Monday, November 26, 2007

Lack of Doctors and Nurses

I just read an article yesterday about the lack of staffing impeding the quality of service offered to HIV/AIDS clients. According to MSF (Medecins Sans Frontiers/"Doctors Without Borders"), South Africa's MSF has 74 doctors doctors and 393 nurses per 100,000 clients. As if that's not bad enough, Malawi's HIV/AIDS epidemic is a lot less contained than that in South Africa at its insane rate of 14% HIV positives with only 2 doctors and 56 nurses per 100,000 clients.

My health center is one of the handful of health centers that MSF has invested heavily in, so I'm priviliged to see all the goods that MSF is doing. But it can hurt your head just watching the nurses and doctors rushing about (actually, I think the doctor only comes to my site every once in awhile) and the clients waiting long hours.

Health care in general in Malawi is just bad. In my district, there are only 5 doctors, all of whom serve at the district hospital, so most villagers do not have access to the doctors. Though the health centers target the villagers specifically, the quality of health care may not be adequate enough due to inadequate staffing and inadequate supplies. In addition to lack of electricity (well, in my case, we have electricity but lots of black-outs), we cannot properly store the immunizations and medications. As for sanitation, most staff don't use gloves and have to hand-wash the bedding and sheets that women have given birth on. They dispose of syringes and other "hazardous" materials by burning them behind the health center (or in other cases, at the incinerator). Since we don't have a doctor, the in-charge of my health center is actually a medical assistant - just one notch up from nurses with just 2 years of medical education. Then, there are the 2 nurses. Well, I could go on and on, but I have to say it's pretty disappointing to see how bad healthcare is especially in comparison to America's. But I know that most people just do with what they can.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

My source of life

During my homestay at training, we worked on building a well. Here's the initial stage of removing muddied water before digging a deeper hole.










After filling up the bottom with rocks, we line the well with bricks and cement.






This wasn't in my village but this is what the final product of a safe borehole looks like. All the boreholes in Malawi look pretty much like this, including the one in my village. These are the villagers gathering around to celebrate the completion of a borehole!




But this is what happens when the community doesn't take care of their borehole well. The water from the pump drains out into another hole (thus dubbed an "unprotected well"), creating standing water, which allows mosquitoes to breed. And guess what? Mosquitoes carry the malarial virus that results in the number 2 deaths for under-5 children. See how something as simple as chlorinating your water or covering standing water can do to save lives?






World AIDS Day

This Saturday is World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is leadership. I found myself asking, how am I leading people in the fight against AIDS? How are our people leading others in the fight against AIDS?

I believe that education is the first and foremost issue in battling this epidemic. If we cannot talk openly about sex and the oppressive cultural practices, how can we fight this epidemic that’s killing off millions and orphaning millions of children every day?

One of the focuses this year is on preventing mothers-to-child transmission (PMTCT).
6 in 10 babies will develop HIV/AIDS after birth.
3 in 10 babies will develop HIV/AIDS if the mother was taking ARV medication during pregnancy.
1 in 10 babies will develop HIV/AIDS if the mother was taking ARV medication during pregnancy and stops breastfeeding after 6 months. But the most daunting issue that scares mothers is that HIV-positive mothers are encouraged to stop breastfeeding their babies after 6 months… in a place where mothers usually breastfeed their babies until they stop weaning at around 2 years old.




Here’s a picture of an HIV-positive mother with her child. I don’t know if the child is HIV-positive; I wasn’t sure if I had the right to ask her.


I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It seems as if this information would be of more significance when told to Malawians than to the rest of the world. But I guess a part of me is tired of living in ignorance. I once lived in ignorance and I don’t want the rest of the world to continue living in that same shadow of ignorance. I know it’s so easy for us to get caught up in all the trivial issues of our lives, like what colored A&F shirt should I wear today? Or why doesn’t that person like me? Why can’t I pay my bills with my six-figure job? Sometimes we forget that there’s a tiny little virus that’s killing millions off by the minute. And at the moment, there is no cure. Even the treatments can only temporarily inhibit the virus from destroying our immune system, yet if we missed one treatment, the medication is no longer effective and our bodies will start breaking down. But the reality is that there’s no cure. People can only fight for their lives if they haven’t given up on themselves already. I’ll spare you the details of how HIV/AIDS can slowly take one’s life. But I guess my take for today is this: get educated and get involved. Don’t let yourself fall into this bubble of ignorance and selfishness. Ask yourself, if you had HIV/AIDS, what would your life be like? If your husband cheated on you and now your baby has HIV, what would you do? What’s more important to you – the $40 shirt or the $40 education fee for an orphan? What’s at the forefront of your mind – how to get more people to like you or how to give more people better opportunities to live? What do your actions reflect – empowering yourself so that only you can advance in life or empowering others to make good decisions and actions so that they too can pay it forward? What it comes down to is this... what is at the core of your heart?

Tower of Babel

The Bible mentions God scattered people after they tried building a tower to reach him, and in order to prevent them from scheming against him, he gave them different languages to speak.

With that said, I’m absolutely baffled at how complex language can be. I’ve learned Chinese, Spanish, English, and now Chichewa. Chinese is hard because it’s the only language that’s based on pictographs, so words are interpreted based on the “pictures” that they represent. Spanish is all about male and female properties. The Bantu language has got to be one of the most complicated languages. For one thing, the “l” and “r” are used interchangeably, so I can never spell anything correctly (I used to be a Spelling Bee buff so that was driving me crazy). And the other thing is that you basically form a sentence out of ONE word. The way that I’d describe Chichewa is like this: since Spanish and French operate on male/female/neutral properties, Chichewa operates on ten noun classes. If you know Spanish, you’d know that you’re supposed to conjugate nouns depending on the male/female properties and the verbs according to I/we/he/she/they/informal you/formal you. Well, in Chichewa, there are ten ways to conjugate I/we/he/she/they/informal you/formal you and the verbs are conjugated depending on the noun subject of the sentence, so there are ten additional ways to conjugate the verbs. (All verbs usually start with “ku-“ and the “ku” is dropped when conjugated in a sentence.) Let me give you an example:

Kusewera – to play

Ndikusewera – I am playing.
Ndinasewera – I played.
Ndidzasewera – I will play.
Ndidzidzasewera – I will play myself (it doesn’t make sense technically but there’s a way to conjugate to indicate an action being done to oneself)
Tikusewerana – We are playing each other.
Mukuseweredwe – You are being played.
Akuseweretsa – They are playing (something).
Akukuseweretsa - They are playing you.

I’m pretty sure there are other rules that I haven’t learned yet or forgotten. And this is just conjugating verbs! I don’t even want to start with conjugating with the nouns.

That’s Chichewa, people. At least it’s not clicking.

Anyway, this week has been packed with activities. I feasted and played ball at the ambassador’s house (though I was disappointed that there weren’t rackets so I couldn’t play tennis… I know right? The ambassador has a tennis court too? And a swimming pool too!). Then, we played softball with the JICA (Japanese) volunteers. And let’s just say that we were SCHOOLED (I didn’t play, but of course I would’ve led our team to victory!). These Japanese take the sport very seriously! But I did get to play a bit when they decided they had enough of the slaughtering. Then, we went to a Thanksgiving Moon house party that one of the Peace Corps staff was hosting.

Come Monday, I will be returning to my rat-infested house. Welcome home.



My host family and some neighbors.

My amayi cooking in the kitchen. I probably helped build that fire. haha




My family eating lunch at home. :)



Probably not the most appropriate picture to follow... but this was my chimbudzi ("toilet" = hole in the ground).



Gule Wamgulu ("traditional dance"). Nyau. They're said to be a secret society because they meet in graveyards at night and never reveal themselves in public.

Friday, November 23, 2007

In Food Coma

FOOD!

Food was pretty awesome! I only ate half my plate (dude, I gotta eat more) and half my desserts. What a bummer. There was a whole pig laid out on a platter but I didn't get to take a picture. Sorry. The day at the ambassador's was pretty awesome. The nicest house in all of Malawi... and probably one I'll never own even in the states. Anyway, I played some pool (I sucked as usual), grubbed, and played some rough n tumble. OMG. These boys are freakin huge... 6 feet tall, 200-pounders, larger-than-average homo sapiens. One of my teammates told me, "Just stand there and look cute. They won't hit you cuz, you know, you're small." Dude, he was so wrong. These guys were like bodyslamming me! Anyway, but it was still good to let out some energy... especially after all that grubbing.


Ambassador's House

Here are some pictures of the beautiful house that I'll never own in this lifetime.
-The chair on the left is a Chief Chair.
-There's a beautiful grand piano that I so love, a volunteer playing his violin, and some volunteers dancing.
:)

Folks

Anyway, I'm in a picture with probably the cutest baby in all of Malawi (he's my neighbor)... Too bad you can't actually see his face! haha He's staring at me because he thinks I'm an alien. Well, now he doesn't. haha The women keep trying to get me to breastfeed him. No way jose.
(I'm standing in the assembly hall where the president comes every year to celebrate Chilembwe holiday. My house is right behind. You can probably even see my papaya tree.)


My site periodically receives visitors from the states, because sponsors from the National Baptist Convention want to assist the mission. The most recent were 3 men from Chicago: a retired English professor, a preacher, and a... I'm not quite sure what he was. (I think they're from Alpine Church... apparently the pastor of their church is Barack Obama's spiritual advisor.) The preacher was my age and he wanted American food so bad, so he tipped the driver to take us and my site mate to the nicest restaurant in town for a good ol' American meal. He's a funny guy. He said that his grandfather (a former congressman) never looked at the menu, so when we arrived at the restaurant, he asked to talk to the chef and encouraged him to cook real American food. haha (I captured the moment because I thought it was so funny.) The meal was pretty sweet. The best and probably only burger I'll have in Malawi. :P


These are my site mates (other Peace Corps Volunteers). Eric (on the right) is an Education volunteer who lives 5 minutes from my house. He always makes me cook the chickens. Linda (on the left) is another health volunteer from my group. The one in the middle... that's Mini-Me. :P Look below for another picture.






We were a little traumatized.







Mua Mission











During training, we went to a cultural museum called Mua Mission. It was gorgeous, probably the most beautiful places I've seen in Malawi. I was absolutely blessed to learn some historical and cultural issues... because unfortunately, most Malawians (the younger generations at least) don't really know the culture and history of Malawi anymore. Now I'm on a quest to find an elder and learn as much as I can to preserve as much history about Malawi as I can.

OK, that's it for today! I'll come back again tomorrow! I'll be in town until Monday...


Thursday, November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

... from a place where we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. What Malawian has heard of Puritans?






Anyhoo, all the volunteers cooked up a storm last night and I am SO ready to grub a dub dub! (Since we're on a volunteer's budget, we're not really paying for the food of course.) But it ain't the same without the Boston Market ham!




Oh Malawi...

at the border of Mozambique

















This is my new Atomic Black! Say bye to my Atomic Blue (Honda Civic '06) and hi to my new Atomic Black (Trekker)!





I've ridden it about.... 3 times? haha



I'll be riding it more often now since I'm going into the villages and district more often.






(eachpicture took 5 minutes to upload... I'm gonna be stuck here forever)





It's true when they say that distance makes the heart grow fonder... Oh, watermelons, peaches, grapes, oranges, honey dews, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries... how I miss you so!


OK, I'll be back again tomorrow! :P

Monday, November 19, 2007

Pictures!! And World AIDS Day...

Yay! Pictures can be uploaded! But only when I'm at the Peace Corps office where there's faster internet speed...






My host family... aren't they beautiful? :) My grandmother with 17-year-old Dorophy, 14-year-old Chisomo, 9-year-old Marisela, and the baby niece.










This one is the newly named "Elaine" or "Ellen". hehe Ain't she a beaut? :)





The albino chicken I helped kill and eat. It was delicious. :P I'll try to post the video when I can... will probably have to do it from the U.S. via my brother.



This is my site... Providence Industrial Mission (PIM), the home of the revolutionary fighter, Chilembwe. I'm trying to figure out which village he's actually from. This is the PIM Church he built... The original one was destroyed but some of the remains lay maybe 100 meters away. I'll try to post a picture of my house next time... or should I say "half house"?


Last picture for the day... It took me over an hour to upload these pictures and send my emails. Hopefully I'll have more time this week to upload more pictures.


He was my host nephew... Lumen... He's a cute lil' brat! :D


Anyway, o.k., I will finally talk about what I’ve been working on. For the last few months, I didn’t really know what I was gonna do. But now I have an action plan. For the next few months, I’ll be working on nutrition programs for children, increasing the distribution of immunization to Under-5 children and mothers, planning with OxFam (a UK aid agency) on health and environmental programs, establishing links between youth groups and PSI/Malawi (Population Services International). The youth group I’m working with (comprising of 18 villages from OxFam’s catchment area) are preparing a song, a drama, and a traditional dance for Chiradzulu’s opening ceremony for World AIDS Day (December 1). This year’s theme is leadership… I honestly believe that these youths are the leaders of our future, because they serve as role models to the kids and as comforters to their parents (or grandparents for those who’ve lost their parents to HIV/AIDS).

So, in light of World AIDS Day, I’d like to dedicate the rest of this post to HIV/AIDS. Sometimes, we get so caught up with our own lives that we forget the impact that HIV/AIDS can have on people. I start to lose sight of its reality when I get used to the people who travel up to 2 hours to come to my health center for ARVs twice a week.

But then I’m reminded by the skin thrashes… the swollen ankles… the weight loss… persistent coughs (usually TB)… just the overall weakening of the body and even their soul sometimes…

Nothing can sober you even more when you realize that among the people milling about waiting for the routine check-ups and ARVs are actually your own co-workers and people from your community.

And when I see the kids and the babies, I think that sometimes life’s just not fair. What if they don’t grow up to see their own children grow old? What if they die before their parents would? I can’t imagine the guilt the parents feel… Sometimes it might take just one act of infidelity to infect the whole family.

Here’s the reality: 14% of Malawians are HIV positive, but I think realistically, the rate is higher… maybe even closer to 30%. I say this because every single village I went to are dealing with deaths, loss of production, orphans, youth drop-outs to provide for their families, etc. My district probably has one of the highest HIV rates in all of Malawi (20-something% compared to Malawi’s overall 14% rate). During the National Testing and Counseling Week, my district rated the second highest of HIV positives, most likely due to the close proximity to town where girls can prostitute themselves, the high population of the villages that allows for infidelity, and I think it’s one of the poorest districts since people often commute to town to sell their crops leaving our area at a low development rate (also has a problem with the highest malnutrition rates). Many of the youths here face the pressure of preserving their “cultural traditions”, such as sharing the same blade for circumcision during initiation rites, polygamy, wife inheritance, “hyena” death cleansing (a widow is to “cleanse” of her grief by having sex with a man the night of her husband’s death), fisi (a woman is to “cleanse” herself by having sex after she gives birth), having sex with as many men or women to achieve “adulthood”, etc. So, you can see my work is cut out for me.

But I just gotta take one step at a time right? Sometimes I think it’s so hard to think that anything I do can make any kind of impact… but who am I to think that anything I do can make an impact? Come December 1, I’m going to remember why I’m here and what I’m here to do and most importantly… that none of it’s for me.

Rats, rats, go away, don’t ever come back another day!

I hate rats. With passion. They stress me out. Even more than the begging.

That’s it! I’m getting a cat. At first, I didn’t want a cat, because I thought they’d be more cumbersome to take care of than the rats. But I don’t want them to keep breeding and chewing on all my plastics (and eventually my clothes). And I figured, I’d probably miss the cat more than the rats when I leave. Maybe it’ll be good to have a cat. I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a cat (where the heck does it defecate?!). Maybe it’ll be good for me to take care of someone… or something. I don’t even know what to name it. Maybe I’ll just call it “Pussy” (Chichewa for “cat” haha).

As trivial as it sounds, the rats are probably one of the most stressful issues here.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Happy OINK OINK day!

All yall may be feasting on that fatty pheasant for the holiday...

I'll be grubbin' on a FATTY MS.PIGGY at the US Ambassador's house! Arkansas style! Yeah! (whatever that means)

And hopefully I'll get to play a lil' football to let out some of that rage in me.

OK, will update soon when I have access to free internet!

Happy Zikomo-day! :)