Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving
with four American friends. Hayden and Margot Boyd and their friend
Tom Toleno visited from Mzuzu where Hayden is teaching at the
university came with them. Of course, Martha Sommers, our American
doctor here at Embangweni, also joined us. Bill had found two
small turkeys at a shop in Lilongwe on his last trip and brought
them back to our freezer. We had turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes,
broccoli, and apple pie. There was no cranberry sauce to be found
so we had raspberry jello with fruit, just for something red!
The power went out during the roasting so we had to take the turkeys
over to Martha's wood stove. And then an hour later brought them
back as the power came back on. Martha had organized an American
touch football game since the Dimmocks had sent her a real football.
Several hospital staff members joined in and learned some of the
basics of the game. Of course they are all avid soccer players,
prompting Hayden to remark that some of them are "really
fast.” They want to play again so Martha is organizing another
game in a week or two. She knows that if Bill and Beth play, she
will fix any broken or dislocated limbs they may have. To the
Malawians, we are really old, at over 50! It is strange for oldsters
and women to be playing such a game!
During this period, Bill has spent much of his time on the road.
The weekend after our last letter, we both went to Lilongwe to
do some shopping and pick up supplies for the hospital. Normally
we would make this 3-4 hour trip about once a month. However,
the very next day after our return, Mrs. Kamanga, the new administrator,
broke the news that she had discovered 37 members of staff who
were not properly registered to the receive the normal supplement
to their paychecks from CHAM, the Christian Health Association
of Malawi. This ecumenical organization receives grants from the
Malawi government and passes them on the member hospitals to help
cover salary costs because the network of Christian hospitals
in the country constitutes such a huge percentage (something close
to 40 percent) of the overall national health services. In effect,
Embangweni Hospital had been paying these 37 people exclusively
from donated funds. Bless Mrs. Kamanga for making this discovery
but it meant that she and Bill had to turn right around and return
to Lilongwe the next day in order to straighten this out and get
the people registered. CHAM graciously agreed to make payments
retroactively to the beginning of our fiscal year in July. Hopefully
this will help to relieve some of the pressure on our meager hospital
budget!
The following week, Bill and several others had to make the two-hour
trek to Mzuzu for the quarterly CHAM meeting. As usual on these
trips, he took a long list of other errands in order to take full
advantage of the fuel and time spent going to and coming from
the city. However, when they arrived in Mzuzu, they discovered
that, overnight, the president of Malawi had declared a snap national
holiday in connection with the end of the Muslim Ramadan! All
the banks and many of the stores and offices were closed for the
day. Adding insult to injury, the CHAM meeting itself, which normally
does not go past noon, dragged on into the late afternoon and
the whole tired group returned to Embangweni after dark with little
accomplishment to show for their day. Then, once again, two days
later (on Thanksgiving), it transpired that Bill had to make a
second trip within the week to Mzuzu, with the hospital accountants,
in order to collect the money for end-of-month salaries. Salaries
here must be paid in cash, no checks mailed out, no direct deposits
to employee bank accounts. To their chagrin, they discovered on
arrival in Mzuzu, that the aforementioned CHAM had not yet deposited
the funds for November salaries into the hospital's bank account
and the hospital did not have an existing balance sufficient to
cover them until the CHAM deposit would be received. Panic! Telephone
calls to CHAM revealed that their staff had all left town for
a weekend retreat and no one could be found to sort the problem
out. The backup plan had been to bring along a pre-signed check
from one of our special project accounts but inexplicably, the
bank rejected the signature on that check as somehow not genuine
and refused to cash it. Instead of a quick return to Embangweni
so that Bill could spend Thanksgiving afternoon, at least, with
our guests, the team had to spend the rest of the day scratching,
scraping, begging, borrowing, arranging and ultimately managing
to cobble together enough money to bring back the money to pay
the salaries. Bill missed the football game but did get back in
time for the Thanksgiving dinner. Once CHAM makes the deposit
(hopefully next week), we will repay all those creditors, but
it was a close call and illustrates well how hand-to-mouth our
existence is! Such is life but we (and the hospital staff!) were
thankful that a solution was found and salaries could be paid.
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we are all looking
forward to a wonderful Christmas season. Between now and then,
we hope to tell you more about how Christmas is celebrated here
in Malawi. In the meantime, our love to you all and grateful appreciation
for you prayers, your support and your emails!
Bill and Beth Rule
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
58
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