Mosquito Confines Her to Silence and Wheelchair
Mosquito Confines Her to Silence and Wheelchair Unknown Village, Southern Malawi … The African sun was beating down at nearly 100 degrees. Sweat beads slowly roll from my hat to my eyebrow where I periodically wipe them away. We turn south from the tarmac road and almost immediately it turns into a curving, pot-filled, rock cluttered obstacle course. It is obvious the “road” is more fitted to foot traffic or an ox cart at most. The land here is rolling with steep hills and cliffs dotting the area like pimples on a teen-ager’s face. After turning the wrong direction two or three times, as there are no road signs in this part of the world and few people can give you directions any farther than 15 or 20 kilometers, we pull up at the foot of a steep hill with a sharply sloping incline beckoning us to try our mountain climbing skills.
I am traveling with Wilson Tembo, from the Namikango Hospital in southern Malawi, and we are on the way to report a story of a little girl who had recently been given a wheelchair by the Clinic after receiving wheelchairs from the Malawi Project and the Free Wheelchair Mission. I considered the fact that we may have discovered the end of the earth, but then I mentally remembered I had flown over this area coming up from Johannesburg two days earlier. I guess there really is a land beyond this remote area.
How Can Anyone Move Along This Path?
Thank goodness we don’t have to go very far up the mountain. We carefully pick our way up the lower slope as I mentally wonder how anyone can carry even a small child farther up this rock maize path. And soon the rains will come. How would they ever make any kind of trip up or down this path during the rains? And the rains go on for 4 months in this part of the world.
In the distance an unseen baby cries in a remote hut. The answer comes from the other side of the road, as a goat looks in the direction of the hut and bleats out some sort of response. As we reach the house the family has gathered near a bamboo mat under a group of mango trees. Wilson and I lean down to keep from hitting our heads on the low hanging mangos, and move to the edge of the mat. It is there for us along with a small stool to sit on that had been brought out for me. The family sits on the ground and has little Judith Qatungwe with them.
Cerebral Malaria is Fatal 50 Per Cent of the Time
Judith is 6 years old, and she could walk, talk and get around on her own when she was 3. Then suddenly, and with little warning, a small mosquito bite proved nearly fatal. The mosquito was a carrier for the deadly strain of malaria called Falciparum, and it can be fatal in as many of 50% of all cases. She felt victim to cerebral malaria. Young Judith was in a coma for a full week and when she seemed well, the family realized she could not walk, talk or even control many of her movements. Now she had to stay at home with her father while her mother worked in a distant school to which she walked each day. While caring for Judith the father could not go into the fields. Since he is a farmer, to stay in the house too long, would put the future food supply for the family in jeopardy. There was nothing the family could do, when her brothers and sisters went to school, except leave Judith at home alone while they worked. Neither her mother nor her father could carry her with them every day.
Tembo reports, “The family has now told us they can take her with them when they go out of the house because of the wheelchair. She can be with her friends, and she can go where the family goes.”
Hope
Before we left I bent down in front of the little girl and touched her unmoving leg, and looking into her eyes. I could hardly see her through the tears. My wife has had cerebral malaria at least three times. I could only look at her and imagine, “there but by the Grace of God go we.” It was so touching to know there are so many people making possible some relief to these people who have little hope and little opportunity to see any kind of assistance in the cruel lives they face. Today we participated in one of those tiny steps of hope.