© 2007 AID AFRICA UK Registered Charity Number 1116336
NEWS ARCHIVE
“A Visitor’s View” ....... By Jim Huegett - May 2006
This April, I was privileged to be able to visit David and Lynda Mills and see their work among the poor in Malawi, first hand.
I arrived at Blantyre airport, surrounded by impressive mountains on three sides and was glad to see David & Lynda waiting to collect me. My first impressions as we drove out of town en route for Chiringa, a rural village close to the border with Mozambique,where Aid Africa/Open Hand Projects is based, was everything I had expected of Africa. It was colourful, noisy,and chaotic, but nothing prepared me for the roads we would negotiate for the next four hours. At the edge of town the tarmac ends and the road becomes something akin to a dried up mountain riverbed. In places it amazed me that any vehicle could get through at all. We arrived in darkness at a house with no electricity, set up the mosquito nets, consumed a small bowl of goat stew and settled down for the night.
I was woken at dawn by the sound of the local people working happily in the fields. This year the rain has been good and the harvest had arrived. People sang, laughed and chatted as they worked.
My first day was spent visiting a hospital with one of the project staff. We feared he had contracted Malaria, which is endemic in the region. The state hospital is free but only has paracetemol, so instead we went to the Christian hospital where they usually have drugs. It comprised of three bare rooms, the first with a table, chair and a stern looking nurse who questioned my companion on his symptoms. We were then ushered into the treatment room, bare but for a bench, a microscope and a small tray of chemicals. “What about the needles?” I asked, concerned about Malawi’s frighteningly high HIV rate. They had a supply of new needles, - I don’t know what they do if they run out. Blood test completed, diagnosis Malaria. Unfortunately they had no medicine today, so he would have to return tomorrow.
I arrived at Blantyre airport, surrounded by impressive mountains on three sides and was glad to see David & Lynda waiting to collect me. My first impressions as we drove out of town en route for Chiringa, a rural village close to the border with Mozambique,where Aid Africa/Open Hand Projects is based, was everything I had expected of Africa. It was colourful, noisy,and chaotic, but nothing prepared me for the roads we would negotiate for the next four hours. At the edge of town the tarmac ends and the road becomes something akin to a dried up mountain riverbed. In places it amazed me that any vehicle could get through at all. We arrived in darkness at a house with no electricity, set up the mosquito nets, consumed a small bowl of goat stew and settled down for the night.
I was woken at dawn by the sound of the local people working happily in the fields. This year the rain has been good and the harvest had arrived. People sang, laughed and chatted as they worked.
My first day was spent visiting a hospital with one of the project staff. We feared he had contracted Malaria, which is endemic in the region. The state hospital is free but only has paracetemol, so instead we went to the Christian hospital where they usually have drugs. It comprised of three bare rooms, the first with a table, chair and a stern looking nurse who questioned my companion on his symptoms. We were then ushered into the treatment room, bare but for a bench, a microscope and a small tray of chemicals. “What about the needles?” I asked, concerned about Malawi’s frighteningly high HIV rate. They had a supply of new needles, -
Back at the house, Lynda was visited by a young woman, Esther, who had heard that “Open Hand” - (the Projects’ name in Malawi), - “helped the most needy.” She thought that she was maybe 18 - dates and time mean little here and few people know their exact age. She cradled an 18-month-old boy in her arms. Married, her husband had built a traditional house of two rooms from mud and grass and then promptly deserted her. Things got desperately difficult and she and her young son ended up in hospital with acute malnutrition. A month later she returned to find the life-giving rains had washed away her house. She had been living in the open for the past month and was hungry.
When we visited her, we found her living in the ruins, surrounded by her entire world possessions, comprising of: the clothes she stood up in, one small cooking pot and a broken washing up bowl.
