Oopsie Daisies!

So, I haven’t written in quite a while. My bad. I’ve been off to the races with the recent things that have been happening at the clinic. Our new OBGYN unit will be up and running by the 31 of October. While I’m not in charge and have no clue about what to set up for the OB unit I’m still a part of getting things ready. We have vamped up our operating theatre (British terminology, UGH!) to get ready for c-sections that will take place every Tuesday and Thursday. The first delivery will happy in about 3 weeks, so we’re cutting it close, but are confident our OB unit will be completely ready by then. The everyday happenings of the clinic are always changing. In Malawi, it is culturally acceptable to miss many days of work because you are attending a funeral. Death is such a common part of life here that people can miss many days of work d/t the amount of funerals they are attending. Not only is it culturally acceptable to attend the funeral of your close family members, but your neighbor and second cousin’s as well. Basically, they attend a lot of funerals. If you do not attend the funeral, then you are considered to be happy that the person has died. I know what you’re thinking give me a break, right? But that’s what they’ll think, so I’d rather just go the funeral to make someone happy than be accused of being GLAD someone died, wouldn’t you? Anyway, so the days that we’re really short staffed I am the only nurse on the private side of our clinic to do triage.  Which I absolutely love, of course.  

Room 2

donated items for the theatre

Room 1

I wanted to include some pictures of the rooms Becky Epperson and I cleaned out. I’m going to post before and after pictures, so here’s the before pictures. These rooms are the delivery rooms for the private paying patients at the clinic. All the equipment is donated and some of it is from the Vietnam War.  Becky and I had a grand time cleaning these rooms out.Also, these past few months I’ve stumbled across some “Malawian-isms.” Some of them drive me crazy, but some of them just make me giggle:

1. Apparently if you ask a yes or no question a proper response is yes or MMmm. For example:

Me: Is that where the paper goes?

Malawian: MMMMmmmm(with a single head nod)

Me: Is MMmmm yes or MMMmmm no?

Malawian: MMmmmm

Me: Wait, so was that a Mmmm yes or Mmmm no?

Malawian: MMM mmm sure

2. It’s near impossible to out-thank a Malawian. I’ve gotten in a few thank you wars already, but the Malawian is always victorious.

3. Malawians don’t say no. This is how they respond with a no:

Me: Can you do this?
Malawian: Of course because I cannot do that.

ME: So the answer is no.

Malawian: Of course I cannot.

Me: Oh, right, of course….

4. Doing something now and doing something now now is 2 different time periods.

5. Malawian’s don’t understand sarcasm. I’ve been accused of being mean to someone because I was being too sarcastic. That’s a constant struggle for me to NOT be sarcastic

6. A few of my Malawian friends at the clinic think America is the land of milk and honey. They think if they just step onto the soil they will be rich and have no problems. I’ve tried to explain to them that the single difference between America and Malawi is that America is full of more options. They do NOT believe me that cheese comes in packages already grated, there’s about 15 options for what type of cheese you want, and that it’s about $3 a bag.  They don’t believe that nearly everyone has a car, that gas is cheap, and nearly no one rides a bike to and from work because that is their only mode of transportation.  They refuse to believe that almost everyone has a computer, a lot of people get to go to college, and that minimum wage is $7.25/hr. It’s fun yet sad to hear all these things that they refuse to believe.

Crisis Nursery:

I’ve been to the Crisis Nursery sparsely throughout the past few months. We work 7:30-4:30 5 days a week, so finding time to get to the nursery has been a little hard. Backston went back to his home village. I was really sad that he left, but I know it’s the best thing for him. I would much rather him be placed back with his family (assuming they take good care of him this time) than be placed in a foster home. Mwawi, the director of the nursery in Lilongwe, is going to check up on Backston in the next few weeks and I will get an update on him then. Meshach and Shadrach are getting so big! Meshach is crawling and sitting up quite well by himself, and Shadrach is starting to make the sweet baby sounds and sits up on his own. Lately Meshach likes to use my phone as a chew toy. If you take it away from him he starts crying and screaming, so I just give it to him and wipe the drool off when it’s time for me to leave. It’s kinda gross but if a green cell phone is tasty to chew on and makes him happy then I’ll oblige. They are some of the happiest babies at the nursery. Their smiles and giggles are always a great reminder to me that these children really ARE His children. 

Meshech

Chewing on my phone


Mateyo

Gule Wamkulu

This past week we had a beautiful young girl came into the clinic to have her hand cleaned and a dressing placed on it. When I asked the nurse to ask her why her hand looked so bad and was infected, the nurse told me the patient said that the kids in the village stabbed her hand. They hurt her hand because she’s in the gule wamkulu (gang dancers) group in her village. The girl didn’t want to be in the group, but was forced in the group because her older brother is in it.  The agogo(grandmother) of the child also proceeded to tell us that the girl was told by the group to kill her agogo because it’s part of her “duties” she’s assigned, and her reward would be an airplane.  The gule wamkulu is a gang of dancers that perform at ceremonies and are clothed in animal skins, grass skirts etc. They are said to be the spirits of the dead ancestors from the underworld sent to roam the earth.  In The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, the writer talks about them in better detail. Basically at night this particular group of people go around and try to find young kids to take back to the graveyards.  The kids are tempted to be in these groups because the group tells the kids if they eat this meat then they’ll go to heaven. Only after they’ve eaten the meat do they find out that it’s human flesh they’ve really eaten. I guess if they eat human flesh then they’re cursed because the evil is already inside them. Then, at night they fly around on “airplanes” that are said to be capable of taking the kids to London in a second if they wanted, to rival gule wamkulu clans.  The kids are sent to other “wizard’s” houses to perform their powers. If the children are killed while “performing” then the wizard will then know how to develop something stronger against his enemy. There’s apparently a secret football match between the rivaling clans where the match is played with human heads and the winners get cups of human flesh. Obviously this is all nonsense, but their belief in these tales is real.

So I’m assisting the nurse in taking the packing out of the girl’s wound to clean it and dress it before she left the clinic. I asked the nurse to ask the girl if she’d ever seen any other child’s airplane they receive from doing these awful assignments. The girl said no, so I asked her if she still planned on killing her agogo. She said no. The nurse told me that if she had wanted to kill her agogo then the agogo would be dead already. Oh, did I mention this little girl is 10 years old? Yah, 10. Imagine dealing with these issues as a 10 year old. Before the girl and her agogo left, the agogo told us that the girl is in standard 5 (5^th grade) and is extremely smart. The teachers at the girl’s school are scared that the girl will be killed soon due to this gang and their activities. The agogo said she wants to take the girl to Faith Orphanage to get her away from the awful things that go on in the gang. So, this agogo would rather send her granddaughter away to an ORPHANAGE than have her live with her. This statement tells me something really awful is going on in that village. Something awful is happening to this girl and her agogo thinks the only solution to the problem is sending her beautiful granddaughter to an orphanage. The agogo didn’t ask us to personally take the girl to the orphanage, but it got me thinking about what I should do to help. Should I take the girl to the orphanage to get her away from these horrible things that are happening to her in the village? Should I just send her on her way with her grandmother to deal with it? Should I take her home with me? The girl will be back in the clinic on Monday to have her hand looked at again to make sure it’s healing. I still don’t know what to do for the girl though. I know in Malawi there are millions of stories like this one, but I believe in helping Malawi one child at a time. As Janine Maxwell from Heart for Africa said once, helping one child has to be enough for you, because if it’s not then you get so overwhelmed you don’t know how to help.

Included below are some pictures of people I get to work with everyday. They keep me smiling and laughing.

Felix

Chrispin


Rosemary Honde

Oh, did I mention Jeff went to S. Africa? You can read about his trip in the previous blog posting.  He brought back some goodies from S. Africa though. He brought back 2 area rugs (can’t really buy those cheaply here), a huge package of mentos (my favorite! And they don’t sell those here), a hair straightener (so I don’t look like a Duggar anymore), coffee (Malawian coffee isn’t all that great),  some trail mix which is hard to find and expensive here, and a flashlight to use when the power decides to shut off. I was super excited Jeff brought all that home! Oh yah, and that he got back safely!

So, I think I’ve posted enough for now. I’m going to hop back on the bandwagon and post more often.  Thank you for your continued support and prayers. We love and miss everyone!

It’s ALL about You, Jesus,

Carson