MAR-A-8
MY FINAL AFRICAN DAWN RUN AND THE FAREWELL CEREMONY FOR ME AT EMBANGWENI HOSPITAL,
THE
LONG DRIVE DOWN THE “M-1” TO THE CAPITAL, LILONGWE, THE ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE
POEHLMANS’ SAFARI TO UVUU THROUGH WILDERNESS SAFARIS,
AND
THE EVENING IN THE BAPTIST GUEST HOUSE IN LILONGWE BEFORE MALAWI DEPARTURE
Mar. 6, 2002
My 9th consecutive African dawn run is my last for a while, since I had time only to return and wash out the running gear before packing it up with the stuff I would be leaving behind with the Samsonite clamshell suitcase each of the shoes and outfits I had brought, and pack all the film and tapes in the Action Packer to be lashed on top of the Toyota Land Cruiser ambulance for my ride down the M-1 with an assortment of ten fellow riders going whichever way the first free bus would be going.
I also stashed a few items for my “next time” in Malawi, and had barely had time to get to the Chapel service before I heard myself being eulogized by Dr. Ngwira, and then the special song sung by the choir in my farewell. Protocol requires that I stand at the door and shake hands and say something personal to each of the staff as they file by for a personal goodbye, as the choir comes through last to sing their last song for my departure. After that I heard the last morning report of the overnight summary of the patient status and census. I was going to give a talk on African clinical pathology, but I had 35 mm slides, and they had no way of showing them, but they could hook a laptop computer together with the InFocus projector to give a Power Point presentation –they have skipped a generation and gone directly into the computer era for visual aids! On the other subject of AIDS, Dr. Ngwira told the results from Tenwek Hospital in Kijabe on their MTCT protocol and I suggested I would be very interested in doing clinical research projects at Embangweni, as I had suggested last night in his farewell courtesy call on me with the station master minister. I had outlined all the conceivable support groups, focusing on those that were within Africa so that there would not have to be expensive international travel involved. He is eager that this happen, but he is also new and rather timid in taking on some of the kinds of projects that outside donors would like to have and the kinds of data driven studies that would be required to be evaluable. I stated two obvious things we would need: we would be looking for money—but not in Malawi—and we would be looking for evaluable patients—but not in America. That means that I will most likely have to be the link bridging this gap.
With less ceremony than the two weeks of farewells the Kennedys held up under, I tucked into the front seat of the ambulance next to Mary Bennett as George drove out the Jenda road to the “M-1.” I saw good market day scenes along the way, shooting a few photos before the windshield was splattered with rain. We had almost no fuel on takeoff, but we made it to Kuzungu, the home village of Dr. Banda, where we could get as much fuel as we could afford with the Kwachas that could be pooled. Diesel is about 45 K/liter, which translates to about $2.25 per gallon, which makes a round trip to Lilongwe expensive. It costs $100 to fuel the ambulance, and then 45K/km to rent it, which means that any in-country travel for a holiday break might add up to several hundred dollars in transport alone, without considering the cost of the accommodation. Staying on station may be cheap, but in-country travel is expensive—but necessary. If one is on call and pinned down, a relief break is a requirement, and there are several good spots left over from when this was the “warm heart of Africa” according to Dr. Banda’s hyped up tourism promoters. That does not mean you might have a “private getaway” since you will have a full vehicle no matter what. Our vehicle had twice the riders as those who had reserved it, but only one amazingly silent chicken, eyeing me suspiciously. The passengers will inevitably include a couple of chickens and sacks of Nsima—“house gifts” for a return of the successful son back home to the village, I presume,--and my Action Packer along with the fixings for the Poehlmans lashed on top of the roof rack. The lucky five are going to a Wilderness Safari Lodge in Uvuu, with further details to be arranged when they get to the agent in Lilongwe. But, a trip to town always means running the errands to get things repaired in the big city, or making calls or banking, or emails or any other kinds of almost modern connections one can make in any hamlet in the US. The capital is never a destination as a city to be visited, but as a list of chores to get done and a place to catch a commercial flight out of the country. For that, the CCAP coordinators (until July it will be the Rodehavers until the Dimmocks return to do that full time again from furlough) have a small guesthouse on the very spacious grounds of their big house and they have a CCAP van for $16.50 transit for drop-off at LLW, which I will take on my departure Mar. 7.
THE M-1
TALES OF THE ROAD
In October, The President made his way out of the capital along the M-1 and onto the Jenda Road. For that occasion, the road was graded fro the first time in over fifty years, so some of the hard-pack road is due to the President’s visit six months back. He came in a seven-car caravan, with the leading vehicle being the fire brigade truck. He was here to attend a tribal dance at Mbiri, which was the original headquarters of the Ngoni tribes in this area. Included in the dancers, of course, were Bwekawaka and his troop doing the Ngoma, so that I have seen the very same dance, but probably at a closer range and with more spirit in its performance, than when the President had seen it done at Mbiri. But, this is Africa; there must be a further story than the simple statement that the President made a road trip into the countryside to see a dance.
Perhaps
it was the grading of the road that did it.
The caravan departed with the President and in the hurry, the leading
fire brigade truck slammed on its brakes—and a serious seven-car pile-up
resulted on these remote rough roads.
All the ambulances were summoned from Embangweni and Equandeni, and
Msuzu, and all the resources of Northern Malawi were pulled into action. A number of the victims were air lifted to
South Africa for head injury treatment.
It must be a blow to the prestige of the indigenous medical apparatus to
have anything more serious than childbirth sent out of the country for any VIP,
but this confidence stems from the era of Banda, who wanted no medical faculty
in Malawi, since he had come from London, and so could anyone else who wanted
to do general practice in Malawi—so, there!
As we get closer to the M-1, there are fewer subsistence plots of maize, and more small plots of added tobacco. Maize and corn—two imports to Africa from the New World—one to feed and one to curse the health of those who transported the New World bounty. On the M-1 itself, the small plots of tobacco became large ones, and the single farmer’s produce of a hard-used hoe became mechanized cash cropping. There were very long thatched tobacco curing sheds that looked like some landholders’ industrial production. There are two kinds of tobacco here; and one is burley, also found in North Carolina. It is a rough large leaf, either used as cigar wrapper or sent to Eastern Europe where they apparently will, and do, smoke anything. The other kind of tobacco here is “oriental” and it makes some cigarettes, but none of them here. Tobacco only leaves Malawi as an export for someone else to make the principle mark up on. Just on the outskirts of Lilongwe there is a huge tobacco auction buying service with huge silos to store the product. All along the way I could see a few small holders with a bundle and a basket on a head or on a bicycle—headed toward the huge bans to add their miniscule bit from the small plots of cash crop inside their subsistence maize plot. Presumably, starving Malawians are not stealing green tobacco from the gardens to eat.
We saw increasing numbers of people, in an almost endless stream as we got closer to an urban setting, all walking back from or to market with some small purchase carried on heads. There were a few animals that crossed the roads—the Tambala—the black cockerel of Malawi, the Chona (cat) and Garu (dog), and, once, a pack of baboons. But, most anything that moves has long since been eaten in Malawi, except the guarded specimens which are preserved in places where foreign currency can be earned by charging guests to ride horseback or walk among the protected wildlife.
Along the roadway I saw “Coffin shops.” One name that did strike me was “Energy Coffins.” OK.
At a bridge, a sign said “Caution: Loose Chipping.” As I had seen before in Zambia, there would be signs that said “Bridge Unsafe.” OK. Now what? It must be crossed anyway, but you have been forewarned that you are traveling at your own risk, with no responsibility for what happens to you devolving upon us, since we are simply the maintainers of the principle highway in all of Malawi.
LILONGWE:
RUNNING ERRANDS, ATTEMPTING COMMUNICATION
We made multiple stops in Lilongwe, which seems to be principally a place for white trucks with NGO logos on them to get resupplied to make upcountry runs. The biggest business is foreign aid, and servicing the multilaterals, UN, and volag groups pumping it in to keep the nation afloat, with a couple of well-connected government types promenading with chicks in tight pants (impossible in the Banda era) with hair straightener and vogue sunglasses strutting and hanging on an arm as the fat cat gets into red Mercedes roadster—hardly an appropriate off-road vehicle appropriate outside the fenced urban environment where it might hardly get out of second gear.
We spent considerable time at the Wilderness Safaris outfitters, where I looked over what I might do on my “next time” visit to Malawi. Most of the safaris they run are into Zambia, and the personnel were all white refugee “Rhodies” who had pulled out of the Zimbabwe where they were born in that country’s free-fall (among the fastest in world history) under the continued autocracy of the anti-democrat Robert Mugabe, now a very wealthy old strident fellow who has run out of people to blame for his nations’ failures. Even when it is abundantly clear that the problem is he, he will never relinquish power, and this weekend demanded a pre-election vote from all the police and army to see who would be able to persist until election time. My prediction? The President-for-Life will win re-election. Quell surprise’! You heard it first here!
I had waited a long time in the oppressive heat of the capital (which is lower than the 4,000 feet elevation of Embangweni) and had bought four post cards at a shop while d=fending off vendors of all kinds who came to me to demand my attention “Boss!” to insist I buy a bicycle tire for their sake, not mine. I then wrote them as quickly as I could since they were the only postcards I had been able to find in Malawi, and gave them to Julie at the Wilderness Safari Outfitters with my serial letters along with 325 Kwacha to be posted. The money and the cards were given to a passing fellow to carry to the post office—exactly the same status as a prior attempt at this process in Venezuela, on giving the entire output of my postal efforts to someone not known to me along with the cash to mail them—of course, none of those prior postings ever made it anywhere out of the post office, unless in a dumpster, so I will be curious to hear if this is repeated this time from Julie’s naiveté in a little trick I have had perpetrated on me often enough, that I ma the only one who posts my serial letters after all the effort they represent in odd moments snatched from the ongoing stream of events and containing, as they do, the records of all my operating and patient listings. Let me know if you get a series of cards and letters with an array of Malawian stamps.
After waiting for a couple of hours for transactions that might have been done by phone or a credit card swipe anywhere else, we made it to the Baptist Guest House where we checked in the spacious and homey facilities right under the TV tower, although that did not improve the snowy reception of EuroNews. Lilongwe is 13* 58.37 S, 033* 46.13 E. A portly Texan named Ross Collier, a Baptist from Tyler Texas welcomed us, and we then made a futile effort to get emails sent through Unicom.net Internet Café. Our big evening excursion would be by way of an ambulance ride into the gated compound of Old Town to an Italian outdoor café type restaurant, where we will make merry, before getting re-subdued sufficiently to return to the Baptist Guest House.