and we are back online!

Hello lovely people,
We are back online after a wonderful week of outreach in Itepela.
We stacked the car once again with the whole team, a lot of luggage (Lyn and Rachel S were contuining to Malawi so the had all their luggage with them) and a lot of food (no stores in Itepela). After 15 minutes of driving I heard banging on the car in the back (that is the sign for me to sanitary stops etc.). But it was even much more funnier. We brought 50 eggs with us and the had fallen over because of the horrible roads and after a little while we heard Rachel L say "something is dripping on my foot". After cleaning up the mess we drove another 2 and a half hour and then we were there!

We stayed at the Ywam centre and in the house of Geraldo's family. Geraldo (mozambican) runs the microlab together with Ariel (american)and they work closely together with the local nurse and midwife. The next morning we went out the meet with the director of healt of the Ngauma district to introduce ourselves; we were very welcome and could work freely with her consent. In the mean time we were getting a bit worried because our great and fearless leader Lyn had fallen sick again. We suspected a rebound of the malaria. After another day of feeling weak and miserable see decided to a test. Funny that we are abolutely in the bush over there but one of the best malaria test centres is run by Geraldo so help was close at hand. It turned out to be malaria again and probably a resistant type because we guessed it was the same malaria that came back. But Malarone was the answer and in three days time Lyn was back on her feet again: praise the Lord.

In the mornings we would go out to the lab and the healthpost and maternity ward (all conveniently at the same spot) and some would help stabbing the mothers and kids with needles in the lab (Jill never made so many kids cry in her life!) and other joined the nurse with diagnosing and handing out medicine, and every now and then Sandra would lead part of the team to help with check ups for pregnant moms. On wednesday we weighed all the babies and filled in their healt cards wich was very interesting because you the problems that are there. The main problem is that the whole thing is about statistics and not about care for the child. So we would weigh small kids that had dropped a kilo in weight but nobody cared about it as long as the figures were written down correctly. Another big problem is the distribution of medication. On the first day we tested 71 people of which 42 had malaria (26 kids and 16 adults) but the medicine had run out. That is very frustrating because people die because of problems like this.

At a certain point we would all gether in front of the healtpost and do one our teachings (breastfeeding, malaria, fever, nutrition). The people we helped were really grateful and it was an encouragement to them. Ariel was so happy to speak english for a while that she wanted us to stay. Geraldo's family really made us feel at home so saying goodbye was little bit sad. We also visited the new founded Yao church with Pedro and Aldenice and looked at his carpentry school that he has started. It was wonderful to hear to new Yao songs that they have created now.

Today is another happy day: Frank's birthday! So I am going back home now to prepare for the visitor.
PS: I brought Rachel S and Lyn to the border and we heared later that night that they arrived safely in Malawi.