In the Waiting Room
Posted on | January 31, 2010
Family Caregivers at Malawi Hospital Cook for Patients
An Emergency in Africa
It was 11:30 PM when the telephone rang, Suzi picked up the receiver and after a lengthy conversation hung up and explained the call.
“It was a call from the Vice President of Malawi. She expressed her regrets that she had to call so late, but with us leaving for the states in the morning it was important that she communicate with us before our departure.” Suzi went on to explain the “emergency”, as I thought back over our time with the Honorable Joyce Banda, the Vice President.
We had known the week before, after showing the VP the new V-Tractor, that she had gone north for a four or five day fact-finding tour of the hospitals. She especially wanted to see the conditions women were facing when they went to the hospitals to deliver their children. Months before Malawi had put into effect a campaign to encourage the village women to travel to the hospitals in order to deliver. It was hoped this would impact the high mortality rate among deliveries in the rural, village areas. What the Vice-President found was not what she wanted to see, and it was the reason for the emergency call.
In Malawi there are reported to be less than 100 Malawi doctors and no more than 3,000 nurses for a population of 13,000,000 people. Hospitals run critically short of supplies, and are often unprepared for women coming to deliver. It is not unusual to see birthing areas filled with women who must bring their own plastic trash bags in order to have something to deliver on. There are no cooking facilities in most hospitals, and not enough shelter for the caregivers to get inside from inclement weather. Thus, all around the grounds of most hospitals are large numbers of people, “camping out” in order to care for the patients.
With the recent campaign to persuade more women to come to the hospital to deliver the problem has been compounded. What the Vice-President found on her trip north was facility after facility overrun with pregnant mothers soon to deliver and caregivers everywhere. The hospitals cannot get everyone inside the overcrowded buildings, and they are sleeping all over the grounds outside. The rains have started and all over Malawi pregnant women and family members are laying on the ground in the wet, muddy conditions.
She needs help from us and she needs it quickly. These women are facing hardships they have done nothing to deserve. ( See Additional Photos)
In the time since we arrived in the states, we find our nation trying to cope with the crisis in Haiti, and our own economy. Meanwhile it is raining nearly every day with heavy monsoon rains, and there are women laying on the wet ground, praying for someone to help them. And the Vice President is also looking for someone, somewhere who will help the women of Malawi.
Tags: Africa Hospital > hospital kitchen Malawi
A Master of Dreams
Posted on | January 24, 2010
Smith Howell – A Master of Dreams
In the 1960’s the congregation was not called Goodman Oaks, and it was not located in Southaven, Mississippi. The membership met in the southern part of Memphis, several miles north of its present location. At the time many in its membership were comfortable with the way things were going, but there was one man who was not, and that person was Smith Howell one of the elders. He was looking south toward a country road with little traffic, and almost no community. It was a place surrounded by empty fields. He kept telling the membership, “We’ve got to buy land there. That is where the growth will be in the next 25 years.” It is remembered that Smith just would not stop until he persuaded them to buy the land. They did and today that location is located on most heavily traveled road in the Memphis metroplex, and Goodman Oaks has become the largest church of Christ in the state of Mississippi. Although he is in his 90’s Smith has continued to look into the future in a way that few people can see. In recent years some have had him drive them to a location several miles south of the current Goodman Oaks location to a small country crossroads and say, “We need to buy land here. Twenty-five years from now the growth will be in this area.” He has been a driving force in the fiber of the congregation for over 50 years.
Smith Howell not only sees need that others miss in the United States; he also has made his mark in Africa. “When Smith was in his 60’s, and when most people were well into retirement, he decided it was time to travel to central Africa and look in on a mission point the congregation was supporting,” reports Dick Stephens of the Malawi Project. “We have seen first hand what he helped accomplish in the northern part of the country. He helped design an entire college complex, he then returned to the states and raised a large portion of the funds to build it.
“Next he turned his attention to central Malawi where we were working, reports Suzi Stephens, Medical Director for the Malawi Project. “Although he was in his 80’s, he had already been instrumental in raising funds to assist us in our travel and work expenses. That was not enough and on one trip I watched him walk the hospital property and silently contemplate thoughts others could not see. On his return to the states his love for people compelled him to first draw up the design for a second medical building on the property, he then helped to raise most of the funding to complete it. Next he drew the plans for a group of homes that could hold over 200 orphans, and on a subsequent trip he saw his dream in reality as children surrounded the white headed man from America. Every trip he made he saw more things that needed to be done to help the suffering in this poor, third world nation.”
Smith made his final trip to Malawi at the age of 90. After suffering a heart attack only three months earlier Smith refused to cancel the trip. He was determined to go there at least one more time. While there he experienced some leg discomfort, and with his recent health problems, doctors determined to immediately get him to South Africa for evaluation, then on to Mississippi. Smith protested the action. He had no fear of death, and his love for Malawi was so strong he said that to die there was as easy as anywhere else. In fact, he had told others he would welcome it in a place he loved so much. The problem did not prove to be serious but it ended his trips to Africa.
Recently Smith decided it was time to retire from the eldership of the congregation. “Retirement means something different to Smith than it does to the rest of us,” reports Art Braden, the deacon over missions at Goodman Oaks. “After services on Sunday morning you will find Smith standing near the main door of the church building watching over a specially prepared communion table to make sure all of the communion packs have been picked up. You see, Smith now has a new project. He is making sure those who cannot come to services have a home visit that day, and someone is taking communion to them. When he is sure all of the packages have been picked up by the church members he goes to lunch with some of his family and church friends, then he and another church member Jerry Richardson head out to take communion to those who are the farthest away from the church building. He is quick to warn us that we are not doing enough for those who are confined to home or in the hospitals.”
Stephens sums it up this way, “In many ways Smith is our conscience, in both Malawi and in America, walking in and out of our lives pointing out clearly what our mission is to widows, orphans, the elderly and those who are suffering with difficulties in life. His white wavy hair and his soft voice call on all of us to commit more of ourselves our lives to serving the Master.”
Medical Supplies to Sierra Leone
Posted on | January 17, 2010
Indianapolis, Indiana … Suzi Stephens of the Malawi Project looks on as members of the Westfield Rotary Club load a pick up truck with medical supplies destined for Sierra Leone, Africa. This is the first such opportunity the Malawi Project has had to send supplies to this West African nation.
In the past four years the Project has shipped over $30,000,000.00 in medical supplies, equipment and medicine to Malawi each year. These supplies have been focused primarily on the government hospital system that is seriously short of medical support from the cash starved government medical system. Government rural hospitals, along with district and central hospitals, are often out or nearly out of supplies only partially through the month. Additional supply shipments are often not scheduled to arrive at these facilities for several more days. A major medical supply distribution has been established at the Namikango Maternity Hospital and Mission in the southern portion of Malawi.
The same supply short situation exists in most African nations, and the Malawi Project is reviewing options for assistance programs in a number of other African nations, including the west African nation of Sierra Leone.
The Birthright
Posted on | January 4, 2010
If Only Access to Good Water Were a Birthright
Water is life. Having potable water for domestic use is a birth right. This is true to many People in the world. If only access to portable water is a birth right, then the residents of Chandiwo Village in central part of Malawi have few birth rights. To get this precious and free gift that God gave the world, people in this village have to exchange it with more effort. Laying parallel to a small stream to its east that also serves as a boundary with a neighboring village Chandiwo village is extremely rich with natural resources. Kawelawela River, to the east of the village, provides an abundance of water resource.
His name is Kondwani (Happy) Bwenzani and he was born thirteen years ago. A third born son in a family of six, Kondwani spends much of his time at home when he is back from a 9-km walk from school. Traditionally, girls are supposed to do all household chores when boys are helping their fathers with watering of vegetables in gardens and other duties like making hoe handles. On the contrary, Kondwani spends most of his time helping his mother with household chores. He washes dishes, draw water and even cook. This is uncommon for a Malawian boy. “His friends used to laugh at him for doing all this, but now they’ve stopped,” his mother explained.
Despite having water resources in abundance, just 450m away, the inhabitants of this small village lack clean and potable water. The reason is simple. They lack modern equipment and resources with which to treat the water. The village is a host to three dug wells that in rain season provide the water near people’s homes. In summer the wells run dry. Kondwani and his friends are forced to get the precious commodity down at the stream. This year however, has been described as the best, since the country received an abundance of rain. This has resulted in a rising water table that provides the water to the people through the wells during the summer.
This gives thirteen-year-old Kondwani no choice but to draw and use the untreated water for domestic use. Like many African and indeed many Malawian village children, Kondwani wakes up early in the morning to make sure he gets the water while it is clean. These water sources are breeding areas for mosquitoes that provide the parasites for malaria. Depending on such source of water for decades now, this village had its highest cases of cholera in 2001 when over ten people were seriously attached by the disease. Three died. For the good health and future of Kondwani and other children of this village, theirs is the need to have a mechanism in place to filter and treat the water from a nearby man made dam that lies along the Kawelawela stream just 450m from Kondwani home.
The Gift of a New Blue Basin
Posted on | December 22, 2009
“I found Patrick Dandaula lying in a hospital bed on Tuesday morning. It was not that he was suffering from a disease like Malaria. No. His mother had brought Patrick to Pirimiti Community Hospital for additional balanced food provisions. He was suffering from malnutrition. Pirimiti Hospital takes care of close to 150 patients a month and has been given large amounts of medical supplies from the Namikango distribution site.” The words are those of Wilson Tembo, the manager of the site in southern Malawi through which large amounts of medical supplies from the Malawi Project enter the country.
“’I noticed his body was swelling, including his face and legs, so I rushed to the hospital for health attention,’ his mother explained when I visited the clinic. Patricia did not know the exact disease that brought discomfort to her second born son. I found him lying on a neat disposable sheet that was displayed on the hospital bed donated by the Malawi project through Namikango Mission. Patrick’s body still showed signs that he had not fully recovered.”
“Young Patrick Dandaula hails from Nyangwara village in Traditional Authority Mwambo east of Zomba Town in southeastern Malawi. It was obvious to the attending physician that Patrick was not getting some of the nutritional food elements his body needs. ‘The problem is very common among children under five years of age because they are sometimes not given all the required food nutrients,’ explained the nurse in charge, Mrs. Kajanga. I noticed that Patrick was comfortably laid on a very neat new disposable sheet and was given a new blue basin to be used in washing and bathing. All of this came from the Malawi Project. These supplies are changing patients’ lives for good. For children like him it is becoming easy to take care of them because of these disposable sheets. ‘When children urinate on a sheet the blankets around them don’t have to be destroyed because the sheet protects them. Infection prevention is now a reality because each patient is given his/her own basin to use,’ Mrs. Kajanga further pointed out.”
Patrick will receive vitamin enriched foods at the clinic under the doctor’s supervision until his health picks up. Patrick is just one example of many children that are currently facing food shortage as witnessed by their body’s food deficiency signs. Some research from other sources indicates that less than 10% of Malawians receive adequate protein. This lack of adequate nutrition can lead to diseases like Kwashiorkor in Patrick and other children. Patrick’s life, and the lives of other children, are being saved with treatments of protein and vitamin rich supplements.
“The mission staff is there to extend all the donations to the required needy groups of people like Patrick. They may seem simple, but to Patrick, the basin is a lifetime gift that will help make his life better. Just think, if Patrick were sharing one basin with other fellow patients for bathing and washing, more diseases could be transferred from one patient to the other thereby increasing chances of death threat,” Tembo points out.
By: Wilson Tembo, Namikango Mission & Maternity Hospital, Thondwe, Malawi
Tags: Kwashiorkor > malnutrition > Namikango
Brother and Sister Polio Victims Get Wheelchairs
Posted on | December 13, 2009
Help Times Two
Dedza, Malawi … Dosidedi Filiberito is the younger brother of Donesiya Filiberito of Nkutu Village, Traditional Authority Kamenya Gwaza in Dedza District. Dosidedi is about 30 years old while the sister, Donesiya is about 35 years old. Both were victims of polio within two years of birth, and have never walked during their entire lives.
Upon receiving the wheel chair, Donesiya, the girl said, “thank God I can now go to church.” She said that although the church is only about 200 meters from her house no one was willing to carry her to church week after week after week. Now that she has a wheel chair she will be able to go to church.
Dosidedi, on the other hand said that he has been craving to go and see the new trading centre two kilometers away, but no one was willing to carry him there. He is therefore looking forward to wheeling himself to the trading centre for the first time in his life.
Both Dosidedi and Donesiya thanked the Malawi Project, and their contributors, for the donation of the wheel chairs.
Augustine Bobo,
Dzidalire Community Development Agency
Dedza, Malawi
Note: While the dreaded scourge of polio has been nearly wiped out in the west, it is still a major problem in sub-Sahara Africa. There are countless stories like this one where children and adults are helpless to get around as a result of polio.
6 Year Old Mosquito Victim
Posted on | December 6, 2009
Mosquito Confines Her to Silence and Wheelchair
Unknown Village, Southern Malawi … The African sun was beating down at nearly 100 degrees. Sweat beads slowly roll from my hat to my eyebrow where I periodically wipe them away. We turn south from the tarmac road and almost immediately it turns into a curving, pot-filled, rock cluttered obstacle course. It is obvious the “road” is more fitted to foot traffic or an ox cart at most. The land here is rolling with steep hills and cliffs dotting the area like pimples on a teen-ager’s face. After turning the wrong direction two or three times, as there are no road signs in this part of the world and few people can give you directions any farther than 15 or 20 kilometers, we pull up at the foot of a steep hill with a sharply sloping incline beckoning us to try our mountain climbing skills.
I am traveling with Wilson Tembo, from the Namikango Hospital in southern Malawi, and we are on the way to report a story of a little girl who had recently been given a wheelchair by the Clinic after receiving wheelchairs from the Malawi Project and the Free Wheelchair Mission. I considered the fact that we may have discovered the end of the earth, but then I mentally remembered I had flown over this area coming up from Johannesburg two days earlier. I guess there really is a land beyond this remote area.
How Can Anyone Move Along This Path?
Thank goodness we don’t have to go very far up the mountain. We carefully pick our way up the lower slope as I mentally wonder how anyone can carry even a small child farther up this rock maize path. And soon the rains will come. How would they ever make any kind of trip up or down this path during the rains? And the rains go on for 4 months in this part of the world.
In the distance an unseen baby cries in a remote hut. The answer comes from the other side of the road, as a goat looks in the direction of the hut and bleats out some sort of response. As we reach the house the family has gathered near a bamboo mat under a group of mango trees. Wilson and I lean down to keep from hitting our heads on the low hanging mangos, and move to the edge of the mat. It is there for us along with a small stool to sit on that had been brought out for me. The family sits on the ground and has little Judith Qatungwe with them.
Cerebral Malaria is Fatal 50 Per Cent of the Time
Judith is 6 years old, and she could walk, talk and get around on her own when she was 3. Then suddenly, and with little warning, a small mosquito bite proved nearly fatal. The mosquito was a carrier for the deadly strain of malaria called Falciparum, and it can be fatal in as many of 50% of all cases. She felt victim to cerebral malaria. Young Judith was in a coma for a full week and when she seemed well, the family realized she could not walk, talk or even control many of her movements. Now she had to stay at home with her father while her mother worked in a distant school to which she walked each day. While caring for Judith the father could not go into the fields. Since he is a farmer, to stay in the house too long, would put the future food supply for the family in jeopardy. There was nothing the family could do, when her brothers and sisters went to school, except leave Judith at home alone while they worked. Neither her mother nor her father could carry her with them every day.
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Tags: malaria > Namikango > wheelchair > Wheelchairs
Strange thing – November Maize
Posted on | November 29, 2009
So Strange in November
Thondwe, Malawi … There is nothing unusual with seeing a field of ripened corn this time of year, since October and November are the harvest time in the mid-western part of the United States. The fact that makes it so unusual is this scene is not in the United States, it is in sub-Sahara Africa and most farmers here are just getting ready to plant their maize (corn), not harvest it. In fact it has not rained here in 5 months and the seasons in this part of Africa are exactly opposite those of the U.S. The U.S. in the northern hemisphere plants in April and May and harvests in October and November. Here in southern Malawi, farmers plant in December and harvest in April and May. The only rains in this part of Africa come in this time frame. The rest of the year there is no rain at all.
Now the scene of ripened corn is a strange one at this time of year. How can it be? How can one farm have ripe maize at one end of the field and at the other end have the field fully cultivated and ready to plant when the rains start in a couple of weeks? One thing makes it possible. That one thing is the V-Tractor and the large tanks of water that rest underneath the frame in order to pick up water at the nearby river and spray it across the fields to create the needed moisture for a second crop on the same land, a crop that grows where there is no rain. It can change the landscape of farming in sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. It is the V-Tractor and it is as strange looking as a field of maize in the middle of the dry season.
This scene is at the Namikango Mission and Clinic in Thondwe, Malawi, and is made possible by the V-tractor, and by contributions from L.T. Rich Manufacturing and the Agricultural Aid International of Lebanon, Indiana and the Malawi Project.
Wheelchairs Await Their New Owners
Posted on | November 22, 2009
Wheelchairs Seemed to Arrive Early
Kasungu, Malawi … From all appearances the wheelchairs were up early and reached the site of the ceremony well ahead of the crowd. Of course, one has to realize that many in the crowd were slow getting around since nearly all of them live with severe handicaps that make rapid progress slow or impossible.
George Banda, the Director of KODO had the wheelchairs assembled and ready when the 25 students and 5 older people with walking handicaps arrived at the school near Kasungu in the northern part of the central region of Malawi.
Chankhanga Primary School, in the Kasungu District of Malawi, offers education to children with special needs. A spokesperson for the school reported, "Our children will now be able to attend classes daily which was not the case before because of mobility problems. Most of the time these children were absent from classes. Thank you to KODO for giving us these wheelchairs.”
According to George Banda, “The ceremony was carried out on an area of open ground and witnessed by many who came to see what the Malawi Project has done to enable KODO to reach this far in helping these people. Thanks.”
“As is the case with everything that is done to help the people of Malawi there are numbers of people behind the scenes who make it all possible,” reports Richard Stephens of the Malawi Project. “Free Wheelchair Mission, KODO, the Malawi Project, and a multitude of contributors make it all possible, but most are never seen. To so many people in Malawi they will never hear the names of their many benefactors, nor will they ever see them. They only know they are now in school, and they can make a different life for themselves because someone, someplace heard the call from Jesus to help those who are poor and suffering.”
Site Inspection Proves Pleasant
Posted on | November 15, 2009
Site Inspection Proves Pleasant
Thondwe, Malawi … Reaching Malawi on Thursday late afternoon board members Dick and Suzi Stephens were taken to the Namikango Mission and Maternity Clinic for the evening. Reports on the progress of the Mission were reflective of so many ministries that rely on western funds in order to carry out their work in third world nations. Funds are down, programs are slowing, and aid to so many of the worlds poorest people is taking a major toll on those who can go no lower on the economic ladder before a sickening crash at the bottom. Mark Thiesen reports, “The trip we just returned from to the states gave little results. The recession is hitting us harder than most. We are cutting back as far as we can go.”
The same is seen in the shipments reaching Malawi from the Malawi Project. The slower pace of funds, supplies, and equipment hast taken a drastic downturn as the recession cuts deeply into the aid being sent.
In spite of the problems one of the bright spots can be seen in the efficient way Wilson Tembo, the Warehouse Manager at the building on the Namikango Mission site is handling the warehousing and distribution. The site, located in Thondwe, Malawi, about 40 minutes east of the commercial center of Blantyre serves as a drop site for supplies to the southern region of Malawi. An early morning inspection of the facilities indicates a high degree of efficiency and professionalism in the way the supplies are being handled, inventoried, and distributed.
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