Wise Advice
Wise Advice
Before we left we were given some
wise advice and now as our time here is coming to an end we are very glad to
use it. Tomorrow starts our last full week of work in the hospital. Originally,
we had planned to stay here until the 8th of December however the
Malawian Government in their wisdom insists that we most leave the country
after 90 days as they are unable to extend our visas but are happy to issue us
with new ones if we return to the country again. Technically we could do this
by driving up to the border with Tanzania, which is about 200 kms away, and
spending the day crossing the border and then crossing back again, it
apparently can incur the additional cost of a present to border officials to
move up the queue. Instead we have decided to leave on the 29th of
November, when Rebecca is here with us and travel down to Lilongwe where we
will pick up a brief safari trip to Zambia which will enable us to exit the
country a day before our visas expire and return a few days later. There is
very little point travelling back up North to Livingstonia and taking the risk
of being stranded by the rains for just a few more days at the hospital so
instead we are going to spend a few extra days at Cape McClear, a Malawian
National park on the lake shore, recently made a UNESCO heritage site. We look
forward to enjoying some swimming, snorkelling and kayaking there with Rebecca.
We leave Malawi on the 8th of
December flying to Cape town to visit my brother James, whose big 60th
Birthday celebrations we missed whilst here. We are due back, all being well in
the UK on 19th December.
This week has been slightly
disrupted as we headed down to Mzuzu mid-week to try and get the car paper work
sorted as we will leave out car behind when we go, however it involved another
frustrating day of waiting around, we have still not mastered the African art
of just waiting! However whilst hanging
around we were able to pick up the Three nursing students from Queens who had
arrived to do an elective at the David Gordon Memorial Hospital(DGMH) We had an
exciting journey back as we nearly didn’t make it up one of the big hills as
water had been sprayed to reduce the dust but made the surface slippy and the
wheels couldn’t grip. We were sliding backwards but thankfully we got stopped
and everyone except the driver bailed out. Thankfully a further attempt in
Four-wheel drive and a reduced load enabled us to make it to the top and
collect the passengers again. We understand why the road is unpassable in the
rains.
The following day we had a very
early start, being at the hospital for
5.00 am. We set off in an ambulance, crammed in with supplies and headed down
the Girodi, thankfully the ambulance driver is an expert, we travelled on to a
little hamlet called Molowe where we then got onto an open boat, and set off for
a three-hour trip to a hamlet called Tcharo where there is a health centre run
by the hospital. The journey out was rough enough as we motored along parallel
to the shore and the wave motion side on did not agree with some!! It also was
very hot as we were out on the lake with no shade at all. We left supplies off
at one remote hamlet called Jungu, where there is a small health centre and the
waves were so big that the captain of the boat had to anchor off shore and then
swim in to pull the boat close enough to carry one of the team members in using
a rather undignified picky back, I dreaded the thought of some poor Malawian
having to carry me in when we returned later!! Supplies were also off loaded so
she could give out the antiretroviral drugs for those who are HIV positive in
that community. The scenery was beautiful, steep mountains, rugged coastline
with little deltas of fertile ground where rivers flowed down from the mountains.
These tiny little fishing communities are completely without road access and
rely on dugout canoes and a few enterprising men who have invested in larger
boats and provide a ferry service. Sadly, last year over 50 lives were lost
when a very over loaded boat sunk, few
of the Malawians can swim, unless they have grown up on the lake shore. At
Tcharo we landed with more ease, an idyllic spot, and we ran a clinic for the
population, everything from eye services and an optician, family planning,
ARV’s and general outpatient clinic, where Charlie saw a variety of people. We
were given lunch here by the clinic and those of us who were not already queasy
after the boat trip had to face into two types of Sima, one made form maize and
one form Cassave, plus a relish of Usipa, the tiny little fish caught in the
lake and eaten by everyone in Malawi, either dried or fresh. The nearest thing
you could compare them with is sardines or sand eels. I did my best!! We sailed
back to where our colleague was waiting and Charlie did another clinic , just
as we were about to leave a canoe came into the bay carrying a young lad and
his father, the boy had badly broken his arm, so they were bundled into our
boat along with another lady and what looked like all her worldly belongings,
who was sick and heading to hospital, our hearts sank, the ambulance was
already full to bursting coming down, how would all these people get fitted in,
although the supplies being reduced to
compensate for them most of the local
staff had procured boxes of fresh Usipa to take home to their families!, On the
final leg of our boat journey we were accosted by a dugout canoe who threw in a
large cat fish and some other fish into
our boat to take back for someone. Yes, they all came in the ambulance apart
from the catfish which was tied to the windscreen wipers and must have cooked
on our journey back up the escarpment. We finally made it home, very relieved,
exhausted and smelling of fish! Poor student nurses it was a testing first day
for them! On reflection we were glad we went, as it was so beautiful, and it
really let us experience the remoteness of many of these little hamlets and the
poverty. They are very much self-sufficient communities, abit like the Scottish
crofters, except with less rain and a lot hotter.
Last weekend visited to Vwaza National Park,
we stayed at Mother Elizabeth organic farm centre and were educated in the way
of improving the soil and not relying on artificial fertilisers. We were taken
around by a very enthusiastic Malawian who had been trained by Elizabeth, a now
elderly Swedish lady, however despite Patrick probably feeling a bit of a
prophet in the wilderness sometimes he is having slow but steady progress in
encouraging the local farmers to use more sustainable methods of growing food.
The efforts of sustaining vegetable gardens were evident as the South Rukuru
River, that the farm borders is dry and water has to be carried for great
distances to try and salvage some of the crops until the rains arrive. We had a
fascinating day in the National park with shares an open boarder with Zambia.
We went on a walking tour early I the morning with Maxwell, our park ranger,
armed both to protect us and because of the problems with poachers. We were
able to get up very close to hippos and saw quite a variety of buck and some
interesting birds
So what was the advice? Well as the end of our
Malawian adventure nears we are inundated with requests for financial help,
some just for food, others for secondary school fees. Many families support not
only their own children but several children of siblings who have died. We have managed most of the time to be firm
and explain that being here only for a brief time, it wouldn’t be fair to
single one person or family out form another as we don’t know all the circumstances,
so that anything we can give will have to be through the hospital once we
return to Ireland. We feel guilty so
much of the time at what we have and take for granted. Certainly we have been
made so aware of how fortunate we are in so many ways.
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