October 19, 2007

We are leaving this Sunday for Malawi. We will be gone until Nov 2.

We were on an overnight bush clinic on Tuesday and Wednesday. A boy came with an infection on his leg. He had come last month with the same problem, but this month is was much bigger

It was like a huge crater in his leg, with a diameter of about 1 ½ inches. It was huge. Everybody was busy, so the task fell upon me to help him. I had him soak it in warm salt water, and then I (yes, I wore gloves, MOM!) cleaned it. It was really gross. It was like porridge. All the skin was rotten and white inside the wound. And all around it was dead too. The boy had no feeling because all the nerves were shot, so I guess that was good because he didn’t feel any pain as I cleaned it. I put some procaine penicillin powder in the wound and then bandaged it. We also prescribed him a course of amoxicillin to take away the infection.

I treated him again that night and again the next morning before we left. I used peroxide on it the next two times. You’ve never seen anything bubble as much as this did! I was surprised that I didn’t feel sick or anything. Every time I changed the dressing and cleaned the wound, it was right before a meal. And I ate afterwards! Anyways, so I left some things with him so he can continue to clean it and hopefully it will get better. I will see him when we go there again next month. I’ll try to send you a picture of the wound. It’s a humdinger.

Here’s a sad story for you. On Monday we had a man and a woman bring in a little girl named Gloria who was 1 year 4 months old. She was sick with a cough and she was severely malnourished. They couldn’t afford to feed her, so we gave them some bananas, porridge, soy flour, and baby formula for her so that she can get some nutrition, and we also gave her something for the cough. She was very listless and kind of out of it. A lot of the kids who are malnourished look like that. Anyways, the people that brought her in were her relatives because both of her parents have passed away. Not sure from what, could have been AIDS. Gloria lived with her Grandmother, but the Granny is lame, so that is why these relatives brought her.

Yesterday I was in the clinic and I saw the man who had brought Gloria in on Monday. I was really happy to see him because I figured he needed more food for Gloria because she was eating so much now or something. I went over to him and asked him how Gloria was doing, and he said," Ah, I am very sorry Madam, but Gloria, she passed away yesterday”. I couldn’t believe him. Apparently she had gotten a high fever all of a sudden, so they decided to take her to the hospital. She died on the way. I have never felt so awful in all my life. He had come to ask for food because there were so many relatives at his house mourning that he couldn’t feed them all with the small amount of food he did have. We sent him home with 10 cabbages, some cooking oil, salt, some milk, and two loaves of bread.

There are a lot of things that we could use money for here. I have been using my own money for little things like buying food for a baby, but I am going to run out soon. There are many projects that I want to do. There is a family with ten children and I promised to buy them shoes because they have none. There is a lady named Gloria who we met when we went to western province who wants to come to Riverside to learn how to sew, but can’t afford the tuition, and there is Ellen, the lady who does laundry for all of us SMs, who needs a roof on her house before the rainy season gets here. The roof will cost 200$ and the four of us SMs each agreed to split the cost and pay 50$ each so she can have a roof. So, as you can see my money will run out soon. I would conserve it, but I feel so selfish if I don’t at least try to help because money is so much more available to me than to the people here.

I don’t know how to even explain how just the fact that I am from North America and have connections with people there, makes me so rich. These people have NOTHING. And no way of even earning money. At least in North America, we are able to earn money in some way if we want it. The job might not be awesome, but people can usually make money somehow. Here, it is virtually impossible. They grow their own food, make their own houses with the materials around them, they have no use for money, except when they need something like shoes, or food if their crop fails. And when that happens, there is no money.

Do you think it would be possible to raise some money around there for some little projects? I could outline each need and send pictures of them and tell their stories and stuff and you could somehow show it to people and maybe someone would want to take on a project.

Maybe some kids in the area would like to send money for shoes for those ten kids. Maybe there is an older couple in the church that would sponsor Gloria to Riverside. I can tell you how much needs to be raised for each project. And there is always money that needs to be raised for malnourished children. Food has to be bought for them. If someone wanted to send money for the clinic to buy supplies or to send even a package with first aid stuff in it. When I patched up that boy’s leg, I used my own first aid kit and its pretty much empty already because I left him the things he needed to continue to take care of it. I could go on and on and on with all the things that are needed here and the things that you could help with if you wanted to.

Ok, its almost lunch time now. After lunch I am going on my bike to visit a blind man named Bornface. I have visited him twice already.