A letter from Martha Sommers in Malawi
August 6, 2009
Dear Friends,
Journalist Christine Gorman and photographer Eileen Hohmuth-Lemonick have created some great opportunities to learn more about the health work being done in Malawi. Much of their reporting featured Embangweni and the nurses.
The American Journal of Nursing’s cover story for their June 2009 issue is called, “At Work With Malawi’s Nurses.” You can read it online at AJN’s Web site.
CNN’s Web site has a multimedia article (article, video, photos) on Malawi’s response to the nursing shortage.
A 10-minute video called “ The Nurses of Embangweni” is online at the Blip TV Web site. You can see nurses from Embangweni working and being interviewed about their challenges and successes.
The 10-minute video “Telling Stories, Saving Lives” captures how health messages are taught to the public at Embangweni through humor, drama, and songs.
There are two other good opportunities coming up this fall:
Forty PC(USA) mission personnel will visit hundreds of congregations across the United States this fall to tell how God is at work around the world. World Mission Challenge, a reprise of a similar event in 2007, will be held September 25–October 18, 2009. Learn more at the Mission Challenge Web site or by calling Ellen Dozier at (888) 728-7228, x5916.
World Mission Challenge will conclude with World Mission Celebration, a large gathering for Presbyterians who care deeply about mission. The event will be held October 22–24 in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the adjoining Duke Energy Center. Learn more at the Mission Celebration Web site or by calling Lis Valle at (888) 728-7228 x5279.
The challenges and celebrations continue in Embangweni. Last weekend the community celebrated the wedding of 76-year-old Mr. W. Mphande and Crissie Gondwe, and we buried the 27-year-old daughter of a staff member. Umanyano, the women’s guild, most of them wearing their uniforms of white head scarfs and blouses and black skirts, were stars. The bride and the mother of the young woman who died were both members of the Umanyano. Most of the Umanyano members mourned with the grieving, making the flower arrangement and singing and doing so many of the details of a funeral. And then they went to the wedding reception to dance and sing and share in the joy. The members closest to the wedding spent the whole day with the wedding, and those closest to the mourners stayed with those mourning after the funeral.
This weekend’s challenge began Friday at dusk, when a 4-year-old girl was hit by a motor vehicle very close to the hospital. The driver carried the child into the hospital, and the staff came in full force to work on the child who has a femur fracture, a deep leg laceration, and bruised ribs and liver. The girl’s mother died of postpartum cardiomyopathy at our hospital when this child was six months old, so her older brother, who is on staff, and his wife are raising her with their child. Competent care and counsel was given by so many to all involved, and we are all overjoyed by the smiles of this little one this Sunday morning as we anticipate her again running about in four weeks, when her fracture should heal.
Thanks for your love and support,
Martha
