November 23
As the delicious redness of the cooler climate Zomba plateau strawberries meet their demise for yet another season, wilting under the growing humidity and daily afternoon tropical downpours and thunderstorms, there is one thing that is indisputable… the mangoes are in. Only a few days ago we stopped at a roadside stall on our way to a relaxing getaway at a lakeside retreat for the night – our little slice of ‘us time’ after a week of frenetic tourism with Heth’s Mum. No less than sixty or seventy perfect juicy yellow mangoes for 50 kwacha, or a little under forty Australian cents. We mix fresh banana, pineapple and mango every day for your average breakfast smoothie. We sit outside until midnight at a dinner party regardless of the day because its always warm. We wear flip-flops out to a bar or restaurant and that’s considered ‘dressing up.’ Welcome to life in the tropics.
Life here, despite the innumerable and often insurmountable daily frustrations, is good. Sitting under the shade of decades-old frangipani trees and sipping a ubiquitous Green in front of the crystalline waters of Lake Malawi, taking a break from the laborious task of drenching ourselves in unending sun as we watch fisherman paddle their dugout canoes into the sun splashed palette of colour that is the distant haze of a Mozambican mountain backdrop. A world away from the fetid stench of human bodies crammed into a swathe of HIV, tuberculosis, diarrhoea and malnutrition that is our other life at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital; a place that on first visit one could never imagine accustoming themselves to, yet after all too short a time it becomes as normal as any other medical institution the world over. To say that we are living a life of contrast would be more than an understatement… although probably better than calling it ‘black’ and ‘white.’
Our week of leave just gone? Walking the shores of the stunning Lake Malawi taking our slowly improving Chichewa for a spin with the over excited kids from the local fishing villages. Spotting somewhere in the vicinity of forty-five elephants on a single two hour game drive in Malawi’s premier game park, and that’s ignoring the hyenas, impala, kudu, waterbuck, reedbuck, nyala, hippos, buffalo, warthogs, baboons, vervet monkeys, sable antelope and countless number of birds. Hiking to the incomparable vistas off the precipitous peaks of the Zomba plateau and Mulanje massif, then relaxing with a well deserved beer. Hunting for the myriad tropical fruits that adorn every market snapshot, roadside stall and even our very own fruit and vegetable-laden garden, then feasting in the tranquility of bird calls and abundant flowers on our back verandah. Life is definitely manageable.
But with mangoes come mozzies
Our toilet and shower both leak, water comes through the cupboards when the rain gets too hard, our electricity and water both cut out with monotonous regularity, the fridge door doesn’t shut half the time and our power line sends off showers of sparks every time the wind throws it into nearby foliage. People walk in front of moving traffic with a degree of unawareness that most two year olds can only aspire to, potholes grow increasingly cavernous with each downpour, customer and service are two mutually exclusive words, and the concept of a balanced meal is one that has something more than only carbohydrate.
Frustrations here are many, but one cannot possibly begin to think of these ‘inconveniences’ as a serious problem in the face of such massive disease burden. Without even beginning to tackle the issues of a single yearly crop harvest leading to chronic food shortages that cause annual plague proportions of malnutrition (and still the government persists with selling off the ‘excess’ supplies to neighbouring countries post-harvest each year), the ongoing sub-Saharan pandemic of HIV/AIDS that is literally crippling the exact people that comprise the workforce needed to prop up these ailing economies, or the resurgent vehemence of diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis in the face of such staggering rates of immunosuppression, the rain brings the mozzies. And these mozzies bring malaria. An interesting disease in the adult world over here in that almost all sub-Saharan Africans are partially immune – in other words, these are the survivors of innumerable malarial infections throughout childhood. Their disease is, on the whole, very mild. Kids on the other hand are like pins at the end of a bowling alley for malaria, and I feel that we are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg… things really get going in a couple of months when the rains truly hit. Yet already we are becoming progressively more inundated with unconscious, fitting, anaemic children who have an alarmingly high rate of post disease disability, and that’s if they survive to begin with. Never before could I have imagined just how many of a hospital population could be nursed while comatose. Absurdly, it is now common place.
