Crazier and Crazier

Ready for this?

121 ENROLLMENTS IN ONE DAY!!!!! Today made the day at Chikweo (where we are going tomorrow) look like a cake walk. There were so many moms at the very tiny, tiny clinic building, which was fine until the rain started to POUR. The result was 600 women trying to cram into one room the size of my den at home. Not to mention that the roof was tin so it was very loud, and there were no real windows so it was very dark inside. At one point the mothers were so crowded that I couldn't tell who came first, and when I took a child from a mom who may not have waited her turn, the women nearly had a fist fight right in front of me. All my Chichewa went out the window as I screamed, "STOP IT! STOOOPPPP!!!" Eh, little response to that until the HSA took control.

After hours and hours of that in addition to running out of food and data cards and everything else, we managed to make it back to Blantyre after 5 pm and still had tons of errands to run. We were supposed to travel to Namandanje for tomorrow's equally huge Chikweo visit (a ~3 hour drive) but decided to house all 10 of our staff members here at my house, and we plan to depart at 4am sharp tomorrow to make it out to the village by 7:30am.

Then to top it all off, another GIANT tarantula. On my foot with all 10 people in my house listening to me absolutely scream at the top of my lungs. Good thing Ramsay (our driver) was here to kill it and get it out. I was told this type bites (who knows if it was really a tarantula, but it was the biggest, hairiest, black spider I've ever seen!)

Dr. M is around so I won't hog the computer any more. Will update more at the end of the week.

-dkm