Ireen

My stories weave in and out of each other, sometimes I give updates and sometimes you never hear what happens to the people I introduce you to. Ireen’s present is a happy one and her story deserves an update (March 27, 2006). Ireen is the young girl who had an unbelievable but true hemoglobin of 1.7 a couple weeks after giving birth. At the time I thought she would surely die, but 10 pints later she was smiling and packing her bags on her way back to the village. Deb and I promised to visit and we arranged a date to meet her at a nearby health center (since directions to a hut in a village off the main road are nearly unintelligible, especially when you’re getting them through a translator). Deb and I arrived at the health center as planned on a Friday to find Ireen’s father, a handsome man despite a few missing front teeth, her mother who is also stunningly beautiful but probably just passes 4 feet tall, Ireen, and the baby girl waiting.

Surprisingly her father speaks good English and as he directed us over the 20 kilometers of dirt roads back to their village he narrated the whole way. As we drove away from the main road we approached two hills that rise suddenly from the land like enormous boulders. Ireen’s father said we should remember to drive towards the hills. He told us the name of both (which I don’t remember) and that we should look for the mouth on the second hill. There is a crescent shaped crevice in the second hill that does indeed look like a soft smile. As we drove past he said in a serious tone, “It’s a very nice mouth, isn’t it?” Deb and I mumbled an agreement and stifled our laughs.

In the village, as it seems to happen in the village, we were welcomed like royalty. The father proudly introduced children and grandchildren, making each of the little ones kneel and shake our hands (that is the way children traditionally greet adults). At one point I counted over 20 children under the age of 10, all smiling and sitting calmly, dressed in literal rags (you can easily imagine the population pyramid of Malawi, no WHO graph necessary). With my paltry Chichewa I think I understood the father tell all the adults we met, including the village headman, that Ireen had run out of blood and we gave her ours (5 pints and 5 pints). We did help retrieve the blood from the bank and make sure that it went into her veins but we certainly didn’t give five pints each (I’ll have to correct that story).

Ireen looked great; I could see pink gums and a pink tongue when she laughed. We asked her if they had given her any medicine at the hospital and she said they gave her iron pills, but when it took her and her mother a good 5-10 minutes of searching to find the pills, I got the idea that she’s not taking them. The baby did not look so great; in the four hours we spent together, she just slept and slept. Finally I told Ireen to wake her and feed her, and I told her not to let her sleep so long without eating. When she did nurse, her sucking was weak, and although she grimaced she did not cry. Before we left the family fed us a meal of nsima and beans and then filled my trunk with sugar cane, green maize, and sweet potatoes.

Two weeks later, Deb and I returned. We passed the house and just as we were turning around Ireen’s father ran up breathless. He said someone told him, “Your strangers just drove by,” and so he took off after us. When we got back to the house everyone was laughing about how we just passed right by. I had worried about the baby but she was much improved, squirming, crying, nursing, acting like a normal baby. She also peed straight through my dress within my first five minutes there. This time Ireen’s father took us to his mother’s house which sat on a nearby hill (not the smiling hill) and had an amazing view. Ireen’s grandmother thanked us profusely and told us that so often when you go to the health center, the clinician just gives you a pain killer and continues to read the paper. She thanked us for taking action and saving Ireen’s life. Ireen’s great-grandmother nodded in agreement. The grandmother wanted to give us something and Ireen’s father said they would cook chicken for us next time (a big deal). Once again they served us nsima, this time with okra and pumpkin leaves (yum), and then filled my trunk sugar cane, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes. We come with so little and then end up driving away with their food. At least there is happiness on both ends. Next time I want to bring kid’s clothes, that will be fun to distribute (used clothes are cheap in the market).