Trips and a little bit of work!

Trips and working in between
I have spent the past few weeks off of working and doing some travelling. We were away for a week and then back at the beach for a week and now I am away again.Likoma IslandTwo weeks ago most of us from the beach, plus two of Patricks visiting friends, headed over to Likoma Island for the week. We took the Ilala night ferry to the island and had to stay for 5 days as the ferry only goes twice a week. The ferry was crazy!! I have bought a book while here which as the perfect way of describing it;"The 'Ilala' can only actually dock at two or three places, so at most of her ports of call she has to anchor offshore after a warning blast on her hooter. She then lowers her two lifeboats and the scarmble begins. Personal belongings and children are handed down into the rocking, rising and falling boat and it motors to the beach." The Great Rift.It was insane! This was all done in the middle of the night as we arrived in Likoma at 4am, so we had to make the sramble to the boats in the dark and I had to fight with a woman and a bunch of bananas to get on! The was all after spending the night under the stars on the deck.The place we stayed was paradise - secluded and white beaches. I got one scuba dive in, a visit to the cathedral and a visit to the local witchdoctor (who I lied to and told him I was teacher when he asked!) It was an amazing week of pure relaxation!HOME VISITSMolly and I have started trying to get out into the community more. Bascially the health center is a very difficult place for us to do anything productive. THere is a language barrier combined with lack of resources. Doing home visits in the community seems to make more sense right now. We went out on Thursday and visited the children who are underweight. THe first woman we got to had a child of 1 year and 3 mos who was severly underweight and under developed. He couldn't hold his head up nor could he bear his own weight on his legs when held. We found that she actually became impregnanted because she has been unable to pay for medication from a witchdoctor and had instead paid with sex. She very little at the house. We were able to give her some food supplements and discuss nutrition with her. There is a belief about not giving children eggs because they cause seizures and the elders also do not believe in putting infants down on the ground and so they are constantly carried on the backs of their mothers.We visited a few more homes with children who were still underweight but not as bad. Hopefully when I get back we'll be able to do more in the community.It was depressing at the clinic the other day when a woman came in with a bad leg injury - she had cut through the tendon in her leg and could not move her toes. There was nothing we could do but refer her to the local hospital. Her husband had to carry her on his back to the main road to find a minibus. I felt totally helpless in being able to at least get her to the hospital.

Now I am down south in Blantyre. We went north first for the weekend to a place called Mushroom Farm and then a hellish 12 hour night bus which played music all night! Now I am about to attempt to climb mount Mulanje! I will updated it once this week is done!xxx