Into the Warm Heart

Weekends are for adventure. On Saturday, Elizabeth, Yiwen and I ventured into Lilongwe to get some groceries, look for electrical supplies and experience Malawi’s capital city.

The journey begins on the back of a bike taxi. You quickly learn to hold on tight and predict the bumps. Once you have those two things down, the 5 minute bike ride to Namitete is really enjoyable as you can sit and observe the winding roads, walking people and the beautiful landscape. After paying the 150 kwacha ($1) we caught a mini-bus. These buses ferry people all across the country, making a bunch of stops, picking and dropping off their passengers. It’s always an adventure to ride a mini-bus. You have no clue who (or what) will end up in your car, as they pack 25 people into the small space. We encountered men with body sized packs of beans, many babies, numerous chickens, what appeared to be flirting youngsters and an old lady arguing the price with the money collector.

After we were dropped off at the bus station, we set out to find Shoprite, the best place to buy groceries. This took us a while. We really had no clue where we were, and we walked around asking where it was, only to be directed to the wrong Shoprite, halfway across the city. Yiwen needed to exchange some money, so we went searching for a bank but had no luck. She decided to withdraw some money from an ATM, so while she was waiting in line Elizabeth and I ventured into the craft market.

This market has beautiful products. That’s an understatement. The things there would go for considerable dough in the States. The wood carvings – figurines, necklaces, bowls and more – are serious works of art. Elizabeth and I walked by every shop, which is essentially products laid out on a blanket with their creators standing nearby. Every shop seemed to be offering both “Saturday discounts” and “very good cheap prices”. I was very interested in the paintings: they were longer than a piece of paper but had a smaller width. Simply put, they were stunning. As I browsed one set of paintings, the man greeted me and I told him I was just browsing. Smiling, he replied: “Looking is for free, man”. I fell in love with the paintings, and decided I would purchase one, along with a small necklace that has a small carving of Africa, with the face of the Mother of Africa etched into the continents contours.

As soon as all the vendors realized that I wanted to purchase a painting, they came over. I mean it. Every single person with paintings to sell came over to me to show me their product. With about 12 different vendors shouting at me, I tried to make it a fair process and look at them one at a time. Some were very patient – others were not. After about 10 minutes of looking at a hundred different paintings, I decided on a vibrant blue painting depicting a elongated body of a women balancing a pot on her head with a baby slung on her back. It disappointed many of the vendors – they were all trying to make some money to get back home. One solicited my sister and we collected two more for a very cheap price of 500 kwacha, but away from the rest of the group. You can’t experience Malawi without going to the bargaining table with some vendors.

After doing some grocery shopping and grabbing a bite to eat at a relatively upscale restaurant, we headed back home. We stumbled upon an electronics store after failing to find any around Shoprite. The store ended up having all the parts we needed for the incubator – so the trip became a roaring success. The people at the store were very helpful (surprise, surprise). With electronics, bananas and oranges in hands and groceries in our backpacks, we made the trek back to the buses and then home.

After sleeping in late into Sunday morning, my sister and mother wanted to go on a long run and I decided to join them. We brought our cameras with us, intending to do a sort of Yes Man-jogging-photography thing. We ran the dirt roads for about 2 hours, and walked through the villages that we encountered.

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Kids running after us as we exited the village, still very excited about the prospect of getting a picture taken

The kids were hilarious. They shout “Azungoo, azungoo!” every time they see a white person. Azungoo is actually not a derogatory term and the tone they strike when saying it reinforces that. We would stop and say hi to the mothers and kids as we passed through the plethora of villages that dot the Malawian landscape. On the roads we met lots of people on bikes and on foot. One group of women started to run with us, baskets on their head and all. My mom even attempted to balance one of the baskets on her head but with little success.

It was a spectacular day to be running through the countryside. The sky was the brightest of blues and looking down on the trails you could see off into the distance.

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View of one of the long dirt trails we trotted upon

We came across a fence and decided to investigate. After walking up closer, we could see over and a man greeted us. He then went on to explain the operation – about 330 beds of tobacco were being nurtured inside the fences and covered with plastic. Typical of a Malawian, the man was friendly and wanted to chat for a few minutes.

We finally circled back into the area near St. Gabriel’s and stopped by at two of the houses of people we knew: Peter and Kennedy. On the way to their houses, we passed a women making sema (a staple food here – essentially corn, salt and water) and stopped to chat.

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A smiling woman makes her n'sema

We finally made it back to our house. I passed out as soon as I had some food in me.

I spent the rest of the afternoon cracking the nuts that Kennedy gave me out of their shell in preparation for their roasting, reflecting on Malawi’s title as the Warm Heart of Africa. As I enjoyed the beautiful rays of sun on the stoop of our house, cracking nuts, with a friendly but humungous dog named Bobby sitting patiently next to me, greeting the people walking by our house – I again reflected that the title had little to do with the weather.

People at Work

St. Gabiel’s is a hospital in Namitete, a rural area in Malawi about an hour away from its capital of Lilongwe. The hospital was founded by a group of nuns from Luxemburg. Recently, the hospital celebrated its 50th anniversary. They put on displays with old pictures and it was wild to see the evolution of the place and very interesting to see some of the older staff members in their younger days. Many of the nuns work in the hospital as nurses or members of the hospital staff.

The hospital serves a catchment area of about a hundred kilometer radius. This brings a lot of people to the hospital and with them comes a lot of work. I have my hands full with numerous projects.

The pharmacy always needs help. Today, Elizabeth, Yiwen and I spent some time working there. We counted and weighed pills and put them into bags so that they could be handed out. We played a game where you tried to grab the exact number of pills needed for each bag. Miraculously, I started it off by getting it first time. Unfortunately, my sister answered with 6 more perfect and I admitted defeat.

The ART Clinic, which deals with HIV positive patients, is another place that could always use a hand. Alex, the extraordinary man that is runs the clinic, is a humorous guy to be around. In the clinic I’ve been working on entering the data from each day (meaning what patients have come to check up, how well they’ve been doing with pill adherence and their weight) into the clinic’s records. Always trying to make something mundane more interesting, I invented a game using the patient numbers, which range from 1 to 2100. For each patient number, we try to figure out something that was happening in history. For example, one patient number was 1783 and somehow I remembered that this particular year the American Revolution concluded with the Treaty of Paris.

I’m also helping my sister’s project here at St. Gabriel’s. Elizabeth and her fellow Rice classmate, Yiwen, are attempting to build an incubator for the hospital. Often a mother will give birth to a child early and the baby will end up being very small. In order for it to be healthy, it needs to be kept very warm. In the place of an incubator, which normally does the job back in the US, the hospital has a “Kangaroo Room” where the new mother and her child are supposed to stay, with the mother using her body heat to keep the baby warm (like a kangaroo’s pouch). However, we visited the Kangaroo Room today and according to the staff there, these directions have not been followed very well. Hopefully a new incubator will provide a solution. In order to build the incubator, we visited the Namitete Furniture Factory to see if they could help us with the carpentry and assembly. Today we saw a lot of progress: almost all the pieces have been created and cut to their proper dimensions. Soon, potentially tomorrow, we will start building the incubator while we wait for some other parts.

I’ve just begun helping my mother, a physical therapist, train two hospital workers in basic physical therapy. The two women are cleaners for the hospital right now, and with the help of my mother, they can perform some physical therapy for the post-op patients. To help their learning process and give them some motivation, my mother and I have begun making short videos where they explain what they have learned in each lesson. Today, my mother taught them how to approach a patient (for example, if they patient’s injury is on their right side, approach the right side of the bed so that they won’t have to reach and strain their back in order to do physical therapy with the patient) and what kind of things to look out for when seeing a patient for the first time (e.g. bandages or IVs). I plan on taking all these videos and compiling them on a instructional DVD so that it can continue training people once we leave Malawi. We hope to have each video lesson in both Chichewa and English which would do a great job in bridging language barriers.

The two women that my mother and I are training are not alone. Many of the people that work at the hospital are also Community Health Workers (CHWs). CHWs provide home-based care to many patients who cannot make it back to the hospital for various reasons. They check drug adherence, symptoms and other problems that might be occurring. These are the people that my brother works with to institute his FrontlineSMS program, which uses cell phones and text messages for communication between CHWs and rural hospitals such as St. Gabriel’s. We sat in on a CHW training session, where they were learning more about how to best provide care to their patients. These people are an inspiration – they volunteer their time to better their community and are very committed to their responsibilities.

My mom’s physical therapy adventures in Malawi have brought her into contact with many people here. Yesterday, my mother and visited a patient in a wheelchair, who she has been working with for four years each summer. The man was paraplegic and has made a lot of progress since they first met – he is now able to stand and walk with help. We brought him a netbook, which is a smaller laptop with the same functionality but longer battery life, so that he can begin his work as an accountant again. The joy in his eyes as I set up the computer for him was rewarding in so many ways. He was very grateful – the first thing he did was open a word document and start typing away a thank you letter to those involved in getting the netbook to him and his family.

The people are what make this hospital. From the administrator to the man who sweeps the leaves, everyone is committed to their role. They are always friendly – yesterday I talked with a man named Kennedy, who offered me to try some ground nuts, a sign of respect here in Malawi. I graciously accepted, and today he went out of his way to drop them off at our house and explained that he grew them himself. I can’t seem to get over the friendliness and generosity of the people here: it is not only refreshing but changes your own outlook as well.

A Different World

You can only be so prepared when you journey to another country. My first experiences in Malawi are no exception. I had heard many stories from my mother, sister and brother about the people and the way of life; however, I really had to experience it myself.

When I arrived late Monday, after easy travels through Johannesburg and Lilongwe, my time in Malawi began. Knocking on the door was Willis, a friend of my family. After we were introduced, Willis asked if I would like to come visit his house. My sister and mother gave reassuring looks, so I accepted his invitation and we walked to his house together. As we sat in his small room, he asked many questions: what sports I played, the music I listened to and whether I had any musical talent. He promptly gathered a keyboard from his house and beckoned one of his younger siblings to play, who ended up being very talented. Before we left Willis’s, I met many more of his brothers and sisters. Family is important here.

Willis asked if it was okay if we ventured to the market so his brother, John, could buy some tomatoes. I saw no reason to refuse, so we walked for a few minutes to a market long after the sun had set, where we stopped to chat with a fish vendor. The vendor greeted me with kind spirit and a phrase I had heard before: “Welcome to the Warm Heart of Africa”. This proved to be a theme in Malawi - I felt very welcome and the country lived up to its nickname.

My sister woke me up at 6AM for a run. I was dead tired but I soon noticed just how gorgeous the scenery was. The sky seems to stretch on forever - I felt like I had never been able to see that far in my life.

After getting dressed, I walked to the St. Gabriel’s hospital with my sister, mother and Yiwen (a classmate of my sister who came to Malawi to work on a project that I will detail in further posts). There we toured the facilities and I encountered another common theme in Malawi - the practice of greeting one another.

Back home, it’s expected that you greet your friends. Here the same applies, but it extends to everyone. Just passing someone there’s a good chance they will stop to say “Hello!” and “How are you?”. I’m still getting the hang of Chichewa, the language of Malawi and many times today I sound foolish trying to talk with them. They answer my stumbles with a warm smile and a goodhearted laugh. This process of greeting really brings a smile to my face every time. You really feel welcome even though you know you’re out of place.

I did plenty of work today. The pharmacy always needs help counting pills - I put in some work today and became adept at counting and putting the pills (today: aspirin) into containers for distribution. After trial and error, I finally found the best method was to keep the pills in your hand and slide them into the container.

Later, I went to the ART (Antiretroviral Treatment - used for HIV/AIDS) Clinic to help out. There I met Alex, the head nurse at St. Gabriel’s who does Home Based Care, who works with FrontlineSMS (the project my brother works on) as well as in the clinic. Alex is a hilarious guy to hang out with and I really enjoyed working there even though our job was mundane. We put ourselves to work updating the ART “databases” (by databases I mean huge binders full of every patient’s visit history). It’s a lengthy process but somehow my sister, Yiwen and I had a good time doing so and chatting with Alex.

After work, we walked back to the house we are staying in and were promptly ambushed by a group of youngsters. I had heard so many things about this group of kids and it was amazing to finally see them in person. They wanted to play soccer with us, so we grabbed a ball from our house and headed to the field. I’ve never felt such joy playing soccer in my life. Playing on a dirt field with kids barefoot, screaming, laughing and smiling is an unforgettable feeling.

Walking around St. Gabriel’s and the surrounding area is astonishing. To see people in their day to day lives - collecting wood, starting fires, walking everywhere, and living in their humble homes puts me in a different world. A different world where bitterness is put aside and warm smiles greet each other. A different world where people walk miles to get to a hospital. A different world where kids wander around with each other waiting for their foreign friends finish working at the hospital so that they can play soccer. This different world also made part of a dream come true - as the sun dropped after what seemed like a long day, I stood beneath an orange sky. A beautiful, clear and inviting orange sky. I think I like this different world.

Beginning

I’m 17 years old and next fall I will enter my senior year in high school. This summer I’m taking a month from my summer vacation to journey to Malawi, a country in southeast Africa. There, I’ll be working on a number of projects, ranging from helping my sister build incubators to aiding my mother with her instruction of physical therapy. To say the least, I’ll be busy.

I’m naming this blog The Orange Sky after one of my favorite songs by an artist named Alexi Murdoch.

Take a listen.

The song always struck a chord with me. In it, Murdoch expresses his dream of an “orange sky, with his brother and sister standing by”. Family has always been important to me. They are, in fact, the reason for my upcoming trip to Malawi. Years ago my sister, Elizabeth, went to Malawi with my mother, and the following year my brother Josh took a trip. From their own experiences in Malawi, my brother and sister have set their minds to impacting the world for the better using their outstanding education (Josh, as a recent graduate of Stanford and Elizabeth as a upcoming graduate of Rice). They are an inspiration to me and no matter where they are on the globe, listening to the song connects me to them.

Murdoch also sings that his “salvation lies in your love." I’m a strong believer that the well-being of every person lies in the compassion and empathy towards others. I think our capacity to connect with others while we live our short time in this world is fundamental to our existence.

While Alexi Murdoch enchants his listeners to imagine an orange sky, I hope my own experiences in Malawi open my eyes to the discovery of my very own orange sky.

I’m almost done with my packing - Mom is a veteran traveler and she told me exactly what I needed. Our plane takes off Sunday morning to New York, where my Mom and I will head straight to Johannesburg. From there, one more plane ride to Malawi!

Simply put: I cannot wait.