Imagine…

…cutting wood for the fire to prepare breakfast, then having to carry it for 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile on your head back to your home.

…walking far up the mountain to cultivate your family farm plot, while carrying a baby on your back and a heavy hoe over your shoulder.

…walking to the market, four miles away, then having to carry all of your purchases all the way home on your head.

…working in the field to cultivate, weed, and raise a bushel of tomatoes, then traveling 40 miles to the nearest market to sell your produce.

…walking deep into a ravine to obtain water, then having to carry it in a leaking bucket on your head all the way back home.

…having a bumper crop from your small family farm plot for the first time in ten years, only to find you can’t get it to market.

…being ready to deliver your first baby, only to find you have to walk 8 miles to get down from your mountain village because no car or ambulance can reach you.

These are just a few of the daily chores that must be sustained by Malawi men and women in order to survive another day. These are also some of the reasons the Malawi Project is focusing on getting basic utility vehicles into the country.

The BUV is built in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is the creation of Will Austin. It is part of his mission to help people in third world countries be able to transport people and commodities over long, hard, dangerous, and exhausting distances. The organization is the Institute for Affordable Transportation. The Malawi Project has purchased and shipped three of these vehicles. Two are in the central region of the county, and a third arrived in November at the Namikango Maternity Hospital in the southern part of the nation. More of these units are needed if life is to improve.

Pictured are the three units, one transporting people, another employed to move food, and the third is engaged in moving heavy logs. Pictures thanks to Richard Stephens, Mark Thiesen and Wilson Tembo. To learn more about the BUV go to: www.drivebuv.org

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    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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Help Needed to Build Safe Kitchen

At First It Looked Like Rubbish

    Thondwe, Malawi… From a distance it almost looks like a pile of metal stacked up near a clearing waiting to be thrown away. But as one walks along the path near the Namikango Maternity Clinic, and reaches a point near the rusted metal panels, it is obvious that it is something more than a pile of rubbish. It is actually a kitchen for the guardians of hospital patients to use for cooking meals for their relatives who are patients in the hospital. Because of so many more critical needs for the funding that is always in short supply (and especially so during this economic downturn) the “kitchen” is in last place when it comes to repair. In order to assist with the funds to construct a new kitchen the Malawi Project is giving this report. It is important to realize how little it will take to help the people who spend days at the clinic caring for relatives who cannot care for themselves. Mark Thiesen, the American administrator at the Mission writes,

    “One courtesy offered by Namikango Maternity Clinic, that we often fail to mention, is the accommodation we provide for family members of patients. Like our other services, room and board is free for people who come to take care of their mothers, wives, and daughters during their stay in the clinic. They look after their loved ones’ needs during this period. One of the most important of these needs is cooking their meals for them.”

    Mark continues, “As our facilities continue to age, the kitchen used for this purpose has deteriorated to such a degree that its very stability is now threatened. The structure’s supporting beams have decayed to such a point that the kitchen presents a real danger to the family members who have come to help our patients. The kitchen must be rebuilt if we are to provide a safe decent environment for our visitors.  At a cost of $3,614.00 we can totally rebuild it to continue serving the people of our community with confidence.”

See More Photos: Click HERE

Or Mail Contributions can also be mailed to:

Malawi Project – Namikango Kitchen Fund
12526 Clearview Lane
Indianapolis, IN  46236

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    Reporting is Mark Thiesen, an American missionary at the Namikango Maternity Hospital and Mission in Thondwe, Malawi. Mark watched his staff put together the new basic utility vehicle sent to them from the Malawi Project. The vehicle will serve as an ambulance that can move into the remote mountainous areas and bring pregnant mothers to the hospital for deliveries.

    The basic utility vehicles are manufactured in Indianapolis, Indiana USA by the Institute for Affordable Transportation,  5868 E. 71st St, #199 Indianapolis, IN  46220

    The Malawi Project has now sent three of these units to Malawi in the past year. Two were sent to the central region, one to serve as transportation of commodities to market, and the second as a people mover. The third unit has gone to the southern region to serve as an ambulance.

    The pictures show the Namikango staff putting the parts together to complete the BUV after its arrival in the country.
 

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In these economically troubling times in the western nations it seems no job is certain.  As we watch the unemployment rate sneak up to 5%, 6%, and higher and we rightfully fret over our friends and family whose jobs may be threatened.

Imagine 80% Unemployment
Imagine a country where the unemployment rate reaches above 80%, where almost no jobs were available and where there was no welfare system or any other safety net.  How would people survive?  The African nation of Malawi where I live is one such place.  How do people survive there, you might ask.  My first answer would be, “I’m not quite sure, but somehow they do.”  My second thought would add, “Not too well.”  The little country is terribly overpopulated with around 13 million people trying to live on a small piece of land that could comfortably accommodate about only about one-third that number.  With so few jobs, most people have to live off the shrinking amount of available land, which is being divided into smaller and smaller parcels as Malawians continue to have more kids, who are forced to divide their parents’ plots in order to survive.  On those little plots Malawians continue to use the age-old backbreaking method of cultivation with simple hoes.  Stooping over for months of the year, they first clear their gardens, then cultivate, then plant, and continue weeding until the harvest finally comes.  Using this method, if the rains have been good–not too little and not too much–and if they somehow found the funds to buy fertilizer for the overused soil, they might harvest enough to eat for another year; and if they’re fortunate enough, they possibly will have a little left over to sell so that they can have money for soap, salt, clothing, and even send their kids to school.

No wonder Malawi is listed as one of the poorest nations of the world with one of the highest mortality rates, lowest literacy levels, and so on year after year, decade after decade.

Tractor Offers Hope in Agriculture Development
Enter the V-Tractor.  Tom Rich, owner of the L. T. Rich Manufacturing Company of Lebanon, Indiana has provided us, through the Malawi Project, a tool that offers hope for people to escape the grim realities described above.  The V-Tractor (“V” is for Village, hence “Village Tractor’) is the most versatile instrument I have ever seen.  Equipped to work with a plow, water tank, and a growing list of other applications, the tractor makes it easy to switch from one job to another in a matter of five minutes or so.  The operator simply loosens some simple fasteners like bolts and cotter pins, pushes the current application aside, and just as quickly attaches the new one.  Operation is even easier, a critical feature in a country where most people have never operated any kind of driven machinery.  The hydraulic pedal covers every movement, including forward and backward motion, and braking.  There is no need to change gears.  At the demonstration that I attended, a group of Malawians who had never driven a tractor or a car or anything else for that matter, got behind the wheel and flawlessly maneuvered the tractor on the flat and with a little practice were cultivating acres of land.

An Eyewitness Marveled
The tractor moved at a good speed, it’s plow cutting through the rock-hard soil that had had several months of dry weather to harden.  It made its way back and forth, softening the soil for the next planting.  As it crisscrossed the field, it became obvious that this tractor could outdo the work of dozens of men working together using the old hoeing technique.  A Malawian eyewitness marveled that just one man could cultivate a larger area in a single day then a company of men could do in a whole week.  The possibilities for improving the quality of people’s lives here using a tool like the V-Tractor are myriad.  Because of its adaptability the machine offers tremendous improvements in the whole farming process including in the current available applications like cultivation and irrigation, but possibly for future applications like planting, applying fertilizer, and weeding.  It also offers opportunities to assist in other parts of rural Malawian life such as transporting water with its tank and other commodities by attaching it to a trailer.

We are thankful to the Malawi Project for directing this marvelous tool our way.

Mark Thiesen
Director
Naminkango Maternity Hospital and Mission
Thondwe, Malawi

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Ox Cart Going Out as an Ambulance

    Pregnant women on the way to the hospital often reach their destination on the back of a bicycle, or in the back of an ox cart. It is not unusual in third world nations, and Malawi is no exception. In mountainous parts of the nation the problem is compounded because of limited access to the remote village areas.

    This situation is true in the southern part of Malawi where some of the highest mountains in the region are located. For the Namikango Maternity Hospital in Thondwe this problem is ever present, and the calls for help in an emergency often cannot be quickly met because of the terrain.

    To help with this problem the Malawi Project has purchased another Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) that will serve as an ambulance. These units are manufactured in Indianapolis, Indiana, and two have already been delivered to the central region of Malawi. The basic utility vehicle is custom made to accommodate a seriously ill or pregnant patient and a caretaker. It can reach a remote area and bring the patient to a medical facility in a timely fashion.

    Mark Thiesen, Director for the Namikango Mission, when presented with the idea and specifications for the until, observed, "This vehicle is ideal for moving quickly over village trails to remote locations to quickly bring expectant mothers to the maternity clinic. We are delivering 75 – 80 babies a month, and almost without exception they are coming from isolated rural areas where no other type of vehicle can reach. Women do not begin the journey, a trip that can be a number of kilometers away, until they are already in labor."

Suzi Stephens, the Medical Director for the Malawi Project states, "Statistics have indicated a mother-baby mortality rate that is sometimes recorded as high as 1 in 7, which qualifies this region as having one of the highest in the world. This unit can help reduce the number of infant deaths at birth."

Shipment of the BUV will take place in the first quarter 2009.

    The unit obtained by the Malawi Project is similar to the one pictured at the right.

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  “He brings a level of specialty that we absolutely need as we begin a new ministry,” according to Mark Thiesen of the Namikango Mission in Thondwe, Malawi. Mark continues, “The Malawi Project, a church-related ministry based in Indiana, has begun sending shipping containers of medical supplies that will bless not only our maternity clinic, but also other area clinics and hospitals.  The problem confronting us was that we had no experience with this type of ministry, and no one on staff had the expertise to organize the huge volumes of equipment we will be receiving soon.”
 
Tembo brings four years of experience managing a similar warehouse at Blessings Hospital in Lumbadzi, near the capital, which has received a large number of containers from the Malawi Project in previous years. Thiesen adds,  “The special training Wilson received both on the job while he was at Blessings, and through the management courses he took in Purchasing and Supply should have prepared him well to help us serve the people of this area.”    

                
     Thiesen notes that having Wilson Tembe with them also has yet another value to the mission. “He has come with his wife Alice, who has joined our team at the maternity clinic.  She has special medical training and experience that we believe will enable us to do a better job of improving the health of women and small children.”

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Board members of the Malawi Project conducted a site evaluation of the Namikango Maternity Hospital, and the adjoining land and buildings in Thondwe in August 2008. Subsequent discussions centered on the location near Zomba, the former colonial capital of Malawi, becoming a second site in the southern region for the receipt of medical supplies and equipment, agricultural supplies and training, and other commodities to serve the people of Malawi through this second location. Hospital personnel and administration along with Mark Thiesen, the American missionary stationed at the mission was immediately positive to the plan. This site would join another one in the south, three in the central region, and one in the north in an effort to make supplies available to every district of the nation. A vacant church building, abandoned after a larger building was constructed, was a logical location to become the storage facility that would be needed. The only problem was the fact the building had deteriorated when it was abandoned and a large amount of expense and work would be required to get it up and ready for use as a major storage and distribution site.

Funds Made Available For Construction
    In September the Project board unanimously agreed to fund the needed repairs on the building and Thiesen headed up a work crew that set out to get the building into top flight condition before the first two 40-foot trailers of supplies arrived at the site.

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The custom designed units, V-Tractors for short, are part of a bold new incentive in research and development by Tom Rich of the L. T. Rich Manufacturing Company with the cooperation of Richard Stephens, Executive Director of the Malawi Project. As the doors of the overseas container were opened outside the Kachere Orthopedic Hospital in Blantyre representatives from the Malawi News Service started taking notes and snapping photographs. A crowd gathered, including Kachere and Queen Elizabeth Hospital administrators, church leaders and representatives from the two agencies chosen to receive the first units. The Dzidalire Community Development Agency in Dedza, and the Namikango Maternity Clinic in Thondwe are the recipients of the first two tractors. The Universal Aide Society of Vancouver, Canada, and its contributors supplied the cost for the transportation of the two units from central Indiana to Malawi.

Thought “V” was for the Shape
Mark Thiesen, the Director for the Namikango Mission and Maternity Clinic in Thondwe made this comment about their new tractor. “At first I thought the “V” stood for the shape of the tractor. But when I learned it actually stood for “village tractor”, and how the tractor had been invented exactly for a developing county, it all made sense. I was impressed with its easy and simplicity of operation, along with its versatility to do so many different jobs. Anyone, even if you have never operated a motorized vehicle before, as is the case of most village farmers, can now cultivate their fields. A farmer who previously cultivated only 1 or 2 acres will now be able to gain production from ten or twelve, while having more time to do other tasks. This can easily make the difference between mere survival and enjoying a complete escape from poverty.”
It’s an All-In-One Unit

Samantha Ludick the proprietor Cool Runnings Lake Resort, scheduled to receive the next unit that is currently being prepared for shipment to Malawi, “This is exactly the right tractor for us at this time in our development. Having an all-in-one unit is just the thing we need. Now the kids can go to school. They have always had to work in the fields along with their parents, but now the V-Tractor can do it all. It does everything. It can run a generator, turn a concrete mixer, plow the field, disk, harrow the ground, pump water, haul water, just everything, just everything. Now that is really cool.”

It Will Revolutionize Farming
As the first tractor started its field trials Stephens noted, “Today is a memorable day in Malawi. A single person sitting on this tractor is doing what it would take two or more men a month to do, and this one man will do it in just a couple of hours. This will revolutionize farming the same way the small John Deere or Farmal tractor changed America from a horse drawn system to a mechanized world. That led America to world success in farming. It will change Malawi as well.”

Just then the first tractor reached the far end of the field, turned and started to carve out two more rows of crusted soil.

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Hearing the News that "You Are Positive"

"Malawi doesn’t have the same strictness about privacy that we have in the US," I tried to explain to my guest from America as we both stiffly watched the scene unfold before us. A nurse who was showing us around the clinic had seated us in a little testing room a few minutes earlier. And now to our shock she was giving a lady a test to see if she had HIV right there in front of us.  Several other strangers, all waiting their turn, were also crowded in the room, some sitting so close to the lady that they could have reached out and touched her as she braced herself for the results.  

The test works like one of those instant pregnancy kits. A nurse captures a drop of your blood on a pear shaped plastic card and a few minutes later-Presto!- the verdict comes in. If only one bar appears on the card that means you tested negative for the virus and you’re free. Life will go on as normal.

Two bars mean you just tested positive for HIV!

"You are positive," as they say here. You officially have the ghastly HIV virus that leads to AIDS and are staring the totality of its nightmare of horrific illness, stigma, and slow but early death right in the eye. 

All who come for testing arrive with a sense of dread, terrified that they will test positive for the virus, but most come out with a new spring in their step and hope for the future after learning that they are not infected after all. Some, though, come out devastated, having received the dreadful confirmation that their worst fears have come true: their life is over as they know it-and that it will probably be a lot shorter at that.

The last thing I wanted was to be present the moment when this lady, or anyone else, learned their HIV status, especially if it was bad news. But it would have been offensive to storm out now, practically stepping over the lady’s feet. I tried not to listen to what the nurse was saying in low tones to her, but the formal rehearsed sound of the voice was not encouraging. A quick glance at the woman’s emotionless face, skin taut over her cheekbones, dark eyes staring blankly into space, told me she was not getting the news she wanted. No, she looked like she had just received the kind of news that makes you feel like a 20-ton Mack truck has just dumped its whole load of rock on you. 

Now they were testing her a second time. And why would they do that? I suspect that you can figure that out. But these little tests are so accurate that there was little doubt her fate was sealed and the nurse confirmed this fact to me the next time we met.

They didn’t reveal to me the woman’s name and I can’t tell you any more specifics of her story. We could only speculate about what was going through her mind when she heard the news. What would this do to her marriage if she had been infected by her husband as is so often the case? How would her kids learn about this? Did she have the emotional strength to fight this with the life-prolonging drugs available these days or would this news just destroy her hope and will to go on living?

Although HIV/AIDS surrounds me in Malawi (Fourteen or more percent of the entire population tests positive for the disease and percentages for certain age groups go way beyond that.), this was my first experience witnessing someone actually facing this reality.

"You are positive."

 Society stigmatizes the disease so greatly that almost no one admits they have it even if they know. Nobody has ever told me, "I have AIDS," or "I am HIV positive."  Instead all these young people who are wasting away and dying in our community officially are being killed by other illnesses. It’s true that other diseases finish the immune deficient patients off, but the real cause, AIDS, usually lurks close by in the shadows. 

My friend and I left the testing clinic after a few minutes and went on our way, but now any easy conversation that would take our minds off of what we had just seen eluded us.  We had not counted on being witnesses to such a grave moment in this stranger’s life.  Never mind the fact that I certainly interact with HIV positive individuals on a daily basis, it’s a lot easier not knowing who they are or being forced to consider what the future holds for them.

In the Photo: The left poster explains what the test means when two bars show: "The HIV virus is present."  The right poster showing one bar says, "The HIV virus is not present." 

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