February 2009

Sorry for the long stretch between blogs this time. I've thought many times of sitting down to write, but I've had a hard time knowing what to write about. When we first got here, each week was full of new things, exciting experiences, strange sights and funny mishaps and they were all so fun and easy to write about. When you move into a culture that is so foreign from the one you have always known, it takes a while to just learn to function, to settle down and live rather than just "experience" what's going on around you. In the past few weeks, I believe that in some ways, the "new adventure" phase has taken a bit of a backseat to things that are much less exciting to write about and are quite difficult for us to sort through in our hearts and minds. It takes a while of living here to even begin to understand the tip of the poverty iceberg. And I mean "understand" in the simplest, most elementary way. We had read the statistics before we came and even shared them with you like we had some idea what we were talking about -- well, we didn't. Poverty is not hard to find, it surrounds us every second of every day. But it takes getting to know someone who is in that largest part of the Malawian population to see what poverty looks like on a day in and day out basis. The best way that I know to help those of you at home to get a glimpse of what I am talking about is to share with you the little that I know about someone who has become very dear to our family and is a sister in Christ.

Martha comes to our house everyday from 8 - 12 to help me clean. I was told before we came that I would need to have someone help me, but I was very uncomfortable with the idea. I had never had anyone helping in my home on a regular basis, and didn't see why I would need it. It seemed like an unnecessary luxury and frankly a little "Gone With the Wind"-ish. We met Martha the second week we were here. Introduced to us by the woman that she had been working for, who was moving to a different country, Martha needed a job and I agreed to give it a try. She was accustomed to working full-time, but I assured her that I didn't have a need for that and she agreed to the part time work. I later realized that she had only agreed to work for us because we were her ONLY option for employment. I soon saw my need to have someone help me clean - with no rain for 8 months and windows opened all the time, the dust was unbelievable. Every surface was covered in black dust. People began plowing their fields, and, again, with no rain, it was just a constant dust supply. We would bathe the children and their feet would be black an hour later just from running around the house. Also, life is inefficient here. On average, they say, that it takes about three times as long to get most things done here than it does in the States. And without the hours in the day multiplying by three, it has been a huge blessing to me to have Martha helping me. So, I've changed my tune as far as realizing that I do actually need her. I have also changed my tune as I have realized how much she desperately needs this job.

Martha is 28 years old. Married seven years ago, had a baby, then was left by her husband because he had an education and didn't want to be married to an uneducated woman. Martha is plenty bright, but her family ran out of money to pay for her schooling. There is no free public education here. Her sister died after giving birth to twins, leaving the newborns and their older sister to Martha's care. So she was 25, single mother of 4, with two of her younger siblings also living with her and dependant on her. We knew from the beginning that she was poor - the majority of Malawians are, but even after learning all this, we had no idea what that meant. Malawians, in general, are very good natured, always say what they think you want to hear, really know how to put on a happy face and are very private. I've heard people jokingly compare Malawians to us Southerners!! It takes time to get to know them. One day she approached me, with her head hanging low, and said, "I am ashamed to come to you for money, but we've had no food in the house for two days. May I borrow 50 kwacha (35 cents) to buy some food?" Our ignorance was exposed. John asked if he could look over her finances with her. She eagerly agreed and came the next day with her budget written out to the kwacha. The only non-essential on the entire list was hand lotion. HAND LOTION!!! That is the ONLY thing that she reportedly spends money on besides what is necessary to keep her family fed, housed and educated. Her income didn't even come close to covering her expenses. Her salary was right in line with the going rate for her line of work - her situation is far from unique. We don't know how they were staying alive. Our ignorance exposed again. Part of her salary was going towards mini-bus fees to get her to and from work everyday. So, we decided to buy her a bike (the most common form of transportation besides walking around here). She was so excited, even rode it around the yard with the children cheering. Then she came only a few days later distressed because her landlord had seen her bike and increased her rent. He said that she must be making lots of money now since she could afford to buy a bike and that she could afford to pay more rent. Well, she couldn't afford to pay more rent, so she had to move to a house with no electricity or running water. We were more upset than she was. We tried to get her to let us talk to her landlord, but she just said, "Oh, no, it's OK, it's OK." So she moved with absolutely no complaining. I asked her one day what different kinds of veggies she used to make the relish (sauce) that they eat with their nsima (staple food - kind of like thick grits). Nsima and relish is what they eat everyday. She said, "tomatoes and onions." So I asked what else she used for the sauce, to which she answered, "tomatoes and onions." Those are the cheapest ingredients, so that is what they had eaten every single day for who knows how long - likely years. I asked her one day if she wanted the rest of the whole chicken that I had baked to use for soup. She said, "Yes. I am so happy. I've not tasted chicken in two years." Our ignorance exposed, yet again. These are just a few examples, there are many more.

So what is our role in all this? Do we pay her much more than the average person in her position for the short time we are here, do we just continue to try to make it up in other ways such as giving her food and other necessities regularly and helping her find piece-work in the afternoons? How do we best help Martha and her children for the long term? We just don't know. In the meantime, her 5 year old niece died by falling into a well and her ex-husband died in a car accident. Her children and younger sister went to live with her mother an hour away, in Salima, to help in the fields in October. Her younger sister, who looked after the children while Martha worked, is now pregnant and isn't returning to Lilongwe, so Martha can't bring the younger three back home without anyone to look after them. We learned many of these things just before Christmas. As we have prayed about what to do for Martha and her family long term, God has provided another job for her that comes as an enormous blessing. A wonderful Christian family moved to Lilongwe and needed full time cleaning and cooking help. Their home has a little house with electricity and water in the back of their compound that they asked Martha to move into. So she is now working about 12-14 hours a day and is so thankful!! Last week, she was so excited, because she was going that weekend to Salima to bring back her mother and children to live with her for a while. When she got to Salima, she found that her mother was in the hospital with severe malaria and needed blood transfusions. Martha gave a unit of blood and so did a sister. She was counting on her mother to take care of the children, so she was unable to bring the children home with her. So she returned alone. A day later,she got a call saying that her mother needed more blood, but there was no one left to give and they didn't have the money to buy it. Martha didn't have the money because she had used it on transport fees to and from Salima. We were able to help and her Mother recovered. Martha's uncle picked the mother up at the hospital (on his bike) to take her home on Saturday and was hit by a car and killed on his way home. This was the only male member of the family in Salima and he looked after her mother who looks after her children. I feel like I've gone on and on about the difficulties in Martha's life, but I've only given you a few examples. There is so much more that we don't even know. In all of this, she is constantly reminding me that God is good and that He provides. Last week as she was telling me about her sick mother and having to leave her children in Salima, I became so overwhelmed by the everyday burdens of her life and came to her distressed, trying to find out what we could do to help her. She just looked at me, very graciously, but almost like I was a child, and said, "I am not worried." Everything in me wanted to scream, "Well you should be. Do you not know how hard your life is? Do you not know how heavy your burdens are?" It is I that have no idea what burdens are and am so ill-equipped to even encourage her. But, she belongs to Christ, and He knows her burdens, and she understands far more than I do what it means in 1 Peter to 'cast all of your anxiety upon Him, for He cares for you.' It may be true, as we have been told, that we are naive. For as many stories as there are like Martha's, there are also stories of missionaries/foreigners who have grown to trust someone who has worked for them for five years, to have that person rob them blind or lie about various things. All we know at this point is that there are many desperate people around us, and we have no idea what that means. I can't bear think what I would do if I sincerely feared not having food to feed my precious little children.

We've heard it said that Africa is on the 1000 year plan. It seems as if nothing even makes a dent in all of the problems here. What's maybe most striking is that Martha is actually quite fortunate. There are very likely 300 million stories similar to Martha's across this continent, however they have no voice and no similar network to Martha's. We're not pretending to understand Africa just from our limited exposure to one family's struggles, however we do feel like our relationship with Martha has helped us gain some amount of perspective into the plight of so many.


Various updates since our last blog:

Clever, the preemie that was brought to the peds ward at 10 days and 2 lbs. has gone back to his village to live with his grandmother. If you looked at our pictures from Christmas, you saw little Clever. His mother died from complications from HIV/AIDS right after Clever's birth. His father was not in the picture and his only other relative is his grandmother. She took him home for the first 10 days of his life, and then realized that he wasn't thriving, so brought him to the hospital, who referred him to ABC Clinic. How she kept him alive, we don't know - only by God's grace. He couldn't suck, so had to be fed through an NG tube for several weeks. He learned to eat from a bottle just before Christmas. Little Clever spent several days with us at our house over Christmas. What a blessing it was to us to get that time to love on him and fatten him up a bit. He gained a whole pound in the five days he was with us. The children LOVED him and didn't want him to go back to the ward. One couple tried very hard to adopt him, but in the end, his grandmother wanted him and he went back to the village weighing a whopping 5 lbs. We may never again see that precious little one on this earth, but he will remain on our prayer list for as long as we live. Certainly, our hope is that God would hold him tightly in His hand and that Clever would grow up to serve the Lord.

Speaking of Christmas --- it was good, very, very different and hard to be away from our families, but good. All the students that remained on campus for the Christmas holiday came over to our house on Christmas Eve for food and games. We had a blast and they ate us out of house and home, It was a real highlight for our family and I hope as much of a blessing for the students. A bunch of us went to our neighbors' house for carol singing on Christmas Eve. It was very strange to be hot on Christmas day. While you all were scraping ice off your windshields, we were swimming, John took the children swimming for a little while as I cooked on Christmas Day, just so he could say that we went swimming on Christmas Day, The local nursery imports Christmas trees from somewhere (maybe northern Malawi?) and sells them for a pretty penny. It was definitely a bit "Charlie Brownish", but we loved it. We had fun stringing popcorn and making gingerbread men ornaments. An ABC student made stockings for us, and we bought a beautiful Nativity scene at the wood market. I think that we had anticipated it being so much easier to focus our hearts on Christ without all of the commercialization. However, we learned that, as most things are, it is a matter of our hearts, not our surroundings. It was a humbling lesson to learn, but a very good one.

Baylor Pediatric AIDS program -- I am now spending one Saturday a month at the Baylor Peds, AIDS teen clinic. It is an all day clinic for teenagers with HIV. The purpose is to give them support, teach them how to live with HIV, how to take care of themselves and make wise decisions. There is also some time built in for fun, creative arts and each child meets with a physician for an examination also. It is quite overwhelming to look at a lobby full of about 40 teenagers who all have HIV - about 98% of them contracted it at birth from their mother's, so have been and will live with it their entire lives. Most of them don't look sick, but they are and must deal with that each and every day. We met a family on our flight here who are with Baylor, so the physician's wife and I are helping with just a small aspect of the clinic.

The ABC Clinic has a new administrator -- HUGE blessing. She is doing a great job and we are so very thankful for her. John is working hard with malaria season in full swing. We are enjoying most of what the rainy season brings (green earth and lots of flowers and cool breezes), but we will all be glad for the rains to stop and for the malaria threat to subside. He has had some interesting and difficult cases that I hope he will find time to write about for you. Please continue to pray for our health. We all got a nasty, nasty virus just before Christmas that I don't care to repeat and we still are in the thick of malaria season. Please also pray with us for the High family to be able to sell their house so that they can get here before we leave. We know that God's timing is right, but in our eyes, it would be most helpful for the new pediatrician to arrive in time for there to be some sort of transition time for them with John still here.

The children are all doing well. Sam is still loving swimming and has enjoyed playing in a few soccer games lately. Last month he wanted to be a potter (thanks to Beck Evans, ABC art teacher and fellow Ole Miss grad), but today he announced that he is going to be a geologist with some art on the side. He and a couple of his friends at school are convinced that they have found gold in some rocks outside the school building. He got a real bow and arrow, bought from the guy that sells them on the side of the road. I guess they are made for shooting small game, but Sam has finally settled for inanimate objects and giant snails. Sam dreams of bagging a crow. Ford learned to swim two weeks ago and has turned in to quite the little fish. He is keeping us laughing and asking funny questions. Today's question was, "How do frogs die? If we find a sick one, can we give it a shot and make it better? Who makes frog shots?" He and Sam are having fun playing in the treehouse they built with John over Christmas and constantly catching new and exciting creatures (chameleon, hedgehogs). The boys and I went to the crisis nursery last week and had a sweet time loving on several babies. Alice Ann is taking ballet, which is about the cutest thing I've ever seen. She LOVES it and is quite serious about it. She and Ford have turned into quite the duo when Sam is at school. Today I heard her explaining something to him that she said he "just couldn't understand, because only people born in China know about things like that." What makes that so funny is that she has no idea what China even is. Ruthie is talking up a storm and constantly walking around in high heel shoes (aka pretty shoes). Her first two sentences were, "Jesus is in our hearts." and "Daddy is strong." In her Daddy's opinion, those are the only two facts she needs to know her whole life. She is keeping us on our toes and on our knees -- she'll be two in April - no need to elaborate. She keeps us laughing! She ran out the door and across the yard yelling "tiss, tiss!" after Sam as he rode off on his bike to school last week. She had not climbed down from the breakfast table in time to kiss him goodbye. Thankfully, he heard her and stopped to "tiss" her.

I'll finish by sharing with you a few unusual signs we've seen around town.
"Age Doesn't Matter Welding Center"
"God is Good Plumbing and Electrical"
"Capital City Bakery, Where Quality Is Always One Step Ahead"
"Double Vision Boys Secondary School"