Helen Halperin ***

•    “Playing by Their Rules: Coastal teenage girls in Kenya on life, love and football” by Sarah Forde ***

•    “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya” by Caroline Elkins (won a Pulitzer prize)

•    “Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika” by Giles Foden

•    “Desertion” by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzanian novelist)

•    “Half of a Yellow Sun” also “Purple Hibiscus” and “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian author)

•    “Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe” by Doreen Baingana (Ugandan writer)

•    “When she was Queen” by M.G. Vassanji (born in Kenya, raised in Tanzania)

•    “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” by Ishmael Beah (from Sierra Leone)

•    “African Love Stories: An Anthology” by Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghanaian author)

•    “One Day I Will Write About This Place” by Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenyan author)

Colonial Perspectives

•    “West with the Night” by Beryl Markham ***

•    “I Dreamed of Africa” by Kuki Gallmann (also a movie with Kim Basinger)

•    “Out of Africa” by Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen (also a movie with Meryl Streep)

•    “The Bolter” by Frances Osbourne (a biography)

•    “White Mischief” by James Fox

*** highly recommended

Fundraiser 2014

Thanks to everyone who came out in Chicago last Saturday to raise money for, and celebrate the work of Yellow House Children's Services (www.yellowhousechildrens.org). We appreciate all your support and we REALLY enjoy the work we do.

Special thanks to Stephanie Thompson and Jamie Kinder for throwing such a marvellous party, and Death's Door (http://deathsdoorspirits.com) and Rockmill Brewery (http://rockmillbrewery.com). Also to Brian Kellett (http://kosinedesign.com) for his smashing design work.

We hope to see you in Chicago again - April 11, 2015

For updates, you can always check us out on Twitter @our_yellowhouse and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/YellowHouseChildrens. Rachael Gibson also has a blog: http://speechtherapyinkenya.blogspot.com

Newsletter

Yellow House Newsletter

Spring Updates 2014

From Rachael:

The start of 2014 literally took all of us at Yellow House by surprise. We found ourselves responding to a flurry of emails and interest in our programs. There was an increase in the amount of visitor inquiries, and people started committing to their travel dates.

Due to new links with the University of Toronto, we will be hosting two students who will come to Western Kenya as a part of their final year clinical placement. These students will join us mid-May for 10 weeks in Vihiga, Kakamega and Kisumu under the supervision of Rachael Gibson and David Rochus.

Further, Rachael is in the process of organising a programme for 10 students from the University of Hong Kong to come in June for 3 weeks. Half of them are training to be SLTs, the other half are training to be secondary school teachers. A partnership has been created with Bishop Abiero Shaurimoyo Secondary school in Kisumu where the students will be based, observing teachers, taking lessons and running workshops in areas that aren’t traditionally taught here like art, stress relief for students taking exams and drama. The SLT students will be spending time with David and Rachael, observing work being done and supporting them within the programmes being carried out. If these partnerships are successful this year then we hope this will be a ‘forever’ link, helping us push forward in developing our service.

Since mid-February, Rachel Bell, a qualified SLT from Ireland, has been with us. She has been such an asset to the team, helping Rachael to set up a play/early language development group at the hospital, providing therapy to the children of the mum’s group Florence and Rachael set up in Kisumu, and spending time in schools and EARCs. Rachel has generously spent some of her own money to provide 2 workshops (alongside David) in Navakholo at Siyombe School on dysfluency after running an outreach programme there and discovering lots of children with stammering difficulties.

A generous donation from Becca Martin (UK) allowed us to purchase 2 occupational therapy mats for our clinic at the hospital in Vihiga. Rachael and Florence have been using these mats during the early interaction development group running on Mondays. So far we’ve had 4 children attend, and we’re hoping the group will continue to develop over time.

Through the generosity of Isis Cooper (a Yellow House visitor in the summer of 2011), Purbeck View School (residential school in the UK that Rachael’s sister Claire works at) and Crawley Methodist Church (Rachael’s Aunty Sheila Jones attends) Yellow House’s programming costs from March to the end of July have been covered. This money enables Rachael, David, Selinah and Florence to travel to their different places of work and make clinical resources each month. Such a weight off our shoulders as we continue to look for funding to support our programmes.

From David:

We are fortunate to have the continuing services of SLT David Rochus, who sees patients in Kakamega, Vihiga, and Kisumu, in hospitals, Educational Assessment and Resource Centres (EARCs), and at their schools. Where possible, he conducts follow-up home visits so family members can become more directly involved in helping plan and implement their child's communication therapy.

In Kakamega, David travels to schools to work with students and their teachers, and assesses children at the EARC as well. Gladys, the EARC coordinator, is passionate about providing for the needs of the students in her district, and has transferred that passion and sense of duty to the teachers she supervises. Kakamega, for example, is one of the few districts where teachers accompany parents and their children to the initial assessment. Kakamega is also the only district where teachers last year contributed a portion of the cost of the Yellow House trainings on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) run by Joanne Fry.

David assesses children at the Vihiga EARC, as well as at the district hospital in Mbale.  He has been coordinating the establishment of a weekly ‘play group,’ and is looking forward to being joined by an Occupational Therapist.

In Kisumu, David works with individual students at their schools. He also helps support teachers as they try to meet a child's literacy needs.

David reports that, in most of these areas, the number of new patients far exceeds the number of returning patients. A number of factors are to blame:

 - Travel distance - some families must travel great distances by bus, matatu, motorbike and/or bicycle to bring their child to the hospital or EARC. The cost of a second visit can be prohibitive, and the significant amount of time involved impacts negatively on the limited funds and time they have to divide between home (including other children), work and shamba (farm) duties.

 - Differing expectations - many parents (and teachers) hope for and have come to expect a "quick fix." Suggestions for the use of AAC materials or visual supports are often ignored or rejected by parents, teachers, and related health professionals.

In his time with Yellow House, David has learned that the role of the speech-language pathologist in Kenya requires many skills, including "the resilience of a social worker," "professional friendship” as opposed to ‘'professional rigidity," and the willingness to "stand up for the right to communicate and obtain access to the most basic of health services."

"The work here," he says, "is exciting, challenging, and easy, all at the same time – definitely not for the faint-hearted!"

Meeting Florence:

Florence is Yellow House’s new parent liaison coordinator. Florence has a daughter with disabilities and became acquainted with Yellow House and our work in the role of a parent. Florence is currently responsible for implementing parent support groups in the districts where we work.

I met Yellow House speech language pathologist Rachael Gibson at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu when my daughter was receiving speech therapy. After working together for a few months we discussed the benefits of forming a group for mothers who have children with disabilities, especially with communication difficulties.

Initially there was a group of 5 of us who met in my home, but we decided that this was important work and could expand to include others. I spent the week walking around the village and our group swelled to 10 members. Though we are in the early days of we have discussed our visions for the way forward, which include registration as a community based organization so we can receive local support. We believe that in unity comes strength and that through this group our goals and vision of a better life for our children will be achieved.

International SLP Job Postings.. May 2014

I am going to update this posting due to some recent requests about finding jobs in interesting places.

Let me preface this to say, I am in essence a traveller. I think I have a personality type that gets a buzz from up and moving to a new place with all new people every now and then. My friend Brady likes to travel alone because he thinks you can be whoever you want to be at these times, not tied to any expectations of your identity. I understand what he means. I have made three moves where I knew no one on the other shore, and I now know well the emotional trajectory such a move takes. I am sure Peace Corps have data some pretty interesting data about this too..

Basically, I arrive and at first I love it. I love the new foods, the new environment, the learning curve.  Then I start to look around, and the shine wears off. Then I might hate it (it might be triggered by loneliness and questioning why I am there), and slowly I get out of my funk, off my sofa, out in to the world, and open up to people for who they are. Then I LOVE it. This process takes 6-12 months. I am convinced the second year is when the really good stuff happens, where you get in the swing of it so to speak. Inevitably though these things have a limited duration, jobs come to an end and its time to move on (ideally in my life after 2-3 years). Some corporations actually insist their expatriate professionals move after three years, to keep them "fresh"!

Moving overseas alone or with a partner is not a particularly easy thing to do, but I highly recommend it all the same. You will feel despondent and fraught at some point, but like all things, it too passes. I had a friend who moved with her partner to Thailand. They told their family 1 year, and told me that it was permanent. They were back within weeks. Apparently it was too crowded, too busy and there were too many bugs. I think about their experience in Chang Mai often. They commented that where they wanted to live was in a little shack on the beach and that of course, you can't work there. It seems like they really had not done their research on the size of Chang Mai, their expectations were high and the reality is that moving is expensive and stressful and overwhelming and there will be bugs. Lots of them. I think it helps to have a signed contract before you go. But I wonder if it was because there were two of them that they returned home. I think if you are with someone you are perhaps more likely to talk each other into jumping ship. I have to ask her about this again sometime. In my experience I always at some point want to ditch the whole endeavour and move back to where ever I came from. Above I say "I might hate it" - usually I did HATE it. I remember hoping for a non-fatal matutu (public transport- basically a crowded minivan) accident so I had an excuse to move back home. But fear not, the bad phase is temporary and my time in Kenya was on the whole amazing, sustaining and wonderful (you get the gist).

In Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" the narrator, a nine year old boy has a habit of writing one word in his diary to describe his day. I started to do this when I lived in Kenya picking each day one emotion word. One morning I wrote my word, looked at the list and realised I was happy, just like that. The darkness had passed without doing anything. All these emotions just roll through us, day to day. It was an enormous relief and realisation. All these things I feel will pass and without my doing anything they will get better. Happiness too will pass, but it will return. Going abroad will make you acutely aware of all these feelings. How can it not? Often you find you have so much time on your hands for thinking (my downfall). In Kenya I had no television, no internet and was usually home by 6pm which left a lot of time for reading and sudoku. But these moves, have been some of the best things I ever did, because they allowed for some of the best times in my little wonderful life. A new context allows you to push boundaries, redefine your identity (consciously if you so choose) and try new things that tend to get constrained, or at least are harder to achieve when surrounded by people who have known you forever and who have expectations for who you are and the roles you should play in their lives.  

If you are an American (ASHA SLP) looking for international jobs.. here are some sites I check pretty consistently to see what is out there and I know they have had positions of interest in the past!

Singapore jobs - The Singapore speech and hearing association: http://www.shas.org.sg

This is the direct link to the jobs page: http://www.shas.org.sg/cos/o.x?c=/wbn/pagetree&func=view&rid=1083815

I'm not sure what the visa requirements are.

Australia jobs (enter speech pathologist in key words)

http://www.seek.com.au/

You might find recruitment firms that will help you with your visa. I am pretty sure Speech Language Pathology is one of those professions that is on the priority visa list. These jobs are looking for an immediate start.

New Zealand also has a site:  http://www.seek.co.nz/?cid=sk:main:au:nav:nz  

South Africa

This is the South African speech, language, hearing association site:

http://www.saslha.co.za/B_Job_Oppor.asp

There are also openings in Qatar which you can google, I'd imagine you can similarly find positions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this way. Sometimes there are positions open in Saudi Arabia. I don't have a good and consistent source for finding positions in the Middle East.

Guam - Not technically international, but you still get to live on a beautiful tropical island. The Guam speech and language community is made up of about 15 professionals who meet regularly. Guam would be a nice place to live with awesome weather, good hiking, amazing scuba diving, great beaches, a lively nightlife, did I mention the weather? Relatively expensive, but all the benefits of living in America, without living in America. Oh right. It IS America. There are certainly a lot of Americans and 10,001 military men. All the salaries of all the speech therapists are posted online (public information) so you can get a sense of the salary range. Department of Education https://sites.google.com/a/gdoe.net/personnel/home/employment-opportunities-and-status

Saipan - Gorgeous place, lovely families, good money for the job and the cost of living (rent can be $400/month, more if you want an ocean view) and the expectations for your work are very low including a tiny caseload. I am happy to give you a direct contact if you email me info@yellowhousechildrens.org

Hawaii - Also not international, but a lovely (though expensive) place to be.. Easter Seals (google Easter Seals Hawaii for the post) were hiring in December 2013, there were also government SLP jobs.

Other - Sterling/Magnum medical usually have international positions. At the moment they have openings in Japan and England. These are civilian positions on military bases with nice relocation packages (~$5000 to cover moving costs for car and furniture, or money to buy car/furniture as needed) and salaries of about $85,000 p.a. for a three year contract. I hear that housing on military bases is subsidized. I am happy to give you a direct contact if you email me info@yellowhousechildrens.org

I'd also recommend you join ASHA's SIG 17 - Global Issues so that you are on the list serve. Sometimes opportunities are posted there and its a chance to hear about the work that is going on here, there and everywhere.

CUSO (VSO Canada) has volunteer positions you might also want to look into  http://cusointernational.org/volunteer. These tend to be 2 year placements with paid flights, housing and a stipend. You can live on it, but if you have a lot of debt it might not work for you to take this kind of position. There have recently been positions in Rwanda, but you might find positions for an SLP in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia (Africa) or Guyana (South America).

There is also interesting speech therapy work going on in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh (volunteer opportunities available), Vietnam (Australians can apply to work/volunteer in the program here), Cambodia, Bolivia, Ghana....

My suggestion would be to know the following before you start contacting people:
- when do you want to go?
- where do you want to go?
and start building connections from there. Like with most things, the less debt you have the more freedom you have. It may be you need to take a year of two to pay off debt, get rid of some/lots/all of your personal belongings and then apply. What ever you decide.. know that its going to be a fun fun fun adventure and you will meet some wonderful friends along the way.  

Good Luck!