Thursday I took the day off from Bottom, the morning I enjoyed by myself, mostly reading in bed and then in the afternoon I decided to visit Chiko. Chikumbutso is the motherless baby girl of Nathan who lives in a village 50km outside of Lilongwe. About a month ago Nathan, her father, and his sister-in-law arrived at Bottom with a listless extremely dehydrated little Chiko. They said she had been having diarrhea for the past 24 hours and already her fontanel and eyes were impressively sunken. We took her to Kamuzu Central right away and after a week of IV fluids she returned to her beautiful bright self. I believed that Nathan would call if they needed milk or if anything were wrong with Chiko but Thursday I felt as though a small voice inside was telling me to go see her.
When I arrived at the house the sister-in-law handed me Chiko and weight the little bundle disturbed me a bit. The aunt said she had malaria. I tucked an electric thermometer under her arm and it shut off once it read 103 degrees Fahrenheit. I also noticed that some spots around her mouth were hypo-pigmented and then was stunned to see more spots spreading from her neck down over her chest. (Later, with the translating help of Sister Namaleu, the aunt told us the spots were vesicles and then sores and were now healing.) I told everyone that we should go the hospital immediately. So the aunt packed up and the three of us headed back to Lilongwe.
The clinical officer started treating her for sepsis immediately, ordered a malaria test, and a full blood count (FBC). The following day I returned to visit her with Sister Namaleu. Her temperature still climbed above 101 and none of the lab results were in the chart, even though blood was drawn early the previous afternoon. Sister Namaleu and I went to the lab to chase down the results; we found that Chiko’s blood was negative for malaria parasites but her hemoglobin was 7.6 (anemic) and her platelets 50 (low). On our way back to the ward we cornered the chief pediatrician who told us that he would not yet consider transfusing her but would repeat the FBC Monday.
I just returned from the hospital where I met Chiko with her pink knitted hat strapped to her aunt's back. She was smiling and cooing and looking much better. The aunt says her antibiotic injections will finish tomorrow. I'll make sure that she gets another FBC to see if there is any change and if it's no worse she'll be heading home on Tuesday.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Ripples and Waves
Frank continues to amaze me. Frank is the young father of Grace, widowed the day after Grace’s birth. A few weeks ago Frank took me to his house for the first time, usually we meet at the mother-in-law’s house where Grace lives. Frank lives in a very modest two-room adobe home that could easily fit into my bedroom, without electricity or indoor plumbing, and he shares this space with a young male relative. I sat on one couch chair and Frank sat on another. As I listened to him talk about his good fortune, I took in our surroundings. He said he might have had to sell his bed and the mattress and his little sofa set (which he bought for 2,200MK) just to try to afford the monthly formula bill of 9,000MK to keep Grace alive. A small shelf pushed into a corning, held some bread, eggs, and a couple old newspapers. He said if it weren’t for the help of others he might be completely destitute but because of the help, his life is good. A cluster of unframed pictures of his dead wife hung on the wall across from where he sat. His own hand-written notes surrounded the pictures; notes to her, notes about how he misses her, notes about the existence of God. Whenever he talks about Grace his eyes tear up and he shakes his head, but his smile always quickly returns. He said he has changed, that before he never understood the depth of despair and could not feel compassion for those who were suffering. A thin sheet hung in the doorway between the sitting room and the bedroom; through the sheet I could see a small simple bed. Now, he said, he just wants to help others. He said his ultimate dream is to start an orphanage.
Some small ripple began with that conversation. Together we decided to start by choosing five destitute families in his area who are supporting orphaned infants, or infants of terminally ill mothers. Frank quickly identified the families and made lists of the dependents and the items he thought they needed most.
A week later we had our first meeting with the group. I held chubby gurgling 4-month-old Grace on my lap as I sat among the other women on a mat. All the children were below 2 years and none of them looked healthy. The oldest, a 16-month-old girl was still not walking or talking and weighed the same as 4-month-old Grace, 7kgs. We told the women that we would buy them basic goods once a month, and then they as a group would have to decided what they wanted to do to support each other (e.g. start a garden, raise chickens, etc). Frank and I went to the market and bought each woman a 40kg bag of maize, 12 candles, cooking oil, 2kgs of beans, formula for the two who still needed to nurse but were unable to nurse, a high protein and calorie mixture for the little girl, soap, and a soy and maize based porridge for all the children. I also distributed some donated clothing.
The following week Frank told me I needed to arrive at the house on Saturday at 9am. Frank’s mother-in-law had called a Malawian Parliamentarian (MP) who said he wanted to support our group. The MP sent a donation of many bags of pala (the enriched porridge) and canned beans and said the President’s wife would also be sending donations from time to time. The MP could not come to the group himself, so Frank’s mother-in-law asked me to come to distribute the items to the families instead. I in turn asked Sister Namaleu to come along because I knew she would be a willing and wonderful asset.
When we arrived, women and children covered the small dirt area in front of the house. A song rose spontaneously and joyfully and as they sang, each woman came up one-by-one to shake our hands. After the greetings, the women served pala to the group of 30 or more children present and then we distributed the pala and beans. Frank decided that with the continued support of the MP, the larger group of children could come to the house to eat pala twice and week and the original group of five would come three times. Our ripple fed a small stream of change and hope.
The greatest part of the morning was watching the little girl – who only one week before personified a tiny exhausted old woman – laughing, squealing, and trying to walk.
It’s stunning how so many people really need so little. And, how so little means so much in certain hands and bellies.
Some small ripple began with that conversation. Together we decided to start by choosing five destitute families in his area who are supporting orphaned infants, or infants of terminally ill mothers. Frank quickly identified the families and made lists of the dependents and the items he thought they needed most.
A week later we had our first meeting with the group. I held chubby gurgling 4-month-old Grace on my lap as I sat among the other women on a mat. All the children were below 2 years and none of them looked healthy. The oldest, a 16-month-old girl was still not walking or talking and weighed the same as 4-month-old Grace, 7kgs. We told the women that we would buy them basic goods once a month, and then they as a group would have to decided what they wanted to do to support each other (e.g. start a garden, raise chickens, etc). Frank and I went to the market and bought each woman a 40kg bag of maize, 12 candles, cooking oil, 2kgs of beans, formula for the two who still needed to nurse but were unable to nurse, a high protein and calorie mixture for the little girl, soap, and a soy and maize based porridge for all the children. I also distributed some donated clothing.
The following week Frank told me I needed to arrive at the house on Saturday at 9am. Frank’s mother-in-law had called a Malawian Parliamentarian (MP) who said he wanted to support our group. The MP sent a donation of many bags of pala (the enriched porridge) and canned beans and said the President’s wife would also be sending donations from time to time. The MP could not come to the group himself, so Frank’s mother-in-law asked me to come to distribute the items to the families instead. I in turn asked Sister Namaleu to come along because I knew she would be a willing and wonderful asset.
When we arrived, women and children covered the small dirt area in front of the house. A song rose spontaneously and joyfully and as they sang, each woman came up one-by-one to shake our hands. After the greetings, the women served pala to the group of 30 or more children present and then we distributed the pala and beans. Frank decided that with the continued support of the MP, the larger group of children could come to the house to eat pala twice and week and the original group of five would come three times. Our ripple fed a small stream of change and hope.
The greatest part of the morning was watching the little girl – who only one week before personified a tiny exhausted old woman – laughing, squealing, and trying to walk.
It’s stunning how so many people really need so little. And, how so little means so much in certain hands and bellies.
A Few Quotes on Happiness
Whatever joy there is in this world
All comes from desiring others to be happy,
And whatever suffering there is in this world
All comes from desiring myself to be happy
-- Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
If you try to subdue your selfish motives—anger and so forth—and develop kindness and compassion for others, ultimately you yourself will benefit more than you would otherwise. . . Foolish selfish people are always thinking of themselves, and the result is negative. Wise selfish people think of others, help others as much as they can, and the result is that they too receive the benefit.
-- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness
There is some kind of ultimate justice or goodness in the universe. It is that goodness that we are all trying to uncover and to free. Whenever we act positively, we move toward it; whenever we act negatively, we obscure it and inhibit it. And whenever we cannot express it in our lives and actions, we feel miserable and frustrated.
--Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
All comes from desiring others to be happy,
And whatever suffering there is in this world
All comes from desiring myself to be happy
-- Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
If you try to subdue your selfish motives—anger and so forth—and develop kindness and compassion for others, ultimately you yourself will benefit more than you would otherwise. . . Foolish selfish people are always thinking of themselves, and the result is negative. Wise selfish people think of others, help others as much as they can, and the result is that they too receive the benefit.
-- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness
There is some kind of ultimate justice or goodness in the universe. It is that goodness that we are all trying to uncover and to free. Whenever we act positively, we move toward it; whenever we act negatively, we obscure it and inhibit it. And whenever we cannot express it in our lives and actions, we feel miserable and frustrated.
--Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Innocent
I told the beginning of Innocent’s story a while back during my first months in Malawi. He is one of many dependants of a woman who has lost 6 of her 8 adult children. With their physical departure each child left her with a few more orphans to add to her household. Innocent is 19, he’s a bright sweet kid who did well in secondary school but could not continue his education because no one was able to pay school fees. He wanted to attend a one-year computer-training course and so with some of the money I received, I paid the fees. His final exams were scheduled for May 2006. In January I went with him to the school to give them a check for the exam fees to ensure that they received the payment on time. In April he was told that he would not be able to sit the exams in May because I was supposed to pay with a bank note and since the school had to obtain the bank note themselves, the fees were not processed in time . . . grrrrr. Of course I went to the school, argued with the school administrator and director but they held firm, it wasn’t their fault that someone from the school failed to tell me this the day I handed them the check, it was Innocent’s fault because he was supposed to know and tell me. Right. Poor Innocent cried in the school office. They then told him he was supposed to take the exams in June from the 26th to the 29th.
Sunday morning, June 25th Innocent’s family called me saying that he had been arrested, had been beaten, and was being held in the main police station. Due to other unforeseen events I didn’t arrive at their house until 3:45pm at which time they told me the station would close at 4. I rushed to the station with a relative and luckily found it open. The police led us to Innocent. They were keeping him in an outside partially covered courtyard, along with two other prisoners, a man and a woman. All three of them looked haggard, cold, with bare feet, and they huddled together on a cement step (winter has arrived in Lilongwe bringing cool night temperatures of about 50 degrees F). Innocent told me that he was accused of stealing the laptop of a foreign student. (His guardian is the housemother at the dormitory of the nursing college and so she lives with her family in a small home built into the dorm.) The student reported a missing laptop and the campus security officer said someone told him that they saw Innocent leaving the building with a bag. Innocent said he did have a bag but that it just contained his books and nothing more. He said at the time of the robbery he was playing darts with friends. He told me that the police had been beating him with a gun. The remainder of my evening was spent trying to find a way to get him out.
First, we went to the arresting officer’s home, who I had been told, had the authority to release Innocent. My biased impression of him was that of a crooked little man with a Napoleon complex; he wanted me to pay him personally the price of the laptop 1,200 British pounds to release Innocent (right). I went to talk to the student, who was quite disturbed by the turn of events but when she asked the college dean what would happen if she dropped the charges, the dean replied that the school would no longer help her with the investigation, nor give her any money towards the stolen laptop. (Supposedly the school was at least partially at fault since they knew the locks on the room needed to be replaced but had not replaced them.) In the end, the student, along with the security officer, and Innocent’s guardian went to the dean’s house. They managed to agree to release him for his exams but he was supposed to return for “questioning” on Thursday. Monday morning, a relative called me to let me know they had released Innocent at 6am. He left the police station and went directly to sit for his exams. I talked to him to him Monday night he sounded sad and tired, and said, “I don’t want to go back.”
Thursday night I had dinner with a group of visiting Americans, they had invited me and a Malawian priest to join them. Our hosts introduced the priest to me as THE spokesperson of the Malawian religious community to the government. Over the course of the evening his passion shone through as he told story after story of his years of advocacy work. Just as he was about to bid everyone goodnight, I told him about Innocent and asked if he knew someone who might be able to help. He made a phone call, quickly explained the story to the person on the other end in Chichewa, and then as he handed me the phone said, “This is the former Attorney General of Malawi.” That knocked the breath out of me. The former Attorney General said he would look into it and took Innocent’s contact information. My fingers are crossed.
Sunday morning, June 25th Innocent’s family called me saying that he had been arrested, had been beaten, and was being held in the main police station. Due to other unforeseen events I didn’t arrive at their house until 3:45pm at which time they told me the station would close at 4. I rushed to the station with a relative and luckily found it open. The police led us to Innocent. They were keeping him in an outside partially covered courtyard, along with two other prisoners, a man and a woman. All three of them looked haggard, cold, with bare feet, and they huddled together on a cement step (winter has arrived in Lilongwe bringing cool night temperatures of about 50 degrees F). Innocent told me that he was accused of stealing the laptop of a foreign student. (His guardian is the housemother at the dormitory of the nursing college and so she lives with her family in a small home built into the dorm.) The student reported a missing laptop and the campus security officer said someone told him that they saw Innocent leaving the building with a bag. Innocent said he did have a bag but that it just contained his books and nothing more. He said at the time of the robbery he was playing darts with friends. He told me that the police had been beating him with a gun. The remainder of my evening was spent trying to find a way to get him out.
First, we went to the arresting officer’s home, who I had been told, had the authority to release Innocent. My biased impression of him was that of a crooked little man with a Napoleon complex; he wanted me to pay him personally the price of the laptop 1,200 British pounds to release Innocent (right). I went to talk to the student, who was quite disturbed by the turn of events but when she asked the college dean what would happen if she dropped the charges, the dean replied that the school would no longer help her with the investigation, nor give her any money towards the stolen laptop. (Supposedly the school was at least partially at fault since they knew the locks on the room needed to be replaced but had not replaced them.) In the end, the student, along with the security officer, and Innocent’s guardian went to the dean’s house. They managed to agree to release him for his exams but he was supposed to return for “questioning” on Thursday. Monday morning, a relative called me to let me know they had released Innocent at 6am. He left the police station and went directly to sit for his exams. I talked to him to him Monday night he sounded sad and tired, and said, “I don’t want to go back.”
Thursday night I had dinner with a group of visiting Americans, they had invited me and a Malawian priest to join them. Our hosts introduced the priest to me as THE spokesperson of the Malawian religious community to the government. Over the course of the evening his passion shone through as he told story after story of his years of advocacy work. Just as he was about to bid everyone goodnight, I told him about Innocent and asked if he knew someone who might be able to help. He made a phone call, quickly explained the story to the person on the other end in Chichewa, and then as he handed me the phone said, “This is the former Attorney General of Malawi.” That knocked the breath out of me. The former Attorney General said he would look into it and took Innocent’s contact information. My fingers are crossed.
Comic Relief
An acquaintance of mine recently had his laptop stolen from his house, while he was inside sleeping. The police came to investigate. As they were leaving, they turned to him and in a somber tone said, “We’ve had a recent rise in break-ins by people who can shrink themselves down to fit in-between the burglar bars.”
How can you even begin to respond to that?
How can you even begin to respond to that?
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