Day 11 Off to St. Joseph's Hospital in the South

I leave today for the 600 km trip south to stay for the next two weeks at St. Joseph's Hospital in the Chiradzulu region. It will prove to be an interesting change as the south of Malawi has most of the nations population and a very different topography. It is the major tea growing area with tea being one of the major earners of foreign currency that the nation desperately needs. For example, without foreign currency Malawi is unable to buy gasoline or diesel fuels. Currently there has been a two week period where all gas stations are empty of fuel and cars sit by waiting for it to arrive.

This also marks the movement of myself from an outsider to a person more integrated into the living reality of Malawi. The change also involves moving out of the relative comfort that I have experienced during the first 10 days into an existence that provides fewer comforts. Although the guest house I will be living in looks inviting from the outside, there is no running water inside. (There is plumbing and sinks and toilets etc but the local water utility has no water to provide to the hospital or to its surroudings.) Still I am pampered in relation to those around me. Although the solid brick-look of the village houses (above) is better than expected, you then realize that families of 10 people live inside with no water, or means of preserving food, or heat (it gets cold at night), or power. The food the people eat is grown in the hard clay-like ground that predominates. Subsistence farming occupies most of everyone"s day.