Looking Beyond the Cane's End

Her name is Kusala, and if you are at the Namikango Mission you may see her. Every morning she goes with her mother to the market. She is a grade 2 pupil at Msamba Primary School, a school located less than 5 kilometers from the mission. Her family earns a living selling sugarcane, and during school holidays she joins her mother in carrying the cane to the roadside market and selling it. With six members in the family, Kusala’s mom earns about $4.00 a day. This means each family member lives on 66 cents a day. When asked how she feels carrying the cane on her head, Kusala says, “my family has no choice; we must eat, having clothing, and it totally depends on selling the cane. I don’t enjoy carrying them on my head, they are very heavy.” This business earns her a pen, a pencil, exercise books and soap.

Wants to be a nurse

Carrying sugar cane for 10 kilometers is not simple for a seven-year-old. However, she tries to look beyond the end of the cane’s length. “I want to be a nurse, so I work hard at school,” she explains with excitement. Her life, and future demands a lot on her if she is going to become a nurse. Malawi is the home  to many children like Kasala whose lives are subjected to adverse poverty due to the loss of parents who die of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Growing up in a Yao tribe in southern Malawi, Kusala has a mountain to climb if she is to realize her dream. Many cultural practices lead to girls such as Kusala becoming sexually active long before marriage, and this can easily lead to HIV/AIDS, or other problems that will bring about the loss of any promise of a productive future. For her to realize her dream of being a nurse Kusala will have to look well beyond the end of the cane.

Reported by Wilson Tembo,

Namikango Medical Warehouse Manager

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Care for the Caregivers Accepts Donation

“After working in Malawi for 17 years, I have seen many good programs that need a hand up. Nothing has excited me in quite the way ‘Care for the Caregivers’ has peeked my interest and excitement,” says Suzi Stephens, the Director of Medical Services for the Malawi Project. “I have never been more proud of my profession as when I work side by side with the most giving, dedicated nurses, who often work without pay when government funds are behind. Nurses who deliver babies barehanded when gloves are non-existent, who dress wounds of the critically ill, and clean up patients,in spite of having no protective gloves, will look you straight in the eyes and say, ‘I will eventually die of AIDS because of a lack of supplies, but my patients need me.’ Today that belief is coming true as nurse after nurse is dying from this dreaded disease and leaving countless numbers of children with no one to care for them, and no one to pay their school fees so they can lead their nation into a better, safer future. After meeting with the Medical Nursing Society, I was told I would be appalled at how many nurses are indeed HIV positive.”

Stephens, a registered nurse in the U.S., continues, “Today they are stepping up to help themselves and their children. ‘Caring for the Caregivers’ is the organization by nurses, for nurses and their children. A building is being built that will care for sick nurses, and money is being collected to send their colleague’s orphaned children to school. I cannot imagine a world without nurses, hospitals empty of a smiling, compassionate, professional nurse. If you are like me and want to honor those nurses and help them have a longer, compassion filled life, and then a comfortable death with the knowledge that their children will be cared for, you can contribute to this effort at:”

Caregiver Fund
Malawi Project Inc.
3314 Van Tassel Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46240

or by using our online donation service and adding the note, “Caregiver Fund”

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Tribal Chief Mdelakwanda, the traditional authority over a number of fishing villages in Senga Bay, Malawi, looks on in amazement at a unique tractor design that exists no place else on earth except Malawi. Not only is he surprised and puzzled by this exclusive farm tractor, the same surprise and excitement is soon seen on the face of the Right Honorable Joyce Banda, the Vice President of Malawi.

With five years in design and development, the V-Tractor is the creation of Tom Rich of Lebanon, Indiana. It currently promises to make a major agricultural impact, not only in Malawi, but also in a number of third world nations.

In 2009 the Malawi Project helped Rich spawn Agricultural Aid International (AAI), a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit, humanitarian aid organization based in Lebanon, Indiana USA.  AAI has a focus on supplying V-Tractors and various other successful farm practices to their world countries.

Just prior to the monsoon rains, the third V-Tractor arrived near Senga Bay and was immediately put into service preparing fields made available by the tribal chief. Rich made his second trip to Malawi in as many years in order to train the Malawians to use the tractors. Both the Vice President of Malawi, and Tribal Chief Mdelakwanda were impressed with the performance and potential of the tractor. Vice President Banda extended an immediate request for some of the units to be used to assist a number of orphan care programs she sponsors in southern Malawi.

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(1) “We had convened one of our field trips when a young man crawled over to where we were meeting and said to me, “I would have been at school now, but it is difficult for me because there is no one to carry me.’ He had come hoping to receive a wheelchair. We had given all of them to others.

(2) “Moments later another person arrived on the back of a barrowed bicycle hoping to receive a wheelchair.”

(3) “Yet another one arrived jumping on one leg, using a stick to steady himself. He had lost one leg when he was attacked by armed robbers.”

(4) “And finally came yet another man who had learned we had come to their village near Salima where our operations are based.”

Another trailer of wheelchairs is being prepared for shipment to Malawi. But in the meantime there are so many people watching in hopeful anticipation. Within the community of need they are still waiting.

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Desire to be Doctors

“Of all the things that happened on our most recent trip to Malawi there is one moment when three lives crossed paths that I won’t easily forget,” recalls Richard (Dick) Stephens of the Malawi Project. “It was the day two boys stopped to talk while on their way to school on the outskirts of Thondwe. It was around 7:30 in the morning, and I met them on a path that intersects with the Namikango Maternity Hospital on one side and the Zomba road on the other. They were excited to talk with a visitor, and immediately stopped when they realized I would take time to talk with them.”

“As is often the case they wanted to know about me, about where I had come from, and what I was doing in Malawi. I briefly explained about the Malawi Project, and its various programs, and that I had come from America. This brought into focus a long explanation about what it is like in America. There is a deep sense of longing in this part of Africa to know about America. They look up to the ‘Europeans’ as they refer to all of us with European decent, and almost without exception all want to visit or live in America. They see it as the goal out of the poverty in which they find themselves mired.”

“I turned the attention to them and what they are doing and plan to do.”

“We are in school,”the one closest to me explained, “and we want to become doctors.”

“I complimented their goal, and after a few minutes of conversation it was time for them to leave. I watched them walk away down the path. In a nation with 13 million people, with a reported total of less than 100 Malawi doctors, I cannot imagine a nobler goal. But too, I know they will face critical threats to their health and survival if they go into the medical profession. They will have far too few protective measures to shield themselves from the diseases they are trying to treat. Too, they will feel the frustration with having unbelievable shortages of even the most basic medical supplies. As if that is not enough they won’t get paid very much, and there will be little chance of a foreseeable change in that status. As they walked on down the path I felt an urgency to get on with our mission. They didn’t ask for anything. They were on the way to do it themselves.”

“It would seem the least we can do by the time these two boys become doctors is to give the country the resources to change their destitute medical situation. I hope so, for the sake of these two boys, and 13 million other people.

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Man Carrying a Drum

In the circles of those who work in Africa from the west there are a number of funny little antidotes that begin with, “You’ve been in Africa too long when …” and you fill in the blank with some sort of situation that is unusual in the U.S. or Europe, but seems quite at home and normal in Africa.

A number of these situations have confronted various members of the Malawi Project teams that would have been extremely unusual in the U.S. but were commonplace in our eyes in Africa. Among those are the feats of strength that are visible when we saw the extremely heavy loads carried on the heads of Malawians because of the lack of adequate devices to get the items from one place to another. For them it is normal to pick something up and put it on their heads. For us it is impossible. This fact was seen one afternoon as I had made my way to a place near the road where I could shoot a particular person coming down the road after the workday. She had a walking disability and I had asked if I could firm her determination as she made her way to the bus stop each afternoon. I got to the scene ahead of her and waited. Several people passed me as I sat on a log and waited. Then it struck me. Great pictures of human strength and determination were passing me repeatedly, but they appeared so “normal” I was missing the picture.

I corrected the problem by quickly snapping pictures of the next couple of people who passed. I later took an excursion to gather some more pictures of people carrying loads on their heads. It is an amazing feat and one that should remind us of the struggle faced day after day deep in sub-Sahara Africa in a land that is so poor that possessions and goods can only be transported on people’s heads.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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