Mrs. Muntala

Nigel writes: Mrs Muntala was quite an extraordinary woman. She was the sister (UK title for "nurse") in charge of the operating rooms in Malawi’s Cure Hospital where I worked for 3 months. We became very good friends after a rocky start. I had not realized that it was custom to greet those women older than you as ‘Mrs’ – a cultural mistake on my part but I soon rectified this. Mrs Muntala was often a little grumpy and would complain about all sorts of things though her work did seem impeccable. I managed to find the knack of making her smile and even just my saying "good morning Mrs Muntala" made her beam from ear to ear. I soon discovered that she had a very sweet tooth, like most Africans, and was very partial to a piece or two of Michal’s banana cake. She would carefully divide it up so that each person had a piece and have a few extra pieces for herself to take home! She made us laugh.

Polina

Nigel writes:
Polina is an anaesthetic nurse working at Cure Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. I had the privilege of spending 3 months working alongside her and her 2 colleagues Hannah and Patricia. She has a lovely personality and a very affectionate and unique way with people. Her laugh is one of her trademarks. She strives for perfection and is one of the most careful anaesthetists I have ever met.

Polina preparing a patient for surgery.

I learned so much from her practically but the thing that struck me most was that her motivation was out of love for her patients. She was humble in everything she did. She had many issues with her job and pay, like most hospital employees in Malawi, but this never got in the way of her willingness to learn and constantly trying to better herself. As I have mentioned before, she earned just enough to feed and clothe her family. Buying a house or travelling outside of the country was out of the question. Her job was a stressful one. Unfortunately though, as I’ve noticed throughout the year, anaesthesia in Africa is not high on the priority list, so the conditions, equipment and pay do not take this into account. Polina, working for Cure though, was probably one of the ‘luckier’ ones.

Polina on the left leading the dancing.

In the morning devotions, Polina was known to be the funkiest dancer and worship leader around. She loved to preach and encourage others to reach their full potential. She became a good friend of both Michal and I during our time there and we liked to hang out with her. I will never forget her response when Michal gave her a painting as we left to come home. She fell to her knees and just stared at it with tears in her eyes. These moments never cease to humble me.

Polina with a young patient.

Junk for Jesus

Nigel writes:
This is an expression I have heard a few times this year. It refers to the massive amount of useless and often expired or malfunctioning equipment donated to poor countries in Africa from the West. I must not be too cynical, since I know many useful items are donated in good faith. In fact Mercy Ships and Cure are careful to put out proper ‘needs’ lists so that willing donators know what is and is not required. Unfortunately, some people put together huge containers of their unwanted items and send them off with the assumption that Africa will be able to use it all. Sadly, and more often than not, they can’t and in the case of malfunctioning equipment, they have no resources to fix them. Worse still, where are they supposed to dump this stuff? I guess the point is: if you can’t or don’t want to use it in your own country, then the likelihood is they won’t be able to use in Africa either.

The storeroom in Malawi's Queen's Hospital.

The term "Junk for Jesus" is most commonly used in religious organizations that work abroad in the "developing" world, one of which we are working with now.

I was talking to one of the surgeons on the ship about this topic. He pointed me to the old Jewish writings in Malachi chapter 1 (Old Testament) which speaks of God’s anger when the people bring defiled offerings to him. God points out that not even their governor would accept such offerings. An interesting reminder.

More junk.

For more of Nigel's medical posts click here.

Blantyre, Malawi

As usual I have fallen behind in my blogs. I am no longer in Malawi, but will show you a few pictures of places we visited and lived.


This was the walk from our home to the large grocer and the University.


Polina was one of Nigel's coleagues who we got along with swimmingly well.


A shot of downtown Blantyre. It wasn't a big city in terms of western cities, but you could find a lot of stuff if you poked around in all the shops. It is Malawi's biggest city.


A man carries crates of pop on his head.


This is the mini bus station. All the white vehicles are the regular mode of transport in Malawi. it is cheap and relatively fast. You will be crammed in with 20 people, children and animals. Don't get on an empty mini bus as you could be waiting an hour. They don't leave until they are full.


The Malawi market was one of my favourites. You could get anything in there, including deep fried intestines of some sort! I did a lot of my shopping for produce and other things there.



Inside the market. The chetengies on the right were yards of fabric that women used for all sorts of things including carrying their children on their backs, skirts, blankets, etc..


A typical street in Malawi. During evening rush hour instead of cars there were crowds of people walking in the streets to get home.



Our Street.


A short cut path to a different neighbourhood.


A dried out Maize field.


Following some Malawian women.

Nigel's Incident

Nigel points out to me the drama with which I retell my harrowing experiences. He also points out very occasionally how he too had an experience that he does not dramatize or retell everyone in ear shot. I firmly believe that is why I am the perfect partner for him: I can dramatize everything for him!

During the same weekend away as my "bug in ear" incident (in Chinguni Hills in Malawi), we were lucky enough to have a family of 81 elephants come through the camp. They are extremely dangerous and we were watching from a safe spot. I had my camera and was ready to shoot any that came into good view. I didn't want to miss a moment.

They were moving closer every moment. From behind me I hear, "Michal. Michal, I can't see". I turn to see Nigel standing behind me facing another other direction, obviously not aware of where I was. I quickly go over to him, as I have some good shots to get and don't want to be distracted longer that I need to be.

I look at him and he has approximately 10 black bugs (a bit bigger than fruit flies) latched to his bottom eye lid, their heads in his eye. "Where are those from?", I exclaim. "I think they are coming from the elephants", Nigel responds. I reach for a bug, not sure whether they are dead or not. I grab it and as soon as I let go it flies away. They seemed to be sucking his eye juice. I grab the rest one at a time in a fast motion. He blinks as the last one is removed and is relieved he can see again. I return my focus quickly to the excitement of the elephants eating shrubs metres from where I am.

Mere minutes later I hear again from behind me, "Michal, I can't see! Can you get the bugs out of my eyes again?" I turn around again, not wanting to take more than a few moments and see his lower lids covered in bugs sucking the liquid from his eyes. I remove them again.

Needless to say, we went through this scene a few times. Nigel neither complained or panicked. I was always distracted and more interested in the elephants. He never told his story to illustrate how he suffered or how dramatic his life was. Most of all, he tolerated being dealt with in a rush (all for elephants) incredibly well.

Nigel, you are a star!

The Bug

I finally downloaded the picture of the ACTUAL bug that was in my ear. The body was extracted from my ear first so what you are looking is mostly the head and wings.

My Incidents with the Malawian Animals: Part 3

Here is the last installment of my personally harrowing experiences with animals in Malawi. I have saved the most traumatic for last. After our mountains trips we took a weekend to go to a safari lodge. The thatched tents hung down to the ground and it was up to the animals and bugs to know they were not allowed to tuck under and cozy up into our beds with us. I saw a giant lizard creep in at one point.

I love animals and am fascinated by bugs, but ever since seeing the movie "Mountains of the Moon" (Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, two of history's most remarkable adventurers, set out to Africa in 1854 to find the mysterious source of the Nile River) I have thought it a terrible nightmare to have a bug in my ear. This I mentioned to Nigel the day before "the incident".

The next day I innocently walked into the shower block. There were the familiar gecko like frogs covering the walls, bugs flying around, and an open air concept. I was pulling my shirt over my head and a bug must have gotten caught between my shirt and my face. In a moment of panic he dove into my ear.

Now there are few moments where I can look back to a moment of complete lack of self-awareness where I say or do anything that comes into my head. It was only in looking back that I recalled jumping around yelling "my eardrum is going to break! Get it out!" Nigel was there and he can attest to my insanity. He immediately looked in my ear only to discover it had crawled too deep to see. He assured me my eardrum was not going to break, nor would it crawl into my head, but that the eardrum was a block it couldn't pass.

Panic beset me. A bug in the ear is the absolute loudest thing I have ever heard. It was panicking and flapping. When it flapped, I can only assume to get out, the noise vibrated in my head. The moments it stopped there was a loud rumbling or buzzing. I was less panicked during these times. I couldn't think beyond getting this thing out.

Nigel led me to the main lodge where we asked the manager if they had dealt with this before. They had not. Nigel decided the bug needed to be killed. He procured a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen and poured it down my ear. It oozed warm.

Having a bug in your ear is traumatic. Listening to a bug drown in oil in your ear is gross. I couldn't look away. I couldn't plug my ear. I sat there and listened to every last noise it made. I swear I heard some sort of crying after the movement had stopped. Nigel suggested it might have been secretions being released on death. Someone had a syringe and we tried flushing it out with water, but to no avail.

That night I slept with toilet paper stuffed in my ear. There was a constant dripping of olive oil. This wasn't so bad. Since the bug had died so had my panic. There were no more loud rustling and flapping, just the realization there was a dead bug rotting my in ear. We would have to wait until we were back in Blantyre to extract it.

By the end of the second day we were back and I began experiencing pain. My glands and sinuses hurt on the side the bug was on. Swallowing hurt. Nigel found an otoscope and peered into the depths of my ear. "It is huge! I think it is a wasp." I did not need to know that before the bug came out! It was so big it was wedged into the end of the canal. To end a long story, the bug was extracted by a ENT doctor at Queens hospital the following day in two bits...body first, wings and head second. I asked to keep it, although I only got the second bit intact.

My incidents with Malawian Animals: Part 2

My second incident with a Malawian "animal" took place during our second trip out of Blantyre. This time we went to Zomba Plateau. It is also a mountain, but less steep than Mulanje and instead of trudging up 6 hours you hitch a ride to find opulent to basic accommodation at the top. We managed to catch a ride and after some confusion with bookings (overbooking is common) we found ourselves housed with two Dutch girls in a very basic log cabin at a Trout Farm.

This time we noticed there were mosquito nets hanging in the familiar knot above the beds. Despite this we saw no mosquitoes. Nigel was convinced the elevation was too high for mosquitoes on Zomba and I reluctantly agreed to ignore the net and just sleep without it. It was nicer without the net draping like an inverted cone and tucked in tight to your mattress despite keeping out reptiles and bugs. Did I mention that Malawi is a malarial zone?

The hum of mosquitoes just on the other side took a while to get used to when we first arrived in Malawi. If you were to accidentally lean a limb against the net at some point during the night you would find a welt of bites from well fed mosquitoes. In order to avoid this you had to lie much closer to the middle of the bed. In the day they would hide in our closets, under beds, and in any cracks. Unlike mosquitoes back home they were almost impossible to kill. They had some sort of aerodynamic body that must have carried them off on a slight current of air from a swift movement towards them in murder.

I went to sleep on this particular night feeling the current of air that is usually stifled by the drapery of net. I blissfully floated off to dream land. Sigh.

I awoke at some point in the middle of the night in the dark to at least one mosquito buzzing around my head. For any of you who have tried to cover your head with a blanket and then became so suffocatingly hot and lacking in oxygen, you will understand my only thought was to get the mosquito net over me. I sat up and as I opened what was supposed to be two eyes, only one fully opened. The other lid had been sucked of all its blood and replaced with what felt like a quart of mosquito venom. I could not open it. It was swollen shut.

I fumbled with the mosquito net knot as Nigel stirred. "What are you doing?!" "I am getting the net down" "Why!?" "Because apparently we are low enough to get mosquitoes, I have one buzzing around my head and I can't even open one of my eye lids I have been bitten so badly! But don't worry I will just put the net around me and not bother you any more." As I continue I hear him say, "You could put it around me too if you want."

I should follow this story by saying that both Nigel and my entire family say I am an exaggerator. I say people like an interesting story and would rather hear a bit of elaboration than a hum drum monotone meandering. All of these stories are true, they were just seen through my fantastical eyes!

My Incidents with Malawian Animals: Part 1

Throughout my stay in Malawi I had several "encounters" with animals. I like animals. I like bugs. I am not opposed to being in the same environment with them. Every second weekend we took a mini bus out of the city of Blantyre to a new destination where I had a strange encounter with one.

ENCOUNTER 1: Our first weekend away we set off for Mulanje, one of the major mountains in Malawi. The Plateau takes 5-6 hours of hiking to reach, climbing 2000 metres. There are several huts on top that one can spend several days hiking around and lodging at. Ours was a log cabin that I noted did not have mosquito nets. Malawi is a malaria zone. It was too high (and cold) for mosquitoes we were told. The cabin was composed of several dorm style rooms and I chose a bottom bunk to hunker down for the night. I dozed off quickly into dreamland.

At some point in the middle of the night I was startled awake from a dream. It is important to note that I was dreaming. I even specifically remember what I was dreaming about when I suddenly was lying awake feeling something rather large gnawing at the side of my eye. As my mind quickly cleared, I automatically reasoned there must be either a giant cockroach or a rodent on my face. Without a seconds thought, I swatted away whatever was there and bolted out of bed. I felt my face. I could feel that it had been eating the sleep crusted near my eye. I felt around in the dark for our carefully placed flashlight and flicked it on. I scanned the floor, the bed, the room...nothing.

Nigel was roused from sleep and in that voice he often uses at these hours (that "you are the weirdest person I could have married" voice) he croaked, "What on earth are you doing?" There was something big gnawing on the side of my face! "You were just dreaming, go back to sleep". This is where my clear recollection of what I had been dreaming about backed me up.

Despite my scan of the room there was nothing I could find and the only thing to do was go back to sleep. I would ask our guide in the morning what sort of animals lived around the area. I settled back into bed content in my belief that my startled reaction would have scared whatever it was away and the chances it would come back were slim.

The next morning I asked our guide what might have been eating my face. He laughed and told me it was most likely a rat. It turns out Nigel had trouble sleeping after the whole episode while I fell back to sleep like a baby.

We Are in Malawi!

We are in Malawi at short last! We have arrived at the hottest time of year. The heat can be crippling. I walk 35 minutes to the market in the midday to get food and then all the way back home (uphill) and I think I must drink 16 cups of water on the journey! The short rainy season is due to start soon. The coolest times are early mornings and evenings.

Blantyre is nice. It is a small city and the hospital Nigel is working at is on the outskirts of the town. The roads are rough and the best vehicles for the terrain seem to be the Landrovers 4x4's. It is a 30 minute walk to the city centre. The centre itself is bustling, but not somewhere I would hang out for long. I prefer the long dusty roads a bit out of town. Malawians walk everywhere (as do I) and rush hour is more people crammed on the roads than cars.

The Market is close by and there is an abundance of fresh produce, live chickens, dried fish, slabs of hanging meat, woven baskets, fabric, spices, handmade furniture, and really anything you can think of. You can buy bananas just about anywhere you go from women carrying large bushels on their head.
Malawi is very nice. Red earth. Wonderfully friendly and kind people. Dusty heat. Crammed minibuses. Little tables under trees along the dusty roads with a telephone on it and a person there to help you make your call on mobile phone units for a small price.

Life in Blantyre begins very early in the mornings...at least 6am. "Malawian midnight" is about 9pm. The sun goes down at 6pm and it is not advisable to be out after dark. The heat starts at about 7:30am, so the earlier you get up, the more of the day you have not bathed in your own sweat and then caked in red dust!

Nigel has started work at the hospital and I am sorting out a regular painting schedule as I have brought my art supplies with me. I have sourced canvas and gesso, but have been told that artist oil paint is not available in Malawi. We are housed in a guest house off the hospital with 3 other housemates. It is airy and simple.

I have found an art gallery on the way to the market that has a cafe, small library, and wireless internet (for a fee). Internet here in Malawi is slow. I have yet to try the country's wireless system, Skyband, as you have to buy a card with time on it which you can use in any hotspot.

We hope to get out of Blantyre on weekends and explore the rest of the country before the rains start.