June 23, 2003

First Four Months at Embangweni

Dear Friends,

Looking out the window at mango trees and ox carts plodding by on the dusty dirt road, we have to pinch ourselves in order to think back five months and remember the orientation in Santa Fe, the last few frantic packing days in Leesburg, Virginia, and the flight from Dulles with 17 pieces of luggage, just as the first of this past winter's snow storms was getting started!

The first week here found us getting supplies in Lilongwe and settling into our little brick bungalow with three (!) electrical outlets that work most of the time. It was still raining then and the corn was growing tall and green all around us. Now, it is dry and the harvest is in. Strangely, it was warm then but now the days are sweater-cool and the nights are two-blankets-cold. Then, the grain bank was selling off its stores to people who had no meal left in their larders. Now, the corn is plentiful and the grain bank is buying and filling its storage rooms for the next cycle. If they make a little over their costs, the small excess will go as a down payment toward a satellite storage unit in one of the nearby villages. Slowly, the ripples will spread across the pond.

The primary school may be the only one of its kind in the country, with 30 computers and a laser printer. We have a couple of people at each school—primary, deaf school and secondary—who are able to do basic trouble-shooting and have so far been modestly successful at keeping the machines generally working. Praise the Lord!

Then, we found a reasonably well-staffed hospital with two doctors and a hospital administrator, but not nearly enough nurses. Now, we have lost one doctor back to Scotland and the administrator to the scourge of deadly disease. Bill has had to leave the computer work in order to help with hospital administration until a new administrator can be hired. Budgeting for fiscal year 2004, which begins in July, he has found about $37,000 currently available for the annual budget of about $300,000. We trust the Lord will provide, perhaps even using your responses to this report in the process! Now, on the other hand, the hospital matron (director of nurses) has succeeded in hiring more than 16 new nurses, so we have lots of nurses, but not enough houses to put them up in. Oh, well.

But the dying continues. AIDS and malnutrition among children are two of the grimmest stalkers and are often the shadowy dark figures behind even the malaria and TB deaths. Some of you have heard the story of the young mother who was forced to return to her village on public transportation with the body of her dead child tied to her back in the traditional fashion, in order to hide the fact that the child was dead (because the cost of transporting a dead body would have been prohibitively more costly than the cost of carrying a live child). We stifle our own cries at such outrages, even as that poor mother had to stifle her wails for fear of revealing the terrible secret.

But all is not gloom and doom, even on the medical front. For two months we enjoyed hosting Laurie Diehl—now returned to begin medical school at UVA—and rejoiced as she gave her first pint of blood to save the life of a woman in surgery. Laurie participated in daily rounds with the doctors, assisted Beth on mobile clinics and generally shed a bright ray of sunshine amongst all the friendly people that she met here. And friendly is certainly the operative word. Malawians are incredibly happy, bright, laughing, pleasant, hopeful, gregarious, enjoyable, constantly smiling people, in spite of everything! Healing continues every day. Only recently, a program of anti-retroviral drugs was announced for a limited number of hospital employees—at $22 per month for the few whose monthly salaries are not less than that amount. Perhaps some who would not hesitate to sponsor a child in school for that amount would choose to help sponsor a life. The rewards are infinite!

As we close this, a group of school children are just outside in the yard, playing an enthusiastic pick-up game of soccer with a raggedy piece of rubber wound into a rough spheroid about half the size of a regular soccer ball. Their happy shouts indicate that they think it is the most wonderful ball in the world. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. The birds are singing (well, the crows are cawing). Life is good. The weekend of June 29 we go to pick up Michael and Diana Bennett for a two-week stay, helping in the schools and the hospital. They will return with wonderful experiences and leave behind a warm legacy, as all do who visit here. You, too, could be part of this story!

We have come to a place that has a 100-year history of Christian witness and service and have been asked what kind of evangelism is needed here. We have found that sharing our faith and living and working with our neighbors offers them support in their struggles. But often we are the beneficiaries of their prayers and good wishes as well. We are indeed blessed.

With much love, thanks and appreciation to all of you who read this and who take an interest,

Bill and Beth Rule