November 14, 2004

Embangweni #23

Dear Friends and Family,

We are just completing the busiest time of year here at Embangweni. The last group of visitors left on Wednesday. As much as we love to have American friends come, we have found that we need a break periodically. When a team comes, we try to ensure that each person has a chance to experience some part of the life and work here. Fortunately, the Shallow Wells teams that come from Marion Medical Mission every fall are very independent and really don’t need our help. They began their work in September and finished in early November having completed over 500 shallow wells that provide clean water for thousands of people. This has left us the time to work with other groups that visit.

We thoroughly enjoyed the two Irish medical students, Jonny Patterson and Declan Quinn. Their joy in their work and the very funny jokes and stories kept our lives full of fun. Tyler Brown from our home church in Leesburg, Virginia, arrived the day before his 20th birthday and we were able to celebrate with brownies, which Jonny and Declan continued to ask for through the rest of their stay. Tyler will be with us for seven weeks. For us, it allows us to see this culture and the amazing people here with fresh eyes (and young eyes). His perceptions are interesting, for he is quite observant and sometimes pensive. He will notice things that we have never seen although we pass them every day. For our Leesburg friends, watch for Tyler’s articles coming in the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Now we are preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas here in Malawi. Of course, Thanksgiving is a purely American holiday and unknown to Malawians. It is a work day here, so we will try to get off for the day. We do not have our friend Martha Sommers here this year to organize an American football game on the primary school soccer field. But we do have a rather decadent thing now. Satellite TV! When Dr. Maclean packed up his belongings, he left us his TV and dish. We were able to see the election results and we can get BBC and CNN news at all hours. Perhaps we can see the Detroit Lions play. Who are they playing this week? This is hard to believe for those who were here four years ago when there was no electricity. It looks like we may soon have telephone as well. Telecom visited yesterday with plans to put up a tower on station property.

Several people on the station can financially afford these satellite systems, telephones, and computers. We have tried to keep from showing our American wealth by owning few such things, but now the towns and cities are full of them and many people walk around with cell phones to their ears in Lilongwe and Mzuzu. It is such a contrast to the villages surrounding the mission station and even more to the more remote villages where some cannot even afford candles or kerosene lanterns.

The economy is not improving in this area, really. The mission station, with its hospital, primary school, school for deaf children, and secondary school, is the sole source of appreciable income for the area. Most surrounding the station are subsistence farmers trying to grow enough maize to feed their families for the entire year in the one growing season. The soil is very poor and nothing will grow without fertilizer. This year the cost of fertilizer doubled again to 2,800 kwachas per 50-kilogram bag. That’s a month’s salary for someone like a cook or housekeeper. Such a sum is unobtainable for most, who earn significantly less than cooks or housekeepers by selling eggs, sometimes beans, greens, or tomatoes, or climbing trees and picking mangoes in season. They will not be able to grow maize this year, and I am afraid that many will starve. No signs of that yet as there are still a few reserves from last year, but we are hearing that people are eating only one meal a day. The grain bank, which was built three years ago, is functioning well and we hope that it will provide some relief to the immediate area. People have asked us to keep them informed and we will do so. We are hoping that the government will subsidize the fertilizer but no sign of that yet.

We would like to thank some of the many friends who have visited these last two months. Just this week we spent the day with the delegation from the PC(USA)’s national headquarters in Louisville and MBF (Medical Benevolence Foundation). These were a group of eight who represented the medical mission work from our parent church in Louisville. We had a lunch for them to meet and talk with the executive committee of the hospital, who had many questions about funding sources and about how things work in Louisville.

In October, a group of five from Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, visited for a week. They were great fun and saw a lot of the work here in just one week. Dr. Carroll Loomis and his daughter, Dr. Sarah Loomis Mack, spent almost two weeks helping to put up a huge radio antenna, which will allow the hospital to have e-mail via ham radio. That is almost working now and will soon allow the networked computers in the hospital to email the outside world. Sarah joined Dr. Harvey Doorenbos working at the hospital and in surgery.

Harvey, as our visiting surgeon, has been here for three months and will soon be leaving to relieve Dr. Maureen Stevenson at Livingstonia so that she can go back to Ireland for a visit home.

It is quiet here now and we are looking forward to a quiet holiday season experiencing Christmas and New Years the Malawian way. The annual hospital Christmas pageant is the biggest event and with our wonderful musician-pastor, the Reverend Chimwemwe Mhango, we are really looking forward to Christmas worship at Embangweni Presbyterian Church.

His sound system is prominent now on every Sunday when we have power (and some when we don’t and he borrows the hospital’s generator) and church services have been enormously livened by his personal singing and that of the several choirs he has been teaching and training ever since his arrival. He is highly unusual in loving pizzas and milkshakes in this culture that largely thinks the only “real” food is nsima (read corn meal cooked in boiling water to the consistency of dumplings). He replaced a number of the non-performing presbytery officers and employees in a very energetic sort of reformist movement that would only be possible for someone with his popularity. Linda is a teacher at the primary school and, on her free afternoons, he has been Beth’s Chitumbuka tutor. Both Chimwemwe and Linda were eager to learn many Tshiluba words and phrases during the Congo trip and they frequently greet us in Tshiluba here on the station. Their sense of humor is pervasive and infectious, giving us many chuckles at the dinners that are often held to honor various guests, where he is always one of the featured speakers.

At the hospital, the work continues on the new HIV medication program. Patients are being referred in large numbers, and we have begun their patient information classes, which they must take with a family member or friend who will be their supporting person. The drugs have not arrived but we expect them soon. In the middle of all this, and following our successful inspection for the anti-retroviral (ARV) program that we reported in our last letter, the government sent another team to inspect us for capacity to conduct voluntary counseling and testing (VCT). This time we failed, primarily for lack of adequate space—we have only one room and that one is not well placed or equipped for confidentiality. The space issue for all of the AIDS programs is becoming more of an acute need and we are actively looking for grants or fund donations to build the new integrated preventive health services facility that we have written about previously. We wholeheartedly thank those who have donated so far, but there is still a long way to go!

We have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. We wish you all a happy and safe holiday.

Beth and Bill

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 58