Alaska to Africa 2009
February 23, 2009
Early morning in Malawi is my favorite time. Just before 5 a.m. and the break of day an infinite variety
of sunbirds sing you awake, most prominently the ringed neck and cape turtledoves.
The new day begins with the unpredictable happenings that fill
each of our days. Most are related to the villagers who live within a half-mile of our lakeshore thatched roof
cottage. Yesterday, it was the 3-year-old boy with an abscess on his scalp, which when I opened it, produced a small
rice size pupa of some flying insect. The other day, it was a 7-year-old girl who had a normal left leg to her knee
and then a dangling, useless and withered lower extremity seemingly unattached except for the skin, blood supply and a few
ligaments. It was reported to have happened after an injury several years ago. She will need an amputation available
at a volunteer orthopedic hospital 4 hours from here.
Then
of course there are the daily requests for food, which soon should end because of the ripening maize. The only complication
is - monkeys and elephants. Monkeys are easy enough. You station monkey guards in the maize fields and man them
24 hours a day. Elephants are a different issue. The villagers plant pumpkins between the rows of maize and elephants
love pumpkins, even more than maize. This morning we heard there is a nearby herd of 12 and they are destroying hectors
of maize in their marauding search for pumpkins. Folks never win out here.
There is some progress, however, and some good news. We noticed on this visit improved roads around
Mangochi. The two separate stretches of sand and mud and dirt that connect us with our closest town of Mangochi 15 kilometers
away have been paved. This was promised 10 years ago and has just happened. I cannot tell you what a joy a paved,
smooth road is out here. Our battered little Toyota is very pleased. Telecommunications have continued
to improve. Cell phones greeted us 10 years ago, which was a great surprise. This time the national telephone
provider added an Internet modem that you attach to your computer, which works surprisingly well. Never in my lifetime
did I imagine to be able to send email from our cottage. It is now possible.
But the best news is the Malawi Children's Village. This home-based orphan support center for the
37 surrounding villages has now almost completed its expansion. There is the village outreach and bed net program, irrigation
and agriculture projects, the clinic, library, vocational training program and now the newly completed four-year secondary
school. The twenty thousand dollars that the U.S. Board has annually spent on paying secondary school fees for students
to attend school elsewhere are now used for Gracious Secondary School on the MCV campus. The 245 students are a combination
of self-pay students and the 84 orphans who are qualified to attend. This year the required exam to continue your studies
taken at the end of your sophomore year(Form II), there was a 100 percent pass rate. The average pass rate in government
schools is less than 50 percent.
Because of
the tuition paying students, this MCV project should not require external funding in several years.
There is progress in the villages. A recently completed survey compared the average weight for age (for
under 5) of orphans and non-orphans in the MCV Villages. The averages for both groups were identical, measuring 14 percent
below ideal weight. The government reported average for this district is 22 percent below ideal weight. All children
in the 37 MCV supported villages are better off than in the large Mangochi District around the lakeshore. Orphans are
just as well off as non-orphans, which has been one of the goals of the MCV program.
Since the beginning of the program in 1998, five thousand, seven hundred and nine orphans have been served.
This number does not include the support that has been given to the guardians and grandparents in the form of housing repairs,
treadle pumps, seed packets and fertilizer. The adopt-a-school program for primary schools is also benefiting
all students in the MCV area.
The need continues, but with the help of all of you, there is an improving village infrastructure, and institutional
programs at the Malawi Children's Village that will continue into the future.
--
February 13, 2009
The big problem - The secrets of the village
Usually the conversation starts with "Bwana, I am suffering too much." Most often the issue is not
enough food or a thatched roof that is leaking. The requests most often come from one of the villagers who live nearby.
It was a bit unusual to have one of our favorite teachers whom
we have known for the past 10 years, greet us saying she had a very big problem that she did not want to discuss just yet.
We had stopped for a school visit to one of the schools adopted by a sister school in Anchorage. After meeting with all the
teachers, passing out pens and pencils, hearing their requests for the school (doors for the classrooms, chalk boards, bicycles
to transport the teachers from their homes, and assorted other items), I left Ruth alone with the teacher. She did not
want to discuss the issue in school, but instead walked Ruth to her home and handed her a small piece of paper. It was
a laboratory result. She was HIV+. It was too difficult for her to say she was positive.
Ruth asked about treatment and the story became more complicated.
A bit of history is in order. AntiRetrovirals (ARVs) only became available to the general public in
Malawi two years ago (they have been available in the U.S. for more that 20 years). As a consequence, no one was ever
tested. In fact, the government under the dictator of Kamuzu Banda denied that there was any HIV in the country until he was
removed from office in the mid 90s. We now know that the first documented cases were in the 1985-1986 time period.
So HIV/AIDS has been a relatively new issue for the general
public. I remember the secrecy and stigma that surrounded HIV testing and treatment in the late 1980s in the States.
Separate hospital patient charts were kept. The one documenting a HIV positive test and treatment were kept in a special
locked file in medical records; the other medical record was used in the clinic and hospital. We had endless meetings
about how to handle this information.
The Malawian
public is at the stage of understanding and acceptance that we were 20 years ago. Dr. Banda's denial held back international
support for HIV education, testing and treatment. Malawi was and is behind the rest of the Sub Sahara countries (with
the exception of Zimbabwe) in their approaches to this devastating disease.
For our teacher the issue is privacy. She could go to the HIV clinic at the District Hospital and now
receive free treatment although she would be waiting in the outpatient line for most of the day. However, and most importantly,
the entire community would know that she is HIV positive.
Instead,
she travels to a private clinic on a monthly basis, pays MK 200 (MK= Malawi Kwacha) for transport and MK 500 for the
HIV medication. This is a significant percentage of her monthly salary. In fact this month she had to borrow her HIV medication
from one of her friends.
HIV/AIDS is still a secret
here. When people die, it is from TB. Keeping HIV secret gives it power, but change is coming, albeit slowly.
In the personals section in the national
newspaper, one now sees: "24 yo male seeking educated 20 something female, loves to read, and willing to have an
HIV test."
This would have been unheard
of several years ago. In the MCV villages, we are aware of 37 people on ARVs. There was none two years ago.
If tomorrow every HIV positive person in the 36 MCV villages were on treatment, there would be only a few new HIV orphans.
The current medications are very effective in reducing the viral load in the bloodstream to almost zero, so that the chance
of transferring HIV even during unprotected sex is significantly reduced.
There is hope!
--
February 11, 2009
The time of Njala
Hunger is nasty! It robs the spirit, zaps your strength and makes you vulnerable. There are pockets of hunger
in the States, here in Malawi it is part of the daily conversation. January and February in Malawi is the Njala (hunger) time.
No government subsidies here. You eat what you raised in the last rainy season. If you did not raise enough,
or the rodents ate it, or maize weevils invaded, or it was not stored properly, you go hungry. Last year it was the first
problem-unreliable rains resulted in a poor harvest.
When we left Malawi last February, we saw some of the healthiest
and robust maize fields that we have seen. The maize was just in to the tassel stage, then there was no rain for two
weeks and the results were disastrous. Wilted maize stocks resulted in poor harvest. This all happened two and
three miles from the tenth largest lake in the world. Not possible you would think! You need to travel to this part
of the world.
Here is the note on the scrap of paper a villager brought to the house two days
ago. "Hie
Mr. and Mrs. Tom. I have come hire to tell you about my problem. For my
house, have no maize flour, two days not
eating food, my children are craying with
hungrey, so madam please asisnt me money for buying maize flour."
We are asked for food money almost every day. It is problematic to give out money
here, so Ruth stockpiles one
kilo packets of rice, beans and sugar. This requests come not from strangers, but from folks who we know or recognize.
The simple long-term solution for other parts of the world would be a simple irrigation scheme. It might make
sense in the North but you have to think Africa. Moving water takes energy, pumps and pipes, all in short supply, very expensive
and beyond the means of those in the traditional villages common in Malawi.
Farming practices are also a problem
in the Mangochi area. The same field is planted with maize year after year. There is no crop rotation in this
sandy soil and the remaining nutrients are depleted and leached from the heavy rains. The historic solution has been
the use of government subsidized fertilizer. Ask any farmer in the States about the increase fertilizer prices in the
last few years and you will understand why even with the modest subsidy, fertilizer is out of reach
for the majority
of Malawians.
Such is life here. The priorities are very clear. First is the next meal; next is a thatched
roof that does not leak; then it is safe water to drink. Pretty basic, but even in 2009 for most people in Malawi and
I suspect Africa as a whole, this is the reality.
Every visit here makes us think about what is important in life.
--
February 5, 2009
Home again
My response was the same as
Ruth's. This is surreal. Has it been a year since we have left Malawi? We landed at Chilaka Airport. It
was if we had never left. Nothing much changes in Malawi. Swarms of people around the airport, 90 percent humidity,
and seas of smiling faces with green country side because of the rainy season. No new buildings, roads, bridges nor
traffic lights.
This trip from the States seemed shorter than usual, a 14 hour direct flight from Washington D.C.
to Johannesburg ... a quick overnight and another two hour flight and three hour car drive and you are here.
The
cottage is the same, the road into our place with water filled pot holes that will swallow our small car, and the ringed neck
doves demanding from the trees with their distinct song of "work harder, work harder, work harder", yes all the
same.
You are aware of the light here. The sun rises at 6 and sets at 6. There is barely a half hour
difference all year long. And set it does. A half hour after the first sign of twilight, it is dark as only Africa
can be. Someone switches the light off.
And so arriving at 5 p.m. we set about unpacking our 84 kilos (185lb) of
luggage, (52lb of excess). There had to be questions when the luggage was screened by TSA in D.C.: there was window
screening, a traveling pharmacy, a wheel chair cushion, blow-up bed, tools, printer, various ink cartages, toilet paper and
soap, discarded sim card cell phones ... plus a variety of uncategorized items like a rain gage.
At 6:30 the electricity
went out- this is Malawi. Ruth did not miss a beat. I married the right person. In addition to all the other paraphernalia
that she brought, she had battery operated closet lights-dim but adequate. No electricity equals no water being pumped
from the lake to the small leaky storage tower that supplies our house. But our forward thinking housekeeper had stored
25 gallons in a garbage container and had it sitting in the hallway. A couple of pans of water over your head, after
a day's travel in Africa is as good as a hot shower in any 5-star hotel.
And so the routine begins: in
bed by 8 p.m., awake by all the birds at 5 a.m., a short run up our dirt road leading to the house and the first visitors
to our porch at 6 a.m. On our morning run I am reminded of the old camp song which has the refrain: "I wave my
hand to all I see and they wave back at me." Malawi is known as the "Warm Heart of Africa" a testimony
well deserved by these genuinely kind and
gentle people.
We feel privileged to be among them.
What
you do not appreciate from the roads that winds through the hectors of hand tilled green maize fields, is the stories from
the village.
Over the next few days, the stories of hardship and tragedy will begin to be told. These are the stories
that a casual visitor to Malawi will never hear, but are as much a part of this world as safaris and sighting the "big
five," and the lure of the Dark Continent. We will share them with you.
--
February 4, 2009
Alaska to Africa
We touched down in JoBurg at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday Alaska time (4:30 p.m. here). We arrived
at
the new Jan Smuts International Terminal that has been built for the August 2010 World Cup Games that will be held in Africa
for the first time. Even the African Center Leisure Hotel in funky bright yellows, oranges and greens (where we have stayed
before) has been upgraded including wireless (this is not the Africa I know).
It was a direct flight from Washington
D.C. with no refueling stops. Fourteen+ hours in
the air, but the plane was not full so we could get some sleep
and arrived at Joburg (at 5000 feet) in not bad shape.
We get to the "real" Africa tomorrow morning when
we leave for Blantyre, Malawi. It is
always feels vaguely like "going home" since this country and these
people have had such a dramatic impact on our lives for 45 years and recently in the lives of a number of Alaskans who have
had a chance to visit. You can see some of their pictures by going to the Malawi Children's Village Web page: malawichildrensvillage.com
Malawi is much the same as it was in 1964 when Ruth and I started our work and lives together as newly married Peace
Corp volunteers. It is rural, subsistence, and people still live is small villages that you see in National Geographic.
What is new, however, has been the devastating impact of HIV AIDS in this country of 12 million. Both the police and
military are short of men between the ages of 19 to 30 because of this disease. And as evidence to the profound injustice
in this world, the first HIV medications were not available to the general population until two years ago. It is a small
country that has been largely forgotten.
Some people can only understand our yearly sojourns here as missionaries.
I think the appropriate label is "emissaries." We come from halfway around world to be present and let
the Malawians know that in the far away place called Alaska, which they can only visit in their dreams, they are not forgotten.
So as we begin, Ruth and I want to let you all know that you are making a difference in the lives of the children
served by MCV. They would say Zikomo Kwambili (thank you very much).
______
Dr. Tom Nighswander is an
Anchorage physician. His wife Ruth is a registered nurse. They first traveled to Malawi, Africa in 1964 as Peace Corp volunteers.
_______
