When we arrived at St. Gabriel’s Hospital late Monday night, we were greeted by old friends. Grace (6) came running into my arms, wearing the blue dress we gave her last year, and a gigantic grin on her face. Roderick (10) followed closely behind, wearing my RFC shorts and Bradock Road Impact t-shirt. Alec (8) and Malifa (12) came next – Alec in my Loudoun Valley Viking basketball shorts, and Malifa in the red skirt I left her last year. All the kids were safe and healthy – only a few inches taller. By Tuesday, they were yelling into our window at 5pm sharp, “Eliza! Eliza! Futbol! Eliza!” They have continued this patter relentlessly ever since.
My mom, Casey, and little brother, Daniel, are staying at St. Gabriel’s Hospital as well, and my older brother, Josh, is in Neno. We all planned our summers separately, but ended up in the same country during the exact same time. Home is where your family is. My mom is a physical therapist, certified to practice in both the States and Malawi. She has had her hands full this summer, working on a rehabilitation program with Dr. Heim, a surgeon from Germany who will be at St. Gabriel’s for the next five years. On top of seeing patients every day, she is training two hospital workers to carry on her work after she leaves in August. Daniel is busy helping her create rehabilitation DVDs to leave behind for these workers.
St. Gabriel’s provides a perfect example of “task shifting”. With a new HIV ward opening this year, a renovated malnutrition unit, and a growing pediatric ward, the staff is spread thin. Cleaners are being trained to provide community health care, hospital workers are being trained to help nurses and physicians, nurses are being trained to help clinical officers, and clinical officers are handling almost all of the OPD (Outpatient Department) patients, leaving the doctors to round in the wards (Male, Female, Labor, Postnatal, Private, and Pediatric). Still, St. Gabriel’s is improving every year. By next year, all HIV care will be moved from “Room 16” (practically, a closet), to a new, spacious, enormous HIV ward at the back of the hospital. When I first came to St. Gabriel’s, the malnutrition ward was a collection of five mats outside the pediatric ward, where mothers sat together and cooked nsima over a fire. Now, the malnutrition ward includes its own building, with four trashcan-size metal cooking pots for mass production of nsima.
There is much to be done at the hospital. So far, I have spent my time helping in the pharmacy every day, helping at the ART clinic three afternoons a week, updating the pharmacy stock system, helping my mom with her physical therapy endeavors, attending training sessions for Community Health Workers, building an incubator, and testing the Community Health Worker Screening Kit in the communities.
While our weeks have been full of hard work and soccer games, our weekends have been adventures. We spent our first weekend in Malawi in Lilongwe, navigating our way from the center of town, to the market, to every bank in the city – including “the black market” – looking for someone to exchange Swazi currency. The craft market in Lilongwe was excited to see us. “Azungus” (white people) provide a perfect opportunity for the craftsmen to manipulate their prices. We weren’t going to be fooled. Not this time. Although every craft shop was “the discount shop”, and the craftsmen were intent upon being flexible with their pricing, we made it clear that we were just looking. Luckily, every craftsman kindly told us that, “looking is for free”. Good thing.
On Sunday, we visited the Malawian Carmelite Sister’s convent. Twelve Malawian nuns live together in a convent next to the hospital. Five of them work at the hospital (as chaplains, in the pharmacy, or in the communities), two of them work at the maize mill, and the others work in the convent, maintaining the garden and grounds. The convent is a wonderful place – overflowing with peace, grace, and patience. Sister Justice and Sister Honest gave us a tour of the garden, a wonderfully huge eden of papaya trees, tomatoes, corn, onions, lettuce, and orange trees – every fruit and vegetable you could possibly imagine (and several that I have never in my wildest dreams imagined). They raise cows, chickens, and rabbits for meat, and kindly offered us nsima and pinky-sized fish for lunch. The Sisters can only be described as gentle souls. I am lucky to know them.