WHAT A DAY. What I am about to try to do is to give you all a glimpse of the craziest day I have ever had in Malawi. If you get bored, well then, stop reading - and don't volunteer in an area with the poorest nutritional status of a developing country.
We started this morning at 5:30am loading up our truck with all the supplies - milk/peanut chiponde, soy/peanut chiponde, likuni phala (read earlier posts if these foods sound foreign to you), our data cards, measure mats, electronic scales, plastic bags, toilet paper, plastic spoons for eating chiponde, weight-for-height charts, randomization envelopes...the usual list. We started off for Chikweo, a small village to the North-East of Blantyre. Chikweo is part of a larger network of villages called Chipolonga, in a district called Machinga. This is the area of Malawi with the poorest nutritional status in children under 5. We drove the hour drive out to Chikweo and were greeted initially by just a modest number of women with their children slung on their backs. My nurses gave their normal introductions, I muddled through some Chichewa greetings (Hi, my name is Danielle. I am from America. I work with the College of Medicine in Blantyre...they laugh, my accent sucks). What proceeded after this very orderly and warm welcome was mass chaos:
We asked moms to try to make a line at the measure mat, which was situated at the front left corner of the open walled building we were working in. From the measure mat, we wanted them to move to the front right corner for me to weigh the child. With both height and weight measured, I could immediately determine if the child is malnourished, and if so, how severe. This however was wishful thinking. The idea of standing on a line is not only incomprehensible, it is IMPOSSIBLE. So rather than any sort of orderly flow, I had babies being handed to me from the front, left, right and behind! And, despite me standing on top of a table and making an announcement (in English, translated to Chichewa) asking the moms to please, please work with us and stay orderly, women continued to push and push until my table was nearly pushed all the way back against the wall. The crowding caused every under 5 child to join into a cacophonous screaming fest. I'm not talking sobbing, I am talking screeching and wailing and screams that reminded me of Mariah Carey. And what could go better with all those tears than a few temper tantrums, kicking me, pinching me, biting me, scratching me and oh of course - peeing and pooping on me and the scale as well. Great fun, eh?
So what why didn't I simply title this post - The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad day? Because we enrolled a total of
40, yes, F-O-R-T-Y!!! children in my study. That is huge! First off, for the study - that is a significant number of children added to our total count. For the children, that means that we've reached 40 children who were on their way towards adding to the number of children who are severely malnourished in Machinga. As much as this day was exhausting and challenging, that is pretty damn rewarding.
Anyway, this blast of an afternoon continued from 7:30am until approximately 3:30pm, with an estimated 400-500 children participating in the symphony of screams. From there, we had to take a child to the district hospital for some very terrible skin rash (I won't describe this, it will gross all you non-doctor type people out). From there, we headed back to Blantyre, a 3 hour drive home. You know that you have been in the car too much when you start the day out listening to the soundtrack to Lion King, and then proceed to listen to albums ranging from Celine Dion to Dispatch to Kanye West to VNV Nation. The drive home was at least pretty - the country is so green now and there are neat rows of planting on every last inch of ground. Even along the highway, someone is out with their hoe softening the ground and making mounds to plant their crop. There are thousands and thousands of mangos stacked up on the sides of the roads as well - small yellow ones, larger green ones, huge red ones. Women also make piles of freshly chopped corn stalks and hold the whole stalk out in the road as your car drives by, hoping that one car will stop and buy an ear or two.
After a very jarring ride all over Blantyre to drop all my staff members home at their houses (we came in too late for them to take any public transportation, it was dark), I finally got home at 8:30pm. So, that is about a 15 hour day, or so...and thus the title of this post. So, maybe its not the real 18 hour deal that I hear about from residents, but it was good practice. And guess what, this is a wash, rinse, repeat type work- we resume tomorrow morning at 5:00am.
Now, don't you all wish you were here? Can someone pass the Malawian gin and tonic please?
-dkm
PS. I am not reading this over to proof read it. I hope you made it through the run on sentences, poor grammar, misspelled words and what ever else is sprinkled in. I'm exhausted, I promise to pay more attention next time. :)
