Nsanje
is at the tip of Malawi at its southernmost region, remote and isolated and the lowest point is 200 meters above sea level which explains the hot and humid weather and temperature could
top 45 degrees Centigrade in October and November. Just days before I left, a
neighbor told me that I should read “The Lower River” by Paul Theroux, a novel
about a former Peace Corps volunteer going back to close to this area hoping to
relive his happy times forty years ago, only to be greatly disappointed seeing
the crumbling structures including the school he helped to build and by the lack of
progress in this region. Almost all the
people he knew had died and the inhabitants could not care less about education;
were manipulative, almost hostile to him and were more interested in fleecing
him. He also described the hot and
uncomfortably humid days that blended together making him listless and helpless
and he was unable to rescue himself from sinking further into a morose state.
It was so despairingly dark that I regretted having read it just before I left,
wondering what I had gotten myself into.
In his “Dark Star Safari” Paul Theroux
described Nsanje “Once known as Port Herald, Nsanje was so buggy and malarial
it had been Malawi’s Siberia for decades, a penal colony for political
dissidents. Undesirables were sent to
the southern region to rot”!
The Shire House where we live nestles deep in
the village looking plush and incongruous compared to the smaller houses in the
bush. MSF recently helped the owner to build it and would maintain it and use it rent -free for the next three years. There is a
screened front porch with rattan chairs to lounge in, a large living room, a
dining room and a kitchen with a spacious pantry. From the screened porch at the back, one
could see mountains in the distance. The house is very spacious with six
bedrooms; all have en-suite bathrooms except three, one of which is mine as I
am the last one of the team to arrive.
We are two doctors, a nurse, a health promoter, a laboratory person, and
a logistician. It is an all women and
international team; Australia, Belgium, Philippines and USA.
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| Shire House |
The most wonderful thing is, there is a kitten
here and she just arrived the week before me from Blantyre, playful and cute
and will certainly make this place feel like a home. She is to catch the mice
in the house and for now she is just chasing them around or is scared by them; they are half her size. My first night in
Shire House she decided to spend the entire night with me, snuggling and
occasionally getting up nibbling on my earrings, necklace and bangle and since
then she has chosen to sleep with me. A few names have been floated around,
Scruffy, Mimi, Engine. I gave her a
Chichewa name: Kuyvina which means to dance and she seems to do a lot of that being
quite frisky. And so her name is
Kuyvina. Roger the young black dog is our security dog but his situation is
appalling, cooped up all day and at night he is let out but tied to a short
leash by the gate; no time to run around and be free.
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| Me and the Kitten in Shire House |
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| Kuyvina |
At the MSF office, I had a few days of briefings. There is so much information given to me and
so many new faces and names that I am completely overwhelmed and saturated. My role here is as a MD mentor in HIV/AIDS
for 14 health Facilities in Nsanje working in conjunction with the Ministry
Office of Health (MOH).
Over the weekend I took a three hour walk into
the town, people are mostly friendly whenever they are greeted: Mulibwanji (hello, or how are you), didikwano (I am fine), zikomo Kwambiri (thank you very
much). There is a church at the entrance
to our village which I was told has been under construction for roughly twenty
years but runs out of funds apparently someone has siphoned a large amount of
the funding. It looks quite grandiose
for Nsanje, almost a cathedral.
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| Nsanje Cathedral |
Market day is Wednesday so there were few
sellers of tomatoes, roasted ears of corn, fried pork and little shops selling soda,
chips, sweets salt, pepper, sugar lotions…A bicycle tire-repair man set up his
shop by a baobab tree. I found my way to
the Shire River, young men congregated on the graveled beach howling at me to
come and take their pictures. A couple
of them went to a more secluded area to bath, soaping their glistening naked
black bodies and dipping into the water to wash. Later I learned that there are many crocs and hippos in the river. This is the Shire Port, there were three boats
there which looked more like pleasure boats than cargo ships and the locals
were not of much help when I inquired about the nature of the port.
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| Me at the Shire River |
My
suitcase finally arrived after almost a week of being missing. It had at least five tags on the handle, it
spent five days in Paris and then several rush tags to Nairobi, Lilongwe and
finally expedited via Ethiopian Airway to Blantyre.
On
Sunday morning I ran through two villages crossing two dry riverbeds and
finally connected to the only tarmac road to Nsanje; a sign said “Chididi” at the T-junction pointing to
the dirt road I came from. Before this road was built a few years ago,
the last 45 Km to Nsanje used to take three hours and now about a half
hour. The houses in the village are of
red bricks, some plastered, tin-roofed or thatched and many have
outhouses. One could have electricity or
running water basing on one’s financial means otherwise there are boreholes
scattered in the villages. Retracing my
way since there were no true landmarks here to prevent me from getting lost, I
was followed by a group of bare-footed laughing children, I felt like the Pied
Piper of Hamelin.
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