November 14, 2004

Dear Church and Friends,

It has been quite a while since I wrote my usual Sunday-night letter. Sorry! There are numerous reasons, but please forgive our lapse. We are all well and doing well, waiting for the rains to fall. People here have all prepared their fields. Those who are able have bought seed and fertilizer, and there have been scattered showers that have already begun to green up the countryside. We are hoping for good rains this year after last year’s drought, which will leave many people hungry in the months prior to harvest, January through April. My own gardener has tilled a huge new field near us to grow peanuts for the children’s ward. They are a great portable and generally unspoilable food that malnourished children consider a treat. They are also something everyone here knows how to grow, so we hope for a good harvest. People have begun to put aside extra maize in anticipation of the shortfall later this year when prices will be very high. Unfortunately, to do so requires that you have a way of paying for the maize now, and that you have a way of storing it in the meantime, both significant obstacles to most rural people in Malawi. Fertilizer for the average family costs about $60,00, which is two or three months salary for the people in our area lucky enough to have jobs. It is challenging to be a subsistance farmer in Malawi, to be sure.

You must have experienced a mission hospital to understand how thrilled I am about these things and how they can have taken nine months to come into being. We have also received a gift of some resuscitation equipment, which was promptly put to use in the past few weeks as two children suffered observed respiratory arrests as we were there making rounds. It is always a dilemma to know what to do in such circumstances because our ability to support critically ill children is so limited. However, in each case there were things I thought could be fixed quickly enough to warrant trying, and both children were recovered enough to start eating by the end of last week.

We had another surprise last weekend when a group from the national offices of the PC(USA) in Louisville and the Medical Benevolence Foundation arrived to see Nkhoma Hospital. Bob Ellis, the coordinator of the International Health Ministries Office, pulled out my piano-tuning kit and started tuning my geriatric piano! Their visit was appreciated much, and for reasons other than the piano.

Regards to everyone. We miss you!

Barbara, Melia, and Anna