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Published: August 18th 2008
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Mary Kaludzu - nurse/counselor
Malawians will laugh and smile until you pull out your camera and then they suddenly get all serious. Good thing I had a few good old knock knock jokes up my sleeve. First I'll introduce myself -
Dzina langa ndi Joanna Raeside, ndimachokera ku Scotland. Ndili ndi zaka 29. Ndidabwera ku Malawi mwezi wasanu kugwira ntchito ku PointCare. Ndimakhala ku St Gabriel's Hospital ku Namitete. Ndikufuna kuphunzira kuyankhula, kuwelenga ndi kulemba Chichewa. Pang'ono pang'ono....
(My name is Joanna Raeside. I'm from Scotland. I am 29 years old. I came to Malawi in May to work for PointCare. I'm living at St Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete. I want to learn to speak, read, and write Chichewa. Slowly slowly (one step at a time).....
Getting there! There are currently no other 'azungus' (white people) in the guest house so I am finding that I am learning faster. I have also asked my colleagues to speak only Chichewa to me if they can. I do ok with that but, for example, when the Matron said something to me the other day all I understood was 'they told me....blood....Monday'. She was trying to tell me that she called about HIV rapid test kits and she was told that they would be available on Monday. Like I said, pang'ono pang'ono!
....and the Malawians I'm going to be working with (introduced through my photos). I
Alfred Ndawalira - Lab technician
I still think he looks like Will Smith. He tells me he will be my dictionary. Today I translated the Malawi national anthem while samples were running (what else would you do?!) am sure you will hear more about them in the future.
The latest news from the project -
- we finally received approval of all of our World Bank documentation. The progress report that I wrote will shortly be posted on the Development Marketplace website at www.developmentmarketplace.org. Having received approval we can now go ahead and apply for the next disbursement of our grant (money=always a good thing).
- we have started work on our instrument validation (we had to wait for the approval of our protocol) so I have been in the lab every day. It's been nice actually because I'm getting to know Alfred and Isaac better. We are testing 45 patient samples on both the hospital's current instrument that they use in their lab and the instrument that we will be using in our mobile clinic. As entertaining as Alfred and Isaac are (and that would be very) I have to admit it feels a little strange (and depressing) testing samples from really sick patients all day long. At first I was reading a bit of the information in their medical passports as I wanted to learn more about everything. However, I came across a 7year
old girl from the wards who is stage III. I think I may stop reading so much.
As always, I am regularly reminded of why I am here. I was back in Scotland for just over and week and it seems like that was long enough for me to forget what it's like working in a hospital. I think I had the misfortune of seeing a few not so nice incidents in the same day. I can’t remember if I told you or not but I spent one afternoon sitting in with my colleague Aubrey while he carried out clinical evaluations. One lady who came in could hardly stand up. She weighed almost nothing, was having great difficulty breathing, and her eyes were bright yellow and looked like they were bulging out of her head. This was her coming to the hospital for the first time. She tested positive for HIV, was diagnosed as stage 3 and was admitted to the hospital that day. I'm sure that was at least a month ago. My first day back after being in Scotland, I saw this lady again, in a wheelchair having her blood drawn. I ended up carrying out the
CD4 test on her sample. She had a CD4 of 33. It's not looking very hopeful for her. As hard as it is for me to see all this (and I know I'm going to see a lot more), it reminds me why I'm here. Had this lady been seen earlier, things could have been better for her.
As I've said many times, Malawi is a country of contrasts, so it's perfectly normal that I’m now going to switch to talking about Malawian music. On Saturday night myself and my colleague Shida attended 'The Greatest Musical Showdown in Southern Africa' (that's quite a statement isn't it?!). The event was hosted by Music Crossroads, a youth empowerment through music program. The annual InterRegional Festival (IRF) intertwines participant's workshops on music professionalism and gender & HIV/AIDs prevention issues with concerts of the biggest young talents of Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Saturday night was the final of the IRF, where participants come head to head to compete for the grand prize - a European tour. Having never been to any other 'musical showdowns' in Southern Africa, I couldn't tell you if this statement was true or not (though it was
an absolutely amazing evening). However, someone also made the statement that we would leave with "beautiful musical memories and a warm heart to last a lifetime". That much, I can say, is true.
Ndilikusowa inunonse (I miss you all),
Joanna
p.s. Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal. Kiswahili, Kikamba and Kimaasai can all be heard in Kenya and Luganda and Lusoga are two of the 40 plus languages spoken in Uganda. I’m assuming everyone knows where the other languages are spoken. Shame on you if not!
Link: http://www.womenchildrenhiv.org/wchiv?page=charts-00-01 (A good website for information on WHO clinical staging of HIV)
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Jen Waite
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Im impressed!!
I'm impressed with your new linguistic skills!! Keep up the good work! The truck supposedly left Jo'burg today...headed up your way! Vroom! Vroom! It's about time, huh? Jaco and Karl took me today to the Lion and Rhino Park... it was amazing! Kassey is supposed to be arriving here on Tuesday... just a day before I head back home to Massachusetts. I've had a great stay here... can't wait to visit again!