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Hello Everyone!
Well, I wish I could say that I have great news to report today, but it seems that everything I have to say is either depressing or just simply not good. I will start, though, with our health.
After staying home yesterday and resting, we were hoping that Nate would wake-up this morning feeling like a million bucks. However, instead, we both woke-up not feeling quite right. Nate's headache and stomach cramping worsened, and I woke-up throughout the night with chills and sweating (not to mention a few stomach problems). We thought we would try to at least make the journey to the office, though, which is where we were suppose to meet up with Lonely to make the trip back to Tsngano area. When we got to the office, though, Nate's headache was in full bore. Lonely asked Nate to described his symptoms, and immediately after hearing them, she made a phone call to the hospital. She said we were going to take Nate to get tested for Malaria. Well, needless to say, this was a shock to both of us as we did not even consider Malaria to be an option; after all, we have been taking our medicine and using the mosquito net. :) Nevertheless, it was off to the hospital...
Since we are visitors (and white, I presume), we were taken immediately to a doctor in a private room where he asked Nate some questions and examined him. He said that Nate was going to need to get blood drawn because he was concerned about two things. He thought that either Nate had Malaria or a blood infection. Well, as soon as I heard the blood infection part, I figured that I better get examined as well :). We ended up both going to the laboratory to get blood drawn (lots of blood!)...I won't go into too much detail concerning that whole experience but will say that it isn't quite as sterile as in the U.S.
Nate was concerned about having a needle in his arm, and I was concerned about the dirty gloves that my lobotomist was wearing! :) Well, our blood tests came back negative for the infectious disease. Praise God!
However, the doctor was still convinced that we have Malaria, so he prescribed SP or Sulfadoxine B.P. (500mg) and Pyrimethamine B.P.
(25mg). This is a single dose treatment that is supposed to do its magic within 72 hours. If our symptoms do not go away, though, we are suppose to call Dr. William (he gave us his cellphone number...so different than in the U.S.) to tell him that we need to switch to a different medicine. The drugs were free as they are to everyone in Malawi (if you can find them). We mentioned to Dr. William that we were surprised that our whole examination was free as we pay a lot of money back home for such things. He said, as if it were common thought, "Well if it cost money, only the rich would be alive, right?" As I walked out of his office, I understood his point as I read the faces that looked up at me - saying that they were just happy to have enough money for the nsima they ate last night.
So that leaves us here, back in bed, waiting for the miraculous healing of SP...
I would like to share a few details from my trip yesterday to Tsngano.
While Nate was bored at the hotel and struggling with his headache and stomach cramps, I was once again traveling on the worst road known to humankind (okay..maybe a slight exaggeration!). Seriously, though, the trip itself was enough to make me want to curl-up in a ball and fall asleep. The red truck, though better in handling the rough terrain as far as tires are concerned, has no suspension, so the whole ride I felt like my insides and outsides were being flip-flopped. At one point, I really thought my brain may have dropped into my stomach. We reached our destination safely, which to me is what really mattered after our last experience with the four flat tires, and we began our journey in handing out the buckets. I wrote in our journal last night that this was a humbling, maddening, and saddening experience all at once, and I think that there really is no better way to describe it.
The whole experience was humbling because as we passed out the buckets I quickly realized that these few items were no where near enough. These people needed so much more than the two bags of rice, bag of milk, salt, etc. that we gave them, yet they were all so grateful. I cannot count the number of blessings that were sent into the sky for me. The ladies would just shake their hands towards heaven and ask God to bless me over and over again. I did not know how to respond as I was only the messenger of someone else's gift, and it left me feeling only one thing
- humbled. I wish that I could have communicated better with the recipients as I would have said to them, "You have already been a blessing to me. Because of you, my life is forever changed."
The day was also maddening, though. It was like a slap in the face with the injustices that exist in this world. You may remember the woman I spoke of in one of my previous emails who has three young children and is quite destitute. Well, on Monday, she found out that she iss indeed HIV positive. You could see the sorrow in her face as she wiped sweat from her forehead. Her sorrow was certainly not only for herself but also for her three children. The injustice in all of this was that she is poor and sick because some man decided he needed a bed to sleep in while he was in Katzekera. She probably thought her marriage to the man was the happiest day of her life. Ironically, it was the beginning of the end of her life. The small bucket of items for her was like a truckload. She will undoubtedly conserve the items, so they will last months. Her children will receive a few invaluable months of decent nutrition because of that bucket. Most certainly, they will still all be hungry, but they will at least not be starving. I think, though, that Frecious offered to her the most comfort as he told her - from experience - that she could live a long life with the disease as long as she received the ARV treatments. For her, those three letters spelled death, but with the encouragement and example of Frecious and the healing power of the ARV drugs, death could be many, many years away for her. To me, that is one injustice being made right.
I think that I had to question God as well when I handed one of the buckets to the little boy we had met last week. His eyes spoke of a pain that I could never know, and the crusted blood under nose spoke of an illness that would his life short. Why should one boy have to know death so well? I know that God's comfort comes through the people that have been placed in his life to care for him, like his grandmother and Frecious. I wish that I could have offered him something more. Maybe I will just pray that God will do with that bucket what He did with the five loaves of bread and fish many years ago.
The day was also very heartbreakingly sad for me. On top of the pictures I have painted above, I was faced with the abrupt reality of life. When we arrived at a house, I remembered that it was the one where the man had been resting under a blanket outside. We never actually saw the man's face but instead spoke with his wife. She was taking care of him as well as an orphan she had welcomed into her home.
When we walked toward the house this time, though, I was told by Picard that the man had passed away. Just like that, my heart fell to the ground. We gave the bucket to the wife, and she praised God for me and the bucket. Yet, all I could think about is how this woman knows a strength that I could never muster. She had cared for her husband, diligently tending to his every ailments, and she, at the same time, found the strength to open her heart and home to a child that had nothing. I praised God for her, as she was the real messenger of God's grace and comfort that day.
We walked to another house that we had visited last week and were met by the son. He escorted us into a dark, round hut that is usually used for cooking. However, instead of the life sustaining piles of shucked corn, the figure that took center stage was the man we had visited last
week. He lay on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down by
Tuberculosis. Every breath he took you could tell came with incredible effort, and yet with all of his strength he mustered up enough breath to thank us for the bucket. The air felt so thick to me at that moment.
He was the last patient we were to visit that day, having handed out 16 buckets in total. Little did I know, he would be the last one we would visit at all since we woke-up this morning not able to make the the hard journey back to Tsngano. In a selfish way, I am happy that we did not go back. I do not know if my heart is big enough to handle any more sorrow. Yet, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to walk into each of those 16 patients' lives. I have been blessed by them and hopefully changed for the better.
So...at the end of this email, I am left worrying about Nate who continues to feel the effects of a terrible headache, but I am also left thankful that we have been able to easily obtain drugs. We will soon be feeling back to normal, but the people I met yesterday do not have a normal. There is no drug that can wipe away their pain. And so once again, I am left humbled by the blessings we enjoy.
Do I believe that there is a God who allows such pain and suffering?
No, instead, I believe with all of my heart in a God who is using His
people to fight with all of their might the pain and suffering. I
believe in a God who will not stop fighting for His people until the end, and the good news is that the end will be the greatest victory of all.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
P.S. Tomorrow we will pack, and Friday we will head to the lake. I am thinking that God helped us out by having us plan a nice resting period into our last few days. We can hardly believe our time is coming to an end, yet we are feeling like the time is right for us to go home...