Malaria & a trip to a Malawian Hospital

Yep its true…I had Malaria…Gastric Malaria to be exact. It all started on a Thursday. My stomach had not been feeling well and I was in and out of the bathroom all day. Then in the middle of the night that night I woke up with a fever, aches and chills. I didn’t think much of it, took some advil, and went back to sleep. I stayed home from school Friday morning. I wasn’t feeling too bad, but I decided I probably shouldn’t push it. Good thing I didn’t go because as the morning progressed I got worse and worse. I continued to rush in and out of the bathroom with all imaginable things that go along with the word gastric (haha) and my fever returned even higher than the night before (it topped out at 102). All I could do was lay on the couch all day, wrapped up in my sweatshirts, going in and out of naps. Blahhh…as you all know being sick is not fun…but being sick in the village with no toilet and only a tiny hole makes everything a hundred times more challenging.  Yuck! By Friday night Gloria decided I should probably go to the hospital the next morning. Now the hospital sounds so extreme but you have to understand that there are no doctors offices around here. Go figure. So if you are sick at all…from a little cough to an extreme case of Malaria you go to the hospital. So Saturday morning we set out for the nearest relatively good hospital…not the most basic village hospital but not the best big hospital in Lilongwe (the capital city) either. We decided that we would try this hospital first and if I still wasn’t better in a few days then I would make the big trip to the city hospital. So we drove about 1.5 hrs to Kapiri to the Catholic “medium-sized” village hospital. When we walked in the waiting room was jam-packed! (after all it was Saturday) I had to go to the bathroom soooo bad when we arrived so we found a staff woman to ask her for some help. While I was in the bathroom Gloria I guess talked to the woman about me being sick and asked her if there was anyway she could help us get through the waiting room faster. I am pretty sure that the only reason she agreed to help get me through faster was because I was an Azungu (white person). The whole arrangement was very frustrating to me (once I realized what was happening) because on the one hand the last thing I wanted to do was jump ahead of everyone in line and just walk right in to see the doctor…continuing to confirm local beliefs that white people are something super special and are more important and better than Malawians…on the other hand though I REALLY REALLY wasn’t feeling well and had we waited in the line we probably would have waited all day until the hospital closed and still would not have made it to see the doctors (there were only two that day). As it ended up the lady just led me right into the doctors office and I didn’t have the energy to argue. L Once I got in there all the doctor did was ask me my symptoms! No checking of height, weight, blood pressure…all the usual American doctor office things…he just listened to my symptoms (high fever, body aches, a really bad headache, chills, diarrhea, nausea) and said “well you have malaria go to the lab and get tested”! Crazy! So then I walked down the hallway to the lab room. When I walked in there was another person in the room just finishing up their test. The whole situation made me a bit nervous. What the lab guy did was rub my finger with a little alcohol swab, then pricked it with a lancet, then rub the blood on a microscope slide, and then just laid the slide down in front of him. This is the same thing he does for every person. He wasn’t wearing any gloves or wearing special clothing, and he didn’t seem too concerned about everyone’s blood! All I could think about was what if one of the patients had AIDS? It just didn’t seem like a very safe situation. Oh well. So then I sat outside the room and waited for my results along with about 15 other people. There was one mother there with a very small child (maybe 1 years old) who at one point jumped up screaming her baby’s name, as he wasn’t responding, and ran down to the doctors. After awhile she came back and the baby seemed ok

One of the biggest things I learned through this whole experience was on Friday while I was watching Braveheart (thankfully my Ipod was fully charged so I could watch the whole thing!). Sorry if you have never seen it but I am going to talk about the end of the movie so if you don’t want to spoil it don’t read any further…at the end of the movie England captures William Wallace and is torturing him trying to get him to confess his allegiance to the King and betray his country of Scotland. Wallace never does and continues to be brutally tortured and basically ripped apart piece by piece. Well as I was watching that scene it reminded me of the scene from the passion of the Christ (if you haven’t seen it watch it) when Jesus is being flogged before his crucifixion. All I could think about was here I am lying on the couch feeling awful but this is NOTHING compared to what Christ endured for me!!! All of the trips to the bathroom and all the pain I was feeling was nothing compared to the sacrifice Christ made for me by being beaten, shamed, and then hung on a cross, so that I can live forever with Him in heaven!

Witchcraft in Dzuwa!!

Last week while I was teaching one of the teachers knocked on my “door” and asked to speak to me. After about two seconds I realized that he was TOTALLY drunk! I have a hard enough time trying to understand this teacher when he is speaking to me normally (his English isn’t very good). Add in the fact that he was drunk and mixing English and Chichewa…phew! I had such a hard time figuring out what he was trying to tell me! Eventually I was able to decipher what he was saying and was totally shocked by the news! He told me that his son (one of my students and one of the biggest trouble makers) was found out to be doing witchcraft!!!! I felt sooo sick to my stomach, sad, and had no idea how to respond. One of my own students!!! He said there was a man that had been coming in the middle of the night to the teachers houses and taking some of their kids off to do witchcraft without them knowing. He claims that my student could perform some kind of whistle that is a signature sign of witchcraft. Also he said that they had been traveling all over the world in one night (apparently they claim to be able to “fly” in an “airplane” anywhere in the world in seconds…don’t really understand how that is possible and its very hard for me to believe but who knows). He asked me to look out for his son, to treat him normally, and that this might be an explanation for why he misbehaves so much in class. I assured him that I would do that and that I would pray for him as well! He then took his son and rushed off to join a meeting with the school committee. The following day there were no classes and we held a big PTA meeting at the school. All the chiefs from the surrounding villages, all the teachers, the school committee, and a ton (not all) of parents were there to take part in the meeting. It was even harder that usual to sit there during a meeting all in Chichewa wondering what was being said, discussed, and decided! After I was briefed by another teacher on what happened…the village parents, committee, and chiefs discussed that either the “witch” (the man to took the kids) or the teachers would have to leave. Finally they decided that the witch would be the one to leave and gave him until 6am the next morning to pack up. I also learned that this was the same man that had already been kicked out of one of the villages for doing witchcraft and sent to live in isolation in an area behind the school. So now he was finally being kicked all the way out of the Dzuwa area and was told to never come back. At first that made me very sad because all I could think about was I wonder if anyone had ever reached out to him and his family to talk about Jesus with them. Later on that night I got to talk to Elliot and Gloria about the whole thing and they said that yes people had reached out to him and his family but that they wanted to have nothing to do with God. That made me feel a little better but I was still a little sad for the man. Please be praying for my student and his family…especially his father who I discovered through this process is an alcoholic (he is drunk quite often he has just never come to school drunk before). Two of the daughters in their family I have a special fondness of for too. Although the mom and dad don’t go to church, they almost every Sunday come (even though they are only 6 and 2 maybe)! They love to sit with the choir and go to all their practices! They are adorable! So be praying for them as well!

Flying Bugs & Bees

Ok now for some bug stories…first…after it rains there are these bugs that come out EVERYWHERE!! They come in some of the biggest swarms I have ever seen and love to just fly right into you! (gross!) Well although I think they are disgusting everyone here loves them…and especially likes to EAT them!!! (again gross!) So after big rainstorms it is very common to see all the kids outside (adults too…but not to the same extent) jumping and swatting at these bugs trying to get their wings to fall off so they can eat the bodies. It is actually a super funny and cute scene to watch (minus them eating the bugs). It reminds me of the kid game (not sure what its called) where there is this elephant that blows butterflies out of its trunk and kids are supposed to try to catch the butterflies with nets. Not sure what that is the image that comes to mind but it is! ...ok next story…for everyone who doesn’t know I am SUPER scared of bees! I had a bad experience as a child (I kicked a ball into a yellow jackets nest in the ground and they all swarmed at me and stung me!) so now anytime a bee comes around I run away…laugh if you want but I really don’t like them! Well recently I was walking home from school with two of my students (Ethero & Gilisaria). We saw this boy running towards us and I was thinking to myself “I wonder what he is doing?”. Well as he got closer I saw he was running from a HUGE cloud sized mob of killer bees!!!! (ok so I don’t really know if they were actually the real killer bee species but that is what I am calling them)  I immediately turned around and started running (with my huge school bag on my shoulder and my umbrella in hand!) and screaming!!!! I ran for about 50 yards and then the bees just flew right over my head!!! I was soooo scared!!! The girls I was walking with ran too and after we all started laughing! It must have been a pretty hilarious scene to watch an azungu with all her stuff running and screaming through the village! Speaking of hilarious scenes…one more funny story…doesn’t have to do with bugs but but you can pretend like it does so it fits with the heading J …ok so I ran to one of the women’s houses to remind her that it was her village’s turn to cook. This is a woman (magaedina) I am very close to and as I was leaving she decided to give me a chicken! So her daughter and her friend (Ethero & Gilisaria again) and another girl (Judy) (all of which are some of my favorite younger kids and ones I spend time with the most) decided to walk me home and carry the chicken for me. So we are walking and Ethero says to me “wait didn’t you run here? Aren’t you going to run home?”. I said no I don’t really want to run back (I had finished my workout and was enjoying just walking with them)”…but then I decided it would be pretty funny to show them how to fast walk! (Kelsey Gheesling!!!) So I said “lets just walk really fast!”…so we all started fast walking!! Gilisaria with the chicken in hand!! We walked super fast (look up fast walking if you have never seen it before...not sure if that is the exact term but try it) the entire way home! Through the peanut fields and corn fields...and past another village where everyone was busy sorting tobacco leaves and dropped everything they were doing to stand, stare, and laugh at us!!! Eventually Gilisaria started chasing Ethero with the chicken trying to get it to bite her! It was soooooooo funny!!! I really wish I had that one on video-tape!

OK wrapping it up…sorry this became a super long post!

The rains here are starting to become less and less frequent (YAY!!!) and all the huge puddles have for the most part dried up. It is still super hot but it is supposed to be starting to get cold soon (end of May I think…hopefully…I am soooooo excited for “cold” weather!) We are finishing up our 2^nd term at school on april 8^th so I will be testing my kids these next two weeks. On april 10^th I fly to Cape Town South Africa (a city I am dreamed of going to since middle school) for 12 days for my Easter Holiday! I am soooo excited! I am in desperate need of a break from the village and teaching. Please be praying that this break would be restful, a good time to reflect on my time so far, fun, and re-energizing to prepare me for my last 3 months!

Thanks for reading to the end J

Can Cows Jump Rope??

Well maybe??...I’m sure no one has ever let them try before!...you never know! ;-) Haha…What I do know though is that the cows in Dzuwa love to watch me jump rope! On days in the village where it is too rainy and wet to run I take my jump rope and exercise bands over to the clinic where they have a huge covered porch (for all the incoming patients to wait on) that is the perfect place to workout. It is very spacious with a high roof so you don’t have to worry about hitting anything and it protects you from both sun and rain! The other day it was raining so I grabbed my gear and headed over to the clinic for my workout. I was surprised though to find all of the cow herding boys and their cows there when I arrived! The boys were sitting under the porch sheltering themselves from the rain and were taking turns going out into the field in the pouring rain to round up the cows. Some days I really hate when I find kids hanging out at the clinic b/c I just want to workout by myself and not have 20 kids staring and laughing at me the whole time. Today though I didn’t really have a much of a choice because I really really wanted to workout so I changed out of my rainboots and into my running shoes and started my jump rope/strength-training circuit/ladder routine (shout out to FUVB). The boys thought I was hilarious as usual and were laughing and trying to imitate me. Then before I knew it they had herded all their cows over in front of the clinic so they didn’t have to keep going out to get them. So there I was working out with 5 cow-herding boys and close to 25 cows staring at me while I worked out!!! A pretty hilarious scene!!! I wish I had a picture!  What is so funny though is that the cows were perfectly content to stand there and watch me jump rope!!! Only in Malawi!

Mixed Emotions About Tobacco

In America today from a very young age kids are taught about the dangers of tobacco and smoking. We always hear about all of the new research that is coming out on how awful it is for your body and all the different cancers it causes. This is all so great and so important. I often wonder why the government doesn’t just get rid of tobacco and cigarettes all together! (money that’s why! So dumb!) Here in Malawi though I am getting a whole new and different perspective on tobacco, which is leaving me with very mixed emotions. Almost everyone it seems in Dzuwa’s fifteen surrounding villages harvests tobacco. Everywhere you look you see the big long tobacco shelters filled to the brim with hanging tobacco right now. Majority of the time I visit the feeding program women in the villages I find them sitting stringing tobacco leaves together to be hung too dry. What I understand from what the people in my village tell me is that Malawi is one of the WORLD’s leading tobacco exporters! (haven’t done my research just reporting what I have heard so correct me if I am wrong) It’s not just the villages around me growing tobacco it’s the entire country! And apparently big businessmen from all over the world come to auction houses here in Malawi to buy our tobacco. Harvesting tobacco if you are really good at it can make you a lot of money too! So it is what is really sustaining life and providing for the people here. Can you see my dilemma?? Tobacco and cigarettes are some of the leading causes of some of the top killing diseases in the world today…BUT…at least in Malawi…it is also helping people survive! As much as I want to walk up to every person I see smoking and chewing tobacco and say to them “What the heck are you doing?! Do you know how dumb it is to smoke/chew and what the risks are associated with it?! Do you know that there are over 100 known carcinogens in one cigarette? You are basically just saying I want to die its ok bring on the cancer! And you are putting all of us at risk too from second hand smoke! Ya gerk!” now I also want to in some ways say “thank you for buying tobacco that is helping to provide money to families in Malawi so their children don’t starve!” Yikes!…thoughts anyone??

Insights into the Government and Teaching

Something that is also very interesting to me being here in Malawi is that I get to hear first hand what the Malawian people actually think about their government! I don’t just have to rely on research books and articles to provide me with information! It just about floored me to hear their thoughts on their presidents. A couple research papers I wrote in college required me to research extensively about the history of Malawi and about their government. Malawi’s first president was Dr. Hastings Banda. From all of my research I came away with the picture that Banda was a very corrupt leader (after all he did try to declare himself president for life) and decided that I didn’t like him. But here in Malawi the people love him!!! I just can’t believe it! They believe he really did a lot for the country here even though he was a corrupt leader! They even consider him a martyr! The president right now everyone likes as well. I think he is pretty all right too as he is really doing a lot to make great changes and develop the country. It is hilarious to me though (and really awful) that when the evening news comes on majority of the program focuses on him!!! Typically on the nightly news we only get 3 or 4 stories and the program only lasts 15 minutes at the most!!! (so different than American news!) Well the other night I timed the radio segments…7/15 minutes was devoted to talking about the president and his new book…6/15 minutes was devoted to talking about the president’s wife and a fake bridal shower fundraiser she was doing…and ONLY 2/15 minutes was spent on mentioning with no real concern at all the situation in Libya!!!! I couldn’t believe it!! No offense but who really cares about the president’s book and a fundraiser when there are riots and governments being overthrown in Libya and Egypt…and other MAJOR stories about other African countries as well (can’t mention anything else specifically b/c I have no idea what exactly is going on b/c I don’t get any news!!! Haha I really have no idea what is going on in the world right now!!). The government is just sooo focused on everything that the president does they can’t even present us with unbiased news.

            Ok now to move on to talking about school, teachers, and education here. It is also so interesting to hear from the teachers what they think of the government and about how they handle education. Just recently the government switched they way they pay their teachers from giving them straight cash to direct depositing into bank accounts. Although I think this could be a good move in the long run it caused soooo many problems!! The government had to wait for all teachers to get registered before they could pay the teachers and a whole other host of problems came up…but what it all resulted in was the teachers from my Dzuwa school were not paid for 2 months straight. From Dec 23 to Feb 27thish they were not paid! But yet they were still expected to go to school and teach and survive on NO MONEY! Many of the teachers only meals each day was the phala from school just like the kids! And even when they got paid they were only paid a 1 month reduced salary!!! No wonder the teachers aren’t very motivated to be good teachers as they never know if they will reliably be paid! In many other areas there were teacher riots b/c of this situation. Also there were and still are (no one has stopped them as far as I know) corrupt government education officials that were/are going into the system and creating fake rural schools and fake teachers and putting them on payroll, and then taking all of that money for themselves! How awful and totally unbelievable!!! Please be praying for the education systems in Malawi- that the corrupt officials would be removed and that God would place His servants in the office!

Ok now to wrap this thing up with a cool story…

Lena all wrapped up

Me & 1 day old baby Lena  

I NAMED A BABY!!!

So crazy I know! Here is the whole story! (oh an mind you all of this talking was done in Chichewa!! J with no translator! J but with a lot of grace and repeating themselves from the women haha)...I was walking to school one morning and one of the older girls, Misozi, who I am closer to at the school caught up with me. I asked her why she wasn’t in school the day before and she answered because her mom was sick. I then asked her what was wrong and she said her mom had had a baby!! I was sooo excited! She then said I could come visit it after school if I wanted to…of course I said yes!!! So later on that afternoon I walked to Misozi’s village to visit her, her mom, and the new baby. I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived but I found the mom and a bunch of other women sitting in their house shelling beans. Misozi was holding the little one-day-old baby! So only a day after giving birth the mom was already up walking around doing household chores again! Amazing! So I sat and talked with them for a long while and got to hold the baby! The women even commented on how much the baby looked like me the azungu with its light colored skin! haha At one point I asked what the little girl’s name was…the mom replied “oh she doesn’t have one yet…why don’t you name her!!!”…I was so taken aback! Naming someone else’s kid is not a common thing in America (I found out later that it is very common in Malawi especially in the village). Mothers and Fathers spend hours and hours thinking up the perfect name for their kids and it’s a very special process...so I was shocked that the mother wanted me to name her baby! I mean really…mothers have 40 whole weeks to think up names and this mother was asking me to name her baby in a span of like 20minutes!!! Talk about pressure!! So I sat there holding the baby trying to think up a good name. I wanted to give the little girl a meaningful name as her older sister Misozi’s name means “tears”…very sad…so I sat and thought and thought…and decided I didn’t know any really easy meaningful names in English…and my Chichewa vocabulary isn’t good enough to give a very good meaningful name either…so I just tried to think of a name I liked that I thought would fit well into the Malawian culture…the name that kept popping into my head was Lena…so I said “what about Lena” and they all said yes! So I hope they really like it! So the little girl will be called Lena and her mother will now be called Magalena (as women don’t go by their names but by Mother of ___  Maga____ *insert child’s name*). I looked up the name on babynames.com later and found out that Lena means woman of Magdala. It’s a Hebrew name. So that’s pretty cool I guess. What an experience! So surreal. When I was leaving too the family gave me 4 pieces of corn and a bunch of tomatoes and vegetables!!! I was soooo taken aback!! They need to be eating that food not me! I am still blown away by the generosity of Malawians!! I bought some super cute baby clothes today so I am excited to take them back to the village and give them to baby Lena J

Love to all!!!

Steph

Prayer Requests:

-       For Family back at home

-       For guidance from God about where He might be calling me when I return home

-       For continued provision for the Feeding Program at School

-       For my health- my allergies are going crazy right now and I don’t have any allergy medicine and continued protection against malaria and waterborne diseases in the rainy season