13 - Finishing the distributions
We found that there were cultural and economic challenges to achieving increased bed net usage that we were not initially aware of, which made the educational work that CU had been doing over the past 2 years in these villages all the more important. The last day of distributions was near a large lake, heightening the risk of villagers using the nets for fishing or selling them to those who would, so we emphasized the risk of the disease and importance of net usage all the more. Unlike the previous week we removed the nets from the packaging and wrote the beneficiaries initials on them. This decreased the value of the nets on what is somewhat of a black market, since the village chiefs are supposed to declare it against the community's rules to use them for any purpose but protecting your family's beds at night. That wasn't the only locally inherent challenge. We heard from numerous locals that some men believe the insecticide treatment on the nets adversely affects their 'performance' and for that reason will not allow their wives to put them over their beds. Other men will sell the nets for boos money. Fathers take much less responsibility here, one reason being that women are considered the head of households. Even our safari guides later joked about this, explaining that male warthogs are much like Malawian men since they impregnate the female warthogs and then leave them to give birth and to raise the piglets on their own. Another issue is all the traditional spiritual beliefs in some of the villages with more tribal roots. It is crucial to get a young child to a health facility after the first signs of malaria to prevent them from dying, but some mothers will instead take their children to a witchdoctor who may try to cast out the disease as if it is an evil spirit.
In addition to the whole net thing, we brought the soccer ball tradition here just like in Guinea which had a great response. The guys we were working with encouraged me to take the balls to schools to help motivate the children to attend. So we divided up the balls and visited about 10 schools in addition to the 20 we had visited last week to give the headmaster a brand new silver soccer ball or two. Most of the kids had never seen a new ball and literally at one school playground close to 1,000 kids gasped in ah as I got the new balls out of the truck like they were a magic trick or something. I was almost the victim of being trampled to death at a couple schools, the kids were so excited that they no longer had to play with a bunch of grocery bags shaped into a ball and wound with twine. On Friday Jen and Alecia were able to take a couple balls as well as some clothes and school supplies to a local orphanage and they had a wonderful experience from it. Apparently the orphanage had never received gifts for their children before and felt completely overwhelmed at our extremely small contribution. Another thing that really got these kids excited no matter where we went was taking a group picture and then showing it to them. I suppose they barely see themselves in a mirror let alone on an electronic device. They literally would just freak out, yelling and pointing at the screen.
We had some great conversations with some of the guys we worked with, all of which were amazingly intelligent. Senard, CU's regional director, was really interested in problems in the US, and then the legislative process after asking why certain things couldn't be fixed. I couldn't answer some of his questions about specifically how many votes were needed to overturn the president's veto etc. He filled us in on Malawian affairs too, specifically President Bingu's latest actions that have made clear he has become a corrupt power grabber like most African leaders. Too bad considering he's replaced Gaddafi as head of the African Union. We drive 45 minutes to Mulanje one night with Mada, one of the CU drivers, to go to the bank and get over priced pizza for dinner - Whig was well worth the trim and price and pretty much made Alecia's week. Mada has a cosmetics store he runs on the side, and also occasionally imports cars to Malawi to sell at a modest profit, capitalizing on the slightly complicated process to getting a vehicle into the country. He gave us his soap box speech on motivation and how you have to work hard for yourself and your family. Coming from a native African, no offense to them personally, this was impressive and great to hear. Whiskey was our daily driver, the girls favorite, and a really humble Christian man. He was asking us all about snow... "is it like rain? How to you drive on it? Does it just stay on top of your house?". When we told him how much of the US gets hit with snow and what you have to wear to stay warm, he made an interesting commen. "If we had snow in Malawi we would die because we're so poor we couldn't afford all those warm clothes. But God is so wonderful, he allows snow to fall in the rich countries and keeps our continent warm". I don't think that is entirely accurate, however I can't deny that from an African perspective it makes a lot of sense, and it may be one of the most gracious statements I have ever heard.
Generally the people we distributed to were really thankful. However it was really clear at a couple villages, specifically the last one, that the people were very much dependent on others for their well being. It was predetermined how many nets they received based on sleeping spaces that lacked a bednet, and this was the first location where those that only got one net were unhappy. They saw our help just like the bare minimum services the government provides, an interesting view into the early stages of what type of personalities develop in socialist-like environments.
