Tales From Malawi
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Nguludi Parish – Our Brothers and Sisters in Malawi
Nguludi Parish - Impressions of St. Joseph’s Hospital
Nguludi Parish – Our Brothers and Sisters in Malawi
by Jeremy Buch
We landed in Malawi after nearly 36 hours of travel time. Our first experience when we landed at Chileka Int’l Airport in Blantyre, Malawi was relief and then concern. The customs officers were skeptical about the medical supplies we had brought and were talking about charging tariffs on them. Fortunately, Fr. Peter, Fr. Johnnie and Fr. Joseph were waiting for us at the airport to help explain things and take us to the parish.
We arrived at the parish after many miles on paved roads and a few miles of travel down a washed-out dirt road. On the way we saw many Malawian people – many of whom were carrying loads down the road or walking to or from home. Most people walked with bare feet nothing but their load to protect them from the sun.
When we did arrive at the Nguludi parish rectory, it filled us with a sense of peace to be home and to have had a chance to meet and talk to some of our new friends during the drive there. So many people waved back and smiled at us as we arrived – some were very excited to see what was happening and their strange new visitors frightened some of the children by themselves. Once we got out of the vehicles and walked out of the rectory drive, the children from the village were all around – watching, listening and waiting to see who we were and why we were there.
The rectory is just across the road from the parish church and the hospital, a telephone bureau and a marketplace are a short walk down the road. It was an exciting experience seeing children and people from the community and quickly realizing how different our daily lives truly are. Most of the buildings here were mud huts or were made from bricks because the bricks could be baked from the clay of the soil during the hot times. Fortunately for us, we were there during the cold winter times. The weather was only in the 70’s during the day – this was great for us, but cold for the Malawian people.
We spent most of our first day just getting to know Fr. Johnnie Chimwaza who is the pastor for Nguludi and Fr. Joseph Maleina. Between the two of them, they celebrate mass at St. Joseph’s as well as at two of the eleven out-churches in the parish. In this way, each out-church community has mass at their home church about twice each month. Fr. Johnnie has a simple car that he uses for travel and Fr. Joseph uses a dirt bike – we can only imagine Fr. Gary or Fr. Steve riding up on a dirt bike to celebrate mass at Holy Family! Despite the hard work and the lack of resources, Fr. Johnnie and Fr. Joseph had true servants’ hearts and were cheerful and hopeful.
Our reflections during the evening focused a lot on the things that the people of Nguludi had: hope, peace, charity, love and compassion. A priest from North Carolina told me last week that a visiting Tanzanian priest once said to him, “You have the hard work – the people here are so full that they feel they do not need God.” Our observations showed us this truth in our own lives – we have insulated ourselves so much from natural life that we no longer have a daily routine that draws us closer to God. While we have more comforts, we risk losing touch with our basic human needs and the compassion to help others with theirs.
Please take some time in the next few weeks to pray for our brothers and sisters in Malawi – that they have enough food and clothing to meet their needs. There are many fathers and mothers who have died due to illness and have left grandchildren orphans. We even met one man while we were there that packed up with his wife and moved to Malawi to adopt many of these children and to provide a family and a support system for them.
While you pray for the people in Nguludi parish, please also reflect on the things that you take for granted in your life. Are there ways you can give up things that you don’t really need and pass those resources on to those who need them more? Are there talents or skills that you have that your brothers and sisters at Holy Family are in need or, or that some of the organizations in the Archdiocese could really use? One of the gifts that the people of Nguludi have passed on to us is simply humility and hope. Only through each of us giving our best and taking only what we need do we truly live out a Christian life.
Nguludi Parish - Impressions of St. Joseph’s Hospital
by Dorothy Meher
We had the opportunity to visit St. Joseph’s Hospital at Nguludi , both as tourists and with a patient! Sharon had twisted her foot on a particularly rough and rocky path the day before, during village visits to anoint the sick and elderly, and we were concerned that it might be fractured.
Our wait was prolonged because the radiology staff was on tea break and there were no others to take their place. Fortunately, the x-ray showed no fractures. I think the charge for all of these services was about five dollars.
Apparently there is only one doctor at the hospital (with perhaps a second doctor available at times) and two ‘clinic officers’ who handle some of the emergencies as well as the daily outpatients. Ellen Stima, an off duty nurse and niece of Monsignor Montfort Stima, guided us around the hospital. Ellen was educated in the nursing school connected to the hospital.
In general, the equipment and supplies at Nguludi, appear to be donations of older items from more modern hospitals as their equipment is replaced with 
newer, more up to date versions. All of the beds are metal with thin pads and are not adjustable for height. Throughout the country, ‘disposable’ is a foreign concept and everything is used over and over until completely ‘used up’.
In the maternity ward, most of the mothers were sitting in chairs beside their beds with their babies lying in the center of the bed and well covered with the 
colorful heavy blankets from the bed. There were no ‘delicate pastel’ baby blankets for them! Hanging about eighteen inches above the foot of the mothers’ beds were the metal cribs for the babies. Sister Rosa, who escorted us, said that women are encouraged to come to the hospital for delivery of their first and fifth babies and any thereafter as well as any births that are anticipated to be complicated. Otherwise, they deliver at home with the aid of midwives and other women of the village.
The hospital has an intensive care area for the premature babies. When we visited, there were three who were about a month early. One was in an incubator and another was in a crib positioned over the steam radiator to provide warmth. As with all children there, their survival was not guaranteed.
In the wards, each patient is accompanied by a guardian – a relative or someone from their village. This person is responsible for providing food for the patient, doing laundry and changing bed linens.
There is a separate building provided for food preparation by the guardians. It is blackened from years of use and consists of yard wide stalls with a waist high area on which to build the charcoal fires for cooking. This is probably easier for them than cooking on the ground as they do at home!
There are separate wards for men and women as well as wards to separate the medical patients from the surgical ones. There is an isolation room to prevent spreading of infections and a separate tuberculosis wing. The children are in pediatric wards with a special area for treating those who are malnourished.
Because AIDS, malaria and malnourishment are so prevalent in Malawi, people are more susceptible to other infections that people with healthier immune systems would be able to resist. As part of the fight against AIDS, the people are being encouraged to come to hospitals or clinics for AIDS testing.
The home based care workers are assisting in the villages with AIDS counseling and care in the homes. For those who are injured or taken ill at home, transportation to the hospital is on foot, by bicycle or by ox cart. Even at the seminary where some of us were staying, two soccer players collided, leaving one unconscious for a time and he was just lifted by his arms and legs to carry him to the transportation available to take him to the hospital.
If a patient’s care is beyond the scope of St. Joseph’s, the next resource available is some distance away in the city of Blantyre. It is the larger St. Elizabeth’s Hospital that handles those requiring higher levels of care, as our larger hospitals do for us at home. Our donated medical supplies were much appreciated and hopefully anything not useful to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Nguludi, will be passed on to others who can use them. We still have many supplies to send to Malawi, and are looking for the best way to accomplish this. We are open to any resources or contacts to help ship them.