Welcome With Both Hands

This morning Mrs. Petani came to my office asking if I could come with her to a youth HIV/AIDS awareness program that they were doing in a village about 5 kilometers from the hospital. Even though it was the last minute I cleared my afternoon and was able to go. It was literally at the end of the road! The road wound up and down some hills and the view was amazing out over the maize and tea fields. We ended up in the village at the school (one of the nicest I’ve seen here) and the kids were out in full force! Being the only white person there (and extra white at that) I felt like a celebrity might feel with everyone staring, waving, and trying to touch me. (It didn’t help that we were driving through the villages with a loud speaker on the back of the truck and the music cranked up!) I don’t like that feeling at all and it’s hard to explain to my Malawian friends that I would like to just blend in. As usual though, the welcome was very warm and friendly. The headmaster of the school greeted me and in the traditional way said, “You are welcome with both hands”.

The program was all in Chichewa but still entertaining and interesting. They have some older youth groups that do dramas for these programs and they are quite good! It is teaching basic things like where to go to get tested for HIV (Malamulo has a testing day in this village once a month), where to go to get treatment (ARVs), how husbands should accompany their wives for antenatal treatment, and other things. Many of the teaching tries to overcome the traditional and social stigma or mis-information that is out there. It is a long process to educate them but the programs done by Malamulo are well known and successful.

In other news – I’ve been busy so haven’t written here for a while. The biggest news of all is that Cristy and I have finally (after searching on and off for 6 months or so) found a car! It is a 1995 Toyota RAV4, manual transmission, 4WD. It is older but low mileage and to be honest, cars here are expensive so it is what we could afford. It is so nice even just to know we can go somewhere if we want to. The very next day after we got it was a public holiday so we took a road trip to a game park about 2 hours away (I’ve posted pictures from there before here). It was great!

Things at the hospital are going fairly well. God continues to bless us and some of the efforts that we started when I first came are now becoming successful. We’ve also just restructured some in the business office due to one person resigning so that is a positive change as well. As I was just telling the Business Manager, at times we have to move in faith and support the activities that are really bringing in the revenue and eventually we will pay off the other things we owe.

Many of you have asked how the meeting with the Malawi tax people went. We are still waiting to hear from the head office, but in the meantime they said “you’ve never kept your promises so we want to see the lump sum payment you promised”. Don and I took that to them last week so we are hoping to hear from them any time. It is nice that they are supportive and doing what they can to work with us. Thank you for your prayers related to this!

We have had another answer to prayer too – a few weeks ago four of us got together to pray specifically about the financial and personnel issues at the hospital. It was a wonderful time of worship and community. THE VERY NEXT DAY we got an unexpected check for a donation of $6,600 from Loma Linda Alumni Association!! Wow – and me being a little dense took a day or two to realize this was part of the answer to our prayer – though not all we are still SO thankful!

There are still areas of concern – specifically now at Blantyre Adventist Hospital. The employees are making unreasonable demands on the CEO and have even tried to strike. Don and I have been there several times for meetings and just to be as supportive as possible to our sister institution. I can’t share all of the gory details here but please remember the hospital and Kirby Kasinja specifically (the CEO) during these next few days. He is doing a good job but is extremely stressed.

I end with a photo of Hobbes and me. For some reason he loves to sit on my shoulders or whatever point is the most precarious. He causes trouble (as most teenage cats do) and knows when we aren’t looking to jump on the counters or try to climb in the fridge. But when he’s sleeping or tired he is very sweet and he loves to play. He has been a good companion and friend for Cristy and I. He makes us laugh and is practicing his hunting skills with bugs and worms. We are hoping he will be ready for rats soon but not sure the ceiling will hold up if we put him up there!

We are looking forward to lots of visitors in the next couple of months. I’m sure I’ll post more about that later!