A letter from Martha Sommers in Malawi
June 11, 2009
Dear Friends and Family:
I am down in Lilongwe to attend Linda Mhango’s graduation from African Bible College. Quite an achievement for a mother of three daughters who are all in school to go back to school herself for a bachelor’s degree. The three daughters will be arriving today to witness and celebrate. Linda’s husband, the Rev. Chimwemwe Mhango, has already arrived from where he is studying in Durban, South Africa.
Two nights ago I lost an old filling in a back molar, that progressed to losing much more of the tooth, so will be taking advantage of being in the city to have the dental work done before returning to Embangweni, where there is no dentist, very few dental needles to help reduce the pain of procedures, and just a dental technician who can do up to class II fillings. At Embangweni, our main goal is not tooth retention, but reduction of pain via extraction.
When I am in Lilongwe I stay with a friend who is looking after a 3-year-old boy whose future is uncertain. He has known cruelty and neglect. Three times he had to be treated for severe malnutrition. Any clothes given to him beyond a tee shirt were stripped from him. He learned to yell abusive phrases far beyond his years. Now, he is mainly happy. Though he sometimes verbalizes events from his past, he no longer says bad things and is a very fun little guy. When I visit, I try to spend extra time playing with him, hoping enough good childhood memories will overshadow the misery that is also part of his childhood.
At Embangweni Hospital, we struggle on, mainly succeeding. Thanks to your generosity, we continue to be able to buy essential medicines—enough to take us through the next three months. The government was late in its May payment to the Christian Hospital Association of Malawi, which uses the contribution to pay the baseline salaries of most of our employees, but the staff persevered. The doctor situation for the Synod of Livingstonia’s three hospitals is close to rock bottom. I am the only doctor working full-time in a hospital, and there is a very part-time new doctor from Holland at Ekwendeni. No others. To put this in perspective: when I started work with the synod 12 years ago, I joined three other doctors at Embangweni Hospital, and there have been between four and eight doctors working at hospitals within the synod for most of these years.
The shortage of doctors and formally trained health personnel makes us push the boundaries of who does what procedures. We have to be able to perform C-sections to save the lives of mothers and babies at every hospital, at any time. At Embangweni Hospital, C-sections are mainly done by clinical officers with four years training. They’re assisted by patient attendants who have 12 weeks training plus continual on-the-job training. This week, we had a woman with late stage AIDS and widespread Kaposi’s sarcoma who needed a C-section. Scrubbed in to perform the procedure was Shaime, our newest clinical officer intern, and Ernest, our newest patient attendant in the operating room. In the room supervising, not scrubbed in but ready to if it became necessary, was Lucky, who finished his clinical officer internship last year, and Rodwiel, a patient attendant for the last four years. They did a fine job, but it still makes me nervous, because although we do much better than the national average, I understand why one out of fifty women in Malawi that has a C-section dies.
We are in the midst of visitor season at Embangweni, and are enjoying the energy, encouragement, and skills of some very fun groups of friends. The Emmanuel Medical Missions Society cyclists bicycled in and out on their fundraising ride to help us, stopping to enjoy local music and dancing, a tour, meals, and a night’s sleep on the way. The “Riley group,” which represents many Virginia churches, included regular visitor Robbie Roberts, who worked his magic to get our unfixable X-ray machine running again. He showed me pictures of the six electrical relay parts he replaced, which I certainly do not understand, but he worked with our electrical and X-ray personnel, who seemed to understand much more than I did. An Irish group arrives this week. Among many other tasks, they plan to have us running a five-kilometer race as they did last year. This ties in nicely to their yearly fundraising for us that they do by having individuals and teams run and walk the Belfast marathon, each with pledged supporters.
Thanks for your continued prayers and support,
Martha
