Orientation – phase II

So, back to Malamulo and 7am worship, where the topic of the day was ‘Crust’. The person leading the service said ‘Christ’ with such an accent that I didn’t immediately cotton on to who we were talking about.
We met Matron, who was very nice and took us round all the wards to meet the Sisters in Charge. Everyone was genuinely welcoming I felt - much more so than Qu E – which was great. We then plonked ourselves down in the Under 5 clinic for the day and were taken through the immunisation schedule for babies by a fantastically thorough Health Surveillance Assistant (HSA). We politely declined to jab any babies ourselves, especially the one that turned up that was only 8 hours old (mother still walking like John Wayne!) In the afternoon we visited the Nutritional Rehabilitation Unit where kiddies with malnutrition are treated – a mixture of marasmus and kwashiorkor cases. One little one had only been admitted that day and it was heart-breaking to see the tiny scrap, wrapped up in a pile of blankets, hardly taking up any room on the bed. Granny appeared to be the guardian too so I can only imagine that the child was probably an AIDS orphan. So, so sad. Another one though, who’d been there a while, looked pretty good and was whizzing about on a ride-on toy so there is hope too.
We went off into the community next day with the HSA team, to one of the Under 5 outreach clinics. It was out further than we’ve been before and there were some great views of the countryside, or would have been had it not been pouring with rain. We arrived at a pretty ramshackle building, with lots and lots of women sheltering under what little roof there was. We were ushered inside and given the only two chairs there were to sit on before being greeted by a marvellously wrinkled, rheumy eyed old chap, who was the Health Centre Committee Chairman. The women sang a song to welcome us and did some dancing too, babies heads bobbing on their backs as they shuffled from one foot to the other. It was all very unnerving being treated like that, so undeserved too as we we’re hardly able to communicate more than a thank you in return.
After the introductions and a health education talk on pneumonia (very apt considering the freezing mist that was drifting in through the glassless windows), we squeezed back through the throng to the front where the weighing scales had been hung over a sticky out beam. The women lined up, and one after the other, slung their baby wrapped in its chitengi, over the hook and let it dangle while we read off the weight and recorded it. The older children, not in tengis, were simply lifted up high enough for them to reach the hook and they obediently hung on, little fingers slipping over each other as they tried to get a grip, faces turned up to us like little sunflowers – so sweet. What was less sweet though was the fact that most babies peed either just before they reached us, or if we were lucky, on us! Charming!! 150 soggy-bottomed children later, we headed back to Malamulo for a well-deserved wash.

We were expecting to go to the ARV clinic next day but instead had another community day, this time with Hilda, the Family Planning Sister. Very knowledgeable, head firmly screwed on her funny Thelwell-shaped body. We met another HSA, Harold, who was fab and is just what this country needs. A few hundred more of him and the healthcare system would be on track to meeting the needs of the population. Some students accompanied us on the trip too and it was great talking to them on the way back about their take on the School of Nursing and its problems etc – good gossip for us to take note of!