In the meantime, if you have some time tomorrow night, I’ll be sharing stores + pictures alongside team RTV, who just returned from Uganda, in the chapel at MCBC. Check it out:

Hope you can join us!

Just this past week, a friend of mine (another PIH missionary) and I were at the Chinese food store looking for ingredients to try out some new Vietnamese recipes. We bumped into Kirkie and began chatting. He had met both of us before and it was nice to catch up with him – he remembers us as “the missionaries who actually do something!” because we work at PIH. After paying, Elizabeth noticed a pamphlet under a table with a bunch of religious symbols on the cover. “Hey, what’s that?” she asked, picking it up. We looked through it briefly and noticed it was a WatchTower publication. Kirkie began telling us about conversations he had had with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Lilongwe and we shared with him (again) that we were Christians and that what we believed was different from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “They say that they don’t acknowledge the cross,” he told us.

An opportunity had opened up so clearly for us to explain to him the most central part of being a Christian and I was able to share the gospel with him right there in his store, explaining our need for reconciliation to God through Jesus Christ. We then were able to tell him about this seeker’s group that was forming where he might be able to have some of his questions answered and he seemed very interested! He took our contacts and when I got home, found an email from him waiting in my Inbox. I sent him an article about the gospel and linked him to an interactive presentation in Chinese explaining it in simpler terms.

I want to share this story with you as an encouragement to see the harvest around you. I was surprised at the opportunities to witness to Chinese people in Malawi when God first began prompting me to pray for Kirkie, but as I talked to other believers, God reminded me of the work He is doing in stirring people’s hearts to share His good news. Many other people I spoke to had felt similar convictions about reaching this interesting (and maybe unexpected) group of people in Lilongwe, but as we individually began sensing God’s nudging, we found support and a way to respond collectively, as a Body.

Please remember Kirkie and his family in your prayers. Please also pray for the missionaries in Lilongwe who are burdened with this population of people – the ex-pat community is large and there are many spiritual needs. Pray for wisdom and intentionality in their friendships, and opportunities to share the gospel. Pray also for the missionaries who are organizing this seeker’s group, for wisdom in planning and sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, as well as for those individuals God is leading to join the group. Lastly, please pray for the Bible study materials which are being shipped from Canada! They should be arriving anytime now!

Thank you for your partnership in prayer.

Then I went to university, where for the first three years, I had to go up or down at least one flight of stairs to get to a communal laundry room, and eventually, moved to a place where I had to walk my laundry down the street to use the laundromat. Often in the rain and snow.

Then I came to Malawi, where I don’t have a washer or dryer, and where putsi flies (also see this) are common: “If clothes are hung outside, it is possible for a female fly to lay eggs on them, especially when the clothes were contaminated with urine or faeces. The clothes are then worn and the eggs penetrate the skin. People will usually complain that their body is itching and within three days, painful, boil-like lesions occur. Over the next three days, pus emerges from each sore as it gets ripe. Once the sore is expressed a worm comes out of it.” Yum.

To kill the larvae, you have to iron all of your clothes after they are hung dry, or use a dryer. I do have an iron and ironing board at my place, but because of the plug for the iron, I can only use it in the space in my kitchen – an area of about 3×4 feet. So, I bought a clothing horse to hang dry my clothes inside. It worked well until I started hang drying all of my sheets, and then it broke. So I bought another one (which still works well).

This weekend, I’m housesitting, so I thought I would capitalize by asking my friends whose house I’m staying at if I could use their washer. “Sure!”, they said, “Except our dryer is broken and so is our spin cycle.” No problem. I figured I would hang my washing on their line and leisurely do all the ironing while watching House on Sunday afternoon.

It is now Sunday morning and it has rained on and off all weekend… meaning my washing has been hanging on the line, damp, attracting mama putsi flies to lay their eggs in it for the past 24 hours. The sun is nowhere to be seen. And I kid you not, as I write this, it has just started raining.

When I get home, I am never complaining about doing my laundry ever again.

I guess it’s like the marathon vs. sprint mentality. When there’s a long way to go ahead, you mentally prepare yourself for endurance – sometimes that means not thinking about certain things at all (coveted comforts of home) and/or rationing what you do have (trying to hold out on spending money eating out as long as possible) – but when there’s only a little bit left to go…you’re just doing all you can to finish the race.

I’m not going to disagree with this. With that said, I recognize that deeply embedded in my personality is a need to look ahead to the future…when that near future involves a washing machine and dryer (hands down the #1 thing I’m looking forward to), it’s easy for me to want to sprint. But I don’t want to sprint. I want to finish well, say goodbye properly, wrap things up, hand things off and nurture the relationships I have been given.

Was reflecting on Isaiah 45 today:

I will go before you
and will level the mountains^[a];
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
³ I will give you hidden treasures,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the LORD,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name
⁴ For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen,
I summon you by name
and bestow on you a title of honor,
though you do not acknowledge me.
⁵ I am the LORD, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,
⁶ so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
people may know there is none besides me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
⁷ I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

I want to finish well so that I can acknowledge that it is God who has done a good work. It is Him who has sustained me in both weakness and strength, even when I have failed to give Him glory and made myself large in my own eyes. As I’m wrapping things up now, I’m seeing how He has indeed gone before me, leveled my mountains, broken down gates and showered me with riches I did not expect. And what a privilege it is to have seen that and to have received from Him the blessing of being lead to a place that forced me to confront my inadequacies and receive grace…

So, I would appreciate your prayer especially over the next three weeks as I prepare to leave and also prepare to re-enter and begin the next chapter. Hope to update at least once more before I go!

Thank you for your prayers during my village stay and for those of you who checked in when I got back home to Lilongwe :)

I had a memorable time with the Chiwezas, involving many “firsts” and new learning experiences. They were incredibly hospitable and fun to get to know. They were also very patient with my broken Chichewa, which made it so much easier to practice! You can read about my village stay (and other things!) in my February 2011 newsletter and see more pictures here. If you would like to receive the newsletter via email, please send me an email (seasonkam@gmail.com) and I will add you to my updates list.

To add to my newsletter, I’ve been meaning to take photos of Children of Blessing, the pediatric rehab centre I visit occasionally. Yesterday was an epilepsy clinic day, so I finally got to snap some photos.

The main room at CoB – I’ll try to take more pictures of the equipment and other rooms… it’s a neat place!

Kathy, a Canadian PT/OT, and Dr. Young, an SIM missionary from New Zealand, seeing a patient + her guardian at the epilepsy clinic

It was a good thing I brought my camera, too, because a lady came in with a pretty severe hand injury she got from falling into a fire during an epileptic seizure. She had been to Dae Young Luke, a Korean mission hospital, where they told her they could amputate the finger that had contracted (and consequently healed) out of shape, but she didn’t want to do that. So, she got some hand cream from us to rub on the skin that had split open and some meds.

I asked Jerry, the doctor looking at her and also another missionary at PIH, whether or not he thought something could have been done sooner that would have given her more options than either amputating the finger or leaving it how it is now. He said that had it been looked at earlier, it might have been possible to correct the damage using a split or undergoing surgery. Unfortunately, the hand had been left untreated for several months before she went to the hospital.

Jerry (Dr. Koleski) and Victor (Malawian rehab officer) seeing the patient

Disability is so widespread in Malawi, but incredibly under served. Options for rehabilitation are few and far apart, and  centres like Children of Blessing often see patients who have walked 30 km or more to receive treatment. Many come every day for their physio programs, others every few weeks to receive their meds at the epilepsy clinic. Talk about humbling to someone who’s been driving since she was 16!

The interesting, but also sad, thing about disability here is that it looks a lot different than it does back home. For example, many of the kids who come to the epilepsy clinic developed epilepsy as a result of the neurological damage caused by cerebral malaria – something that probably would never happen back home and can easily be prevented by using bed nets.

Malaria prevention is something we’re also trying to address as part of Tigwirane Manja at PIH. According to the WHO, in 2008, malaria was the cause of almost one million deaths, mostly among African children. Young children in countries with high rates of malaria transmission, like Malawi (and more broadly, most of sub-Saharan Africa), are particularly at risk because they have not developed an immunity to the disease.

So, as we’ve been visiting people in their homes, we’ve been trying to assess their need for bed nets, particularly for those with young children. I just saw a man today whose 9-year-old daughter is HIV positive, but none of them sleep with bed nets in the home. Of course, throwing HIV into the mix exacerbates most of these conditions even more, so we’re hoping to go back out and bring him some next week.

Alright, gotta jet. It’s Friday night over here…time to babysit :)

Have a great weekend, friends!

Here is my version of that game. Take a look at the photo below and the items in it and guess where I’m going…

1. Ample (English) reading material…
2. Chichewa-English dictionary, Tiyeni Tipunzhire Chichewa! VSO language manual, Chichewa intensive course, Khalani Ticheze Chichewa manual (missing: Chichewa Bible and hymn book)
3. English Bible and notebook with plenty of “sharing material”… just in case
4. Chitenje (dark green cloth underneath everything)
5. Toilet paper
6. Food container (previously held Cheesies…) a.k.a water scoop/bucket
7. Battery operated camping light
8. Dettol antiseptic cream, small bottle of hand sanitizer, 30% deet bugspray, toiletries
9. Metal water bottle
10. Chintenje-material made shirt

Any guesses?

(No, I’m not actually going on a picnic…)

….I’m going to the village!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be driving out to Salima (near the lake, about 1.5-2 hours out of town) to stay with Abusa Chiweza and his family until Sunday. We’ve been trying to plan my village stay for awhile now, so after a washed-out bridge and fuel crisis…I’m looking forward to finally making it out there!

I’m not 100% sure what to expect, but I’m excited to practice my Chichewa and gain a deeper appreciation for Malawian culture and village life. As you may have gathered, I’m not exactly suffering in Lilongwe with my (sporadic) electricity and fantastic flush toilet…not that I would wish to be without either…but 80% of Malawi’s population lives rurally in villages, so I think it’s about time I got acquainted with chimbudzis (squat toilets in the ground), learn how to make nsima and sleep without a mattress. At least for a few days.

Should be good. I’ll update with photos and stories when I return. Thank you for praying for me!

I’ve had the privilege of working at one in the Lakeshore West area of Toronto over the past two years and I’ve loved it. LAMP is a great place to work – the staff know the community well, offer supports and resources, and service multiple needs in the community. From meeting the need for affordable primary health and dental care, to subsidized housing, to early childhood and youth programming, etc. community health recognizes that a multitude of factors contribute to how well people as individuals function (yes! sociology!).

Working at LAMP ignited my interest in community health and was influential in my decision to come to PIH in Malawi over other placements in Burkina Faso and Kenya. Since coming here, I think I’ve received more confirmation about my desire to work in a community health environment in the future… be it locally or overseas…so that has been exciting and certainly a product of God’s grace.

Enjoy the article!

Kubwerera – to return (from a place/trip)
Kubwereza – to repeat
Kubweza – to return (an object)
Kubwera – to come
Kubweretsa – to bring

Last Thursday, I was at the epilepsy clinic and a patient came to me to get her meds. After handing her the packages labeled “1 m’mawa/1 madzulo” with a rising sun and poorly drawn moon on it, I said, “Bwerezani 14 March” – what I thought meant, “Please come back on March 14th”.

She looked at me and said, “Marachi 14″ – and then she wrote it on her health passport. Confused, I repeated myself and told her in English to come back on that date (making sure to pronounce my consonants slowly and clearly). “Mukumvetsa?” Do you understand?, I asked her. She nodded, thanked me, and left.

It wasn’t until much later, and after I’d gone home and looked at my Chichewa notes, that I realized that I’d asked her to please repeat, rather than please return on March 14th! Oops. That mayi must have been just as confused as I was!

The funny (and often, confusing) thing about Chichewa is that it’s common that certain words have multiple meanings that are just dependent on the context. For example, kulemba means to write or to employ, kuwerenga means to read, study, or count, and kufuna means to need or to want. If you think about it, to need something or to want something are really very different things, but similar enough that if the word were used to mean either/or, it would be confusing…

Jan 29th/11 - visiting the lake for the second time with the new residents + my friends Jen (in the photo) and Chris

The past two weeks have been busy over here with the start of Tigwirane Manja at PIH and a new pair of residents visiting from UCLA. We finished our training for TM on Wednesday, and yesterday, I had a chance to visit my first outpatient in the community.

Nolia has been a patient in our Moyo (HIV) clinic for awhile now and spent almost 5 months in our ward over the past year. Dr. Fielder told us about her during our training – she is a single mother of three, living with her agogo (grandmother) and great-agogo in a community not far from PIH. The great-grandmother is surprisingly old for a Malawian (almost visually confusing when I met her because most Malawians don’t live into their 60s/70s), and the grandmother, according to the counselors who have visited the home before, is often drunk and rarely contributes to the family. Nolia herself doesn’t work and is cognitively delayed. She has struggled with drug adherence and attending her appointments to PIH, and though she is very young – probably mid-20s – she is already on an alternative second line treatment of ARVs and TB medication.

The last time she received her meds at PIH, Dr. Fielder filled enough empty (and clean) urine sample bottles with her daily dose of ARVs and TB meds and explained to her she just needed to take all of the pills in each bottle every evening (6 in total). When we went to see her on Friday, she dumped out all the bottles from a plastic bag and showed us the empty ones. There were 10 filled bottles remaining.  Veronica, the counselor I went with, asked her to tell us how she took her medication and explained that someone would return on Friday to refill them for her.

Nolia’s issues with adherence and numerous psychosocial needs make her an ideal case for TM. These are exactly the patients we hope to follow-up on in the community. In this case, a severe lack of income prevents her from making appointments at PIH in time, making her drug adherence spotty and building resistance to her ARVs. By following up with her regularly and making it as easy as possible for her to remember to take her meds, we hope that we can prevent her from defaulting and keep her viral load low so that she can remain healthy for many years.

I’m hoping to collect some photos of our home visits over the next few months and will be sure to post them when I do!

Here is an electronic copy of my January 2011 Newsletter. I hope you will enjoy reading it and looking at the pictures of some of the interesting things I have recently put in my mouth over here :)

It has been a busy month with a lot going on by means of ministry visits and the beginnings of some new things I’ll be helping out with. As I write this, I’m about to head out to help at the epilepsy clinic at Children of Blessing, which I haven’t visited since probably October – so I’m excited about that!

In the busyness, I’ve continued to feel God’s provision, grace and sharpening through your partnership with me in prayer. Thank you for being so faithful in that. Ndathokoza – I am grateful.

Be back soon!

Season

Let me tell you just a few stories to illustrate this. Sometime in November, I attended this fundraising event at the crisis nursery, where I visit usually about once or twice a week. It was held on the lawn and there was an auction and coffee/tea/biscuits/etc for sale. Of course, all the babies and toddlers were also dressed up and outside…so it was a bit distracting. In the process of getting in the food line and fumbling with the kwacha in my coin purse, I dropped it on the lawn, and didn’t discover it was missing until much later that evening. There was probably K5000 in there – roughly $35-40 CAN. I racked my brain trying to think of where it could be and eventually concluded it could only be there, but everyone I told was skeptical it would be returned to me, much less with all the money in it.

The next morning before church, I stopped by the nursery, greeted the amayi, and asked if anyone had turned in a cloth bag with kwacha in it. To my surprise, they said that someone had, and that it was locked away in the office of the director. When I went back the next day to get it, Mwai (the director) brought it out for me and all my money was still inside! She pointed to a few digital cameras that people had left behind and laughed, saying, “Zimachitika!” – it happens!

Another example happened pretty recently on my impromptu roadtrip up north. Katie and I had pulled the car off the side of the road to take a snack break, when we saw a truck zoom past us, then stop, and reverse backwards. “What are they doing…?”, we asked each other, debating if we should start the car and drive away. The truck eventually pulled up right behind our car and the driver hopped out. At that point, we nervously agreed that we should probably start the engine, so I was about to wind up my window, when he came by and asked if everything was okay. Surprised, I almost did a double take before I realized he had thought we were having car troubles since we were pulled off on the side of the road…we were a bit embarrassed at our lack of faith after that incident!

The last story for today just happened this past week, after returning from camping for a week in Zambia. A few friends of mine and I traveled to Victoria Falls (which were beautiful – kukongola kwambiri!) and on the drive back to Lilongwe, I realized I had left my cell phone inside my tent….rolled up and packed away on the roofrack of our Land Rover, which was bumping along the road at 120km/h in a torrential rainstorm.

I was about 80% sure at that point it was in the tent, but had no way of confirming that it was there (nor going back to Zambia, of course, in the situation that it weren’t) until we got back into town. Our driver ended up dropping me off at my house, and when I told him about my cell phone, he said, “Well, I’ll tell the guys, and you can pick it up tomorrow.” That night I just prayed that I hadn’t left it in Zambia – that would have been even more silly (and irresponsible) than the time I almost had someone break into my car because I thought I’d locked the key inside…only to discover a few hours later that it was in my jean pocket.

So the next morning, I headed to the tour office trying not to get my hopes up – it’s a second hand phone, but still super fancy by Malawian standards – but again, when I got there, I hardly had to say anything and the guy at the desk opened a locked cabinet and there it was: all in one piece and working just fine despite the rain.

I think of these things everytime I get into one of those conversations with expats complaining about Malawians. They remind me of how little we know (despite often thinking we know it all) and of how big God is…He is not constrained by what we think of the world, or what we think of others, but He freely gives and takes away. I’m grateful for the immense grace He’s given me in my first three months here.

When I got back from Zambia, I had that feeling you get after returning home from a trip – even if it’s great, it’s always nice to be home – and it surprised me a little bit. It wasn’t too long ago when power outages, the craziness of the Internet/phone network, and driving in town felt very foreign and uncomfortable. But after seeing developed and modern Lusaka (a story in itself…), something about returning to sleepy Lilongwe was comforting. I enjoyed driving on familiar, pot-holed roads crowded with people and bicycles, making my rounds to do my groceries, and seeing the SIM families again. They have quickly become like my family here, and I guess as they say, home is where your heart is. I suppose there’s something to be said there about adapting and finding comfort in familiarity as well.

I now also have an extra visitor staying with me at my place. She is a South African doctor who will be helping out at PIH for about three weeks, so it’s been fun getting to know her :) Lastly, I’ve just started helping out with a new project that is kicking off in February at PIH. For the past few months, my time has been split primarily between running/supporting groups on HIV and health at the youth centre and building relationships with the youth there, and helping out with visitation and spiritual care of the patients in the clinics at PIH. I’ve begun writing devotionals for the waiting room area of our Dalitso clinic and have had the opportunity to talk to and pray with patients in our inpatient ward.

Beginning in February, I’ll be helping with a new community health initiative, and I’m really excited to learn from the team and see how I can contribute. It will focus on education, adherence counseling, voluntary testing and counseling (VCT), support groups (targeting younger children and expanding existing ones) and TB control and will have members of the team visiting ART patients in two primary communities around PIH. The team for this project consists of two other missionary clinicians, nurses, a TB officer and a few VCT counselors who already work at PIH. We just had our first meeting today, but will be meet more often and having our orientation and training over the next few weeks, where we will be trained on common infections/illnesses in our population and basic treatment to aid in adherence counseling. I’m excited to get to know the patients who come to PIH, and their communities, better, and I think there will be lots for me to learn as well.

It has been a good first three months of stretching and growing, being disciplined and being shown much grace. I’m thankful that our God is one who is faithful even when we are faithless, who pursues us fervently even when we pursue other things.

Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers? If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence. When I thought, “My foot slips,” your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.

-Psalm 94:16-22

Here’s to the second trimester!