There is no such thing as a free lunch!

No such thing as a free lunch!

I am sitting writing this by a pool, overlooking a golf course in Dwangwe, which is a lot further south from our present home and down the lake shore!! The town is built on a big swamp, where many rivers feed into the Lake. It feels incredibly decadent, given the poverty that we have passed through on route, few tin roofed houses and just tiny little thatched huts, where people live off the land and fishing. The Tsasa Estate is a big sugar refinery for the surrounding areas which grow sugar cane, it is a subsidiary of Illovo a South African Sugar producer and which is also connected to  Tate and Lyle.  

 Johnny our host, had decided we needed to enter a golf competition here, and if Charlie and I both entered we would get free accommodation for the weekend as visitors! But this meant that I had to play ball, literally and metaphorically!! Those of you that know me well will appreciate that this was a big ask! My attitude to golf is putting it politely “a good walk spoilt” so could I swallow my pride and prejudice and pretend to be a committed and enthusiastic golf beginner? Well I suppose it proves that every person has their price and it would have been churlish, and a bit of “biting off my nose to spite my face” to refuse, so with a heavy heart I agreed to this plan!  On Thursday, after another challenging week at the hospital we set off, on what we are looking at as our half term break. The bush telegraph works well in the hospital and often people need lifts so and we had a passenger from the hospital part of the way, an interesting young man who is the lead in psychiatry in the hospital, as a diploma nurse who has had some additional training. We were very glad of him during the week when there was a very sad and disturbing incident of a young man, the son of one of the nurses, who had an episode of psychosis and was brought to the male ward. It was very distressing to see and hear him and try to console his Father, however the upshot of it was that he had to be held down, sedated, and later transferred to a physiatric hospital in Mzuzuu, which I dread to think about as I can’t believe that it will be a very pleasant place to be detained for a young 17 year old. There was no family history of psychosis with this young man, and we wondered if there was some sort of substance abuse involved, but hard to get a straight answer to those questions. Certainly, it cleared the ward, as patients and guardians and even the resident hens made a quick exit as the drama escalated.

 IN Malawi only primary education is free, consequently if you are able to afford secondary education many parents on the plateau who want to get a good secondary education for their kids, want to get the best value for their money and often send their children to schools quite far away where they must board. How good the pastoral care is would be is uncertain and sadly many kids can fall into difficulties of all kinds without their parents being fully aware. What the future is for this young man is uncertain but certainly as my first “counselling situation” the pathos of the situation for the whole family was very real. The concern of his father, and the disappointment at the potential loss of his dreams for a better future for his son, the reality of the financial loss of a years hard earned and sacrificially found schools fees, the stigma of psychiatric illness and how this episode was played out in the public gaze of his colleagues were all palpable. Recent “Vampire incidents “in the South of the country, where suspicion, fear and ignorance has whipped up mobs of people, who recently turned on and murdered an epileptic man, certainly don’t lead to the expectation that difference is tolerated well amongst people who have so little and are fearful that somehow someone might cause them harm and affect their survival, no matter how unrealistic those fears might be.

 Charlie has survived a further weekend on call, which felt like longer as Friday and Monday were public holidays on the hill. Friday was a day off in honour of Robert Law, the Scottish maverick, Rev/Dr who started the mission station here in 1894. Sunday was Malawi’s Mother’s day and a public holiday is given on the Monday, a very good idea!  so the place was very quiet with few people, patients or staff around. The number of Malarial cases is increasing and being a long weekend, Charlie had the fun of stitching up several men who had got into fights or been assaulted. There was one sad case of someone who had obviously taken an overdose, and was comatose, but survived. Although we couldn’t discover what he had taken we later found out that he was HIV positive and had stopped taking his drugs and obviously had lost hope. Lack of language and cultural appreciation make helping patients like this very difficult for us but there was some counselling given by the AIDS team and the Chaplain. He was very withdrawn and sullen and apparently disappointed to still be alive, hard for his wife and baby who were looking after him, what future for any of them? But once he was physically stable he was discharged.

  A week of no reliable electricity or water made us also ready for a break away. It is getting harder to cope with the temporary frustrations of lack of services especially as the temperatures are rising, and the supplies were running down so we needed to make another stocking up trip.  Food for the animals was getting short, dogs were getting cat food, which they seemed fine about!  hens were getting most of the compost and we were eeking out their meal with Maize husks, obtained from the community Maize mill very cheaply  as the maize is  now mechanically milled, instead of the very labour intensive methods used by the women in the past,  and the husks, the good fibre!! Is removed! Despite sparse diet for the livestock we have two new hatchings of ducklings and the realisation that some of the ducks will have to be culled is growing!!

As we head back to the hills we are grateful for the break, for the opportunity to see more of the beautiful scenery of Malawi, to swim and relax in another part of the Lake shore. We stopped for the night at Nykhata bay, enroute here. Lovely little rocky inlets, with fishing villages, some with beaches and separated by densely wooded hillsides.  We had two lovely swims there, in clear water, which with the waves and sandy beach, felt like we were at the sea! this is the widest part of the lake. Seeing the sun rise on the lake is beautiful and seeing the lights in the dugout canoes at night and hearing the voices of the fishermen over the water as they keep their nets between the boats to catch the fish was very special.

OH yes and guess what! I won a prize for the golf!! The wooden spoon, but they didn’t call it that, it was the best effort!!and I am appearing in the Illovo magazine!! I will never live it down!! But if you have to play 18 holes of golf I suppose it was a different way to start!