A Meeting with the soldier

---

A Meeting with Soldier

For those of you who know me (and my appearances on stage at Cirque de Soleil, dueling Piano bars, Travis concerts & the like), you will not be surprised when I tell you that we ended up on stage at the Lucius Banda concert, dancing with the ‘soldier’ himself. The story of how this happened is long so I’ll save it for now, but I WILL say it was a fun night and I am a big fan!

Since I last wrote, much has happened. Our house is becoming busier as the number of guests has changed from 4 to 3 to 10 in the past few days. Steve has gone home for a couple of weeks of rest and relaxation and we have been joined by 4 new volunteers (2 Canadian, 1 English) and 3 Malawi Volunteer Organization employees (South Africa). The number of white people is proving to be a little overwhelming for some of the local kids as they have been running away crying when they see us.

One of the South Africans is here to start a Hippo Research project. On his first day he called us out onto the beach to point out a couple of hippos to us. It was quite a sight to wake up to! I have since been wondering if I should listen to those of you who have been suggesting that my swimming in the lake is not the best idea.

At work I have been busy working with the Outreach Clinic. I haven’t been able to help much with their cholera and malaria prevention talks (due to the minor fact that I don’t know Chichewa) but I am now giving immunizations (measles, DPT - dyptheria, pertussis & tetanus, depo-provera contraceptive) and polio drops. I swear the doctors no longer do any work themselves. We (myself, Katherine & nurse Moses) immunized almost 100 babies between us at the last clinic.

We have also been assisting with the Home Based Care project that I was talking about last week. We visited one of the ‘Fishermens Villages’. You can imagine how excited I was for the journey when I realized it was going to involve being on a little old motorboat for 45 minutes, on quite possibly the worst weather day we have had so far. I’m not going to lie, I was petrified. It was white knuckles all the way. I was very proud of myself for ‘surviving’ the journey.

The village itself was stunning. Absolutely surreal. I kept calling it an island by mistake. It is on the mainland but you literally cannot access it except by boat. The houses have just been built in amongst rocks. My pictures, unfortunately, do not do the place justice. We met the volunteer who takes care of the supplies for the village (after the compulsory meeting with the village chief). The village currently has 1 box of supplies and 10 trained carers for 4000 residents. It’s a start. Thanks to the fundraising money that we have raised, we are currently preparing to train another 20 volunteers.

I have also been assisting in the ARV clinic (performing rapid HIV tests and recording results), the pharmacy (working in the stock room and distributing medicine) and the psychiatric clinic (aliquoting medicine). The problem with most of the patients visiting the psychiatric clinic? Epilepsy of course!

I feel like I have rambled a bit this time but I have less than an hour here. We didn’t come last week because Katherine (my roommate) went down with Malaria. We had a fun night in the hospital together. Thankfully, she is pretty much fully recovered. Keep your fingers crossed I do not get it. I certainly am!

I hope you’re all well and sorry again that I am unable to reply to emails…..

Talk soon hopefully,

Joanna x

p.s. I did meet the president. In passing though…..

---

Comments

[Christina]

You wild woman
Hey Joanna, Been wondering about you since we have heard there is flooding in Malawi. Glad to know you're still alive and well--keep taking your chloroquine, eh? So enjoyed your centipede story aswell. xxxooo