Malaria...

Even though it is a warm day he is rugged up in a heavy sweater and uncontrollably shivering. 
His usually cheerful face is creased with pain and instead of a friendly greeting he struggles to talk... 'madam, I am feeling somehow bad".
I sit him down and take his temperature, it is unusually high and so I take some blood and do an in-vitro malaria test. 

It takes less than 2 minutes to show up positive.  

Despite being preventable and easily treated, malaria kills almost 500,000 people in Africa every year. 
It is not uncommon for students here to get malaria but fortunately I have testing facilities, medication is relatively cheap and in most cases, effective.
Malaria medication takes around three days to have full effect and generally the students surprise me with their quick recovery. However, there is something about this case that has me unsettled and I decide to go up to the boys dormitory to checkup on him.

The dormitory is crowded and noisy and it takes me a while to make my way through the morass of bunk-beds to find him. In the very back corner he is curled up on his bed, semi conscious and incoherent. I take his temperature and can't help but gasp when I see the reading of 40.6, his body is literally burning up. I ask some questions to his bedmate and find out that he has vomited all the medicine I have given him and hasn't eaten or drunk all day. 

There is something so alarming about being responsible for someone who is so unwell, has no one to care for them and is unable to help themselves. For the next few hours as I work to bring his temperature down and try a different malaria medication I feel ill myself, tossing up whether I should drive him into hospital but knowing that they will not be able to do much more than I can.

That night I wake up many times stressing about his state and as soon as it is light I race back up to the dormitory to check on him. Fortunately my prayers are answered and he is on the mend although it takes four more days of care before he is back walking around and cheerfully greeting me again. 

Two weeks later, thanks to some donated funds a large parcel arrives and we are able to provide mosquito nets for all the boys in the dormitory, hopefully now this situation does not have to be repeated in the near future. 

Household Blitz!

When living in a country surrounded by poverty it is difficult to know how best to help the many needs you see every day, you can't assist everyone and therefore its hard to know who you can help, however sometimes the circumstances add up right and it is possible to get in there and really make a difference in someones living conditions...

Joyce is a widow who has been part of the Agape in Action widows program for a few years. She lives with her daughter in law Mary along with Mary's husband and four children. Unfortunately both Mary and her husband are somewhat simple, the kids are also rather developmentally delayed and their living conditions were horrible. 

When we went to visit the family it was disturbing to see... the kids were dirty and malnourished, they sleep on rags and sacks on the floor and the house was filthy. Neighbours had expressed their concerns about the family to the coordinators of the widows program and it was decided we organise a blitz day to help turn their situation around and give them a good head-start. 

A team of two older girls from here, three sisters from the ecclesia, Abi, Kiri and myself headed round to their house one sunny Friday morning. The house was emptied completely, piles and piles of filthy dirty, ripped and mouldy clothing and rags sorted through, the worst burnt and others all scrubbed clean, stitched up and neatly folded into new storage boxes. Thanks to some generous donations we purchased new kitchen equipment and pantry supplies, bathing basins, soap, clothes, mattresses, blankets, sheets, mosquito nets- an entire refit for the whole house. We even scrubbed the kids clean and put them in fresh new clothes- much to the babies displeasure, she screamed the entire time! 

The kids were so cute, proudly showing each other their new undies - which they were wearing for the first time in their lives! Upon seeing their new mattress they were so shocked they wouldn't believe that it was for them- discussing amongst themselves about how these visitors must be staying the night and that was why there was now a bed where they usually sleep. It took a while and a fair bit of convincing before they realised that it was where they were going to be sleeping from now on. No dirty sacks on the floor, a mattress, sheets, blanket and even a mosquito net!

The locals agreed to continue to pay visits to the family to make sure they have a good understanding of how to maintain their new things and follow the advice and example of cleanliness and hygiene. We left the house with the kids giggling and running around excitedly in their new clothes and Mary outside already using the new basins to do some extra washing. 

A heartwarming day for all involved!