Malawi Mayhem

Two American nursing students have been in Lilongwe for the last three weeks. Amy is from Pasadena and knows Uncle Don, and Ann is from Chicago (Lincoln Park! which is very close to the neighborhood where I lived). We have met with them several times, and Thursday we got to go to the N.O.A.H. Project with them and another American they met while here.

The N.O.A.H. Project has a feeding center and a private primary school for orphaned children (having lost one or both parents, living with a guardian). There were tons of Americans there yesterday--some doctors, a dentist, an organization called Samaritan's Feet, and another organization called Missions 4 Jesus.

Samaritan's Feet was started by a Nigerian man named Manning who grew up in a village and was given a pair of shoes (along with the gospel) when he was nine years old. The missionary gave Manning the shoes and told him that he could do something for people with his life. He ended up getting a scholarship to play basketball in the States. He got a degree, started Samaritan's Feet, and travels all over the world washing villagers' feet and giving them a free pair of shoes.

Missions 4 Jesus is members from a church in Charlotte, NC. I didn't get what the organization does, but for this trip they teamed up with Samaritan's Feet.

The project is on the same side of Lilongwe as Likuni, so David Nixon (the American who started the N.O.A.H. Project) picked us up right outside our "neighborhood." We drove down a dirt road for at least half an hour. The other Americans were not there yet when we arrived, so we sat around for a bit before bringing out two bottles of bubbles. Ann took one bottle, and thus a crowd of twenty children, and I took the other. It was so much fun. The kids did not all know how to blow bubbles, so they learned and looked so wonderful doing it!

After bubbles, we set up triage. In the first room, Amy listened to their lungs, and I took temperatures and checked teeth. Then we sent them with their paperwork (a chart made on a piece of notebook paper, handwritten in pen) to the next room, where Adam and Amy were checking pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. There were also two clinical officers who were doing checkups.

That was a bit tiring. After every child had been through, I wandered off to see what the rest of the group was doing. A child walked by me with a pair of brand-new white shoes, which is a bit strange to see in dusty Africa. I found the building where kids were getting their feet washed (and massaged and tickled) and presented with a pair of new shoes.

Next, we took vitals on the guardians of the children. Oh my goodness, it was at least 200 women. Adam, Amy, and Ann all were taking blood pressure, and I had a very important task: I took temperatures. So I got to touch 200 strange women's armpits...and subsequently their breasts or nursing children! I thought that the earlier part of the day was tiring, but after standing in the hot sun with little water and no food, we were exhausted.

David bought tons of loaves of bread, which we tried to pass out later. That was terrible. Unless you consider that some people got food, which is great. There had been a line of students, then others started to jump the line, and soon we had crowds around us, all reaching and urging us to give them bread. That was really hard for me emotionally--I only had so much bread, and there were three times as many people around me, all demanding it, all hungry, all needing it. David decided to give it to the children the next day at school instead of trying to figure out what to do with the mob.

Despite the desperate attempt to distribute bread and our exhaustion, we felt pleased with the day.

-Rachel




Life in Malawi is good. I have spending more and more of my time volunteering with the different organizations that Rachel has been involved with. I have especially enjoyed being at the Youth Ministries Safe Haven. The boys there are really great and a lot of fun. We play chess, soccer, and they have even taught me Bau, a type of Malawian mancala game.

I have had some really interesting medical experiences. For a few days I got to follow an American doctor around Kamuzu Central Hospital. The conditions there are dire. It is overcrowded, with people lying everywhere on the concrete floor. They are extremely short staffed and so many patients go undiagnosed and untreated. I followed the doctor around on rounds for just a couple of days, but I saw so much. I really got to see just how much of a need there is, something I won't be able to forget for the rest of life.

As you probably gathered from Rachel's post, yesterday was crazy. But it was a lot of fun as well. Even if we didn't make much of medical difference, I still felt that at the very least we were giving all these women and children the kind of attention they deserve and never get. If anything, I hope that we made them feel a little more comforted by our presence.

-Adam
ps- Sorry, we had alot of images to put up but this internet cafe isn't any good.