Death

Simoni Paulo is our housekeeper. He is in his 50s and has worked for Terrie for nearly 20 years. Every day he cleans the house, does our laundry, buys our groceries and cooks our dinner. He is a terrific cook and will make us whatever we want. Over the years he has learned how to make many "western" dishes, like delicious lasagna, peanut butter cookies and pizza! He has made us beef stew, curried lentils, veggie chili, orange chicken, fish and chips and ratatouille to name a few. He laughed at me for not knowing how to make salad dressing, and told me he would teach me how to make his fantastic vinaigrette. Simoni is sweet and gentle and as honest as they come. This week Simoni is not here. Simoni called Terrie on Sunday night to let her know that his wife had just died.

About a week after we got here, Simoni's wife was taken to the hospital. It was hard to figure out what exactly was wrong with her, as Simoni would say things like belly pain, and "water on her back", but would never go into details. She had had a hysterectomy 2 years ago and had some complications from that, but men do not usually talk much about "female problems", so Terrie could never quite figure out what the complications were. A neighbor told Terrie that Simoni's wife had never been the same since that surgery. There was also mention of possible TB. She got a little better our 3rd week, then worse, then she passed away. Simoni was beside himself with grief.

The funeral for Simoni's wife was yesterday. Terrie suggested that 1-2 of us should go, and so Kim and Katie went. I would have loved to go, but I had responsibilities at the hospital. Talking to the girls it seems like the funeral was incredible.

Funerals here are very unique. The main employer for the family (typically the person/company that the man works for) is responsible for paying the funeral of the employee, his/her spouse and their children. The person is returned to the village where they were born/raised to be buried. The employer hires a lorry (large flatbed truck) to transport family and friends to the village, pays for the casket, and helps pay for the food to feed the people at the funeral. The Blantyre Malaria Project has a fund for funerals and paid for all of this for Simoni.

Kim and Katie traveled almost 3 hours to the foot of Mount Mulanje to a small village outside of Phalombe where Simoni and his wife originally came from and much of her family did still lives. It is expected that the entire village attends; in this case more than 500 people. If a person is not in attendance, they are talked about behind their back and possibly implicated in the death!

The girls said that one by one Simoni's wife's relatives stood up to speak about her life. The whole service was in Chichewa (so the girls could not understand it), and there was lots of singing (the girls were told that the singing was to drown out the wailing of the mourners.) Before the service concluded, a man recited the donation list. This was a list of who donated to the family and how much they donated. Most people would donate food or send money if they weren’t able to attend. Most of the donations were 20 Kwacha, about 14 cents.

Overall, Kim and Katie said that the day was very powerful, and Simoni was very happy to see the students from Terrie's house represented at the funeral. I am so glad that they went.

Everyday we are faced with unbelievable poverty and desperation. Death is a common part of life here. Almost everyday that I have been here I have seen or heard the mourners singing in the the hallways. Yesterday in the woman's ward 2 women died. I couldn't help but get tears in my eyes when I heard that they were dead...and I mean literally "heard" that they were dead. The description that the medical student gave me last week about "hearing the guardians wail and that signals to the medical staff that something is wrong" is all too accurate. It was around 11am yesterday when I saw a guardian throwing her body on the floor and crying and wailing. She was so loud it was hard for me not to stare. All the rest of the medical staff went about their business like nothing was wrong. The guardian started chanting and wailing. In the US it would probably look like this woman was acting. It was unbelievable, and hard for me to watch, but very appropriate and expected for here. The other patient's in the ward were very quite and respectful as this patient's guardian mourned over her death. Then a friend took the guardian's arm while the nurses wrapped the body in sheets, and led the guardian and the body out of the ward. The mourning procession then started. As I walked through the hospital halls yesterday evening I say another group of mourners lead by a very small body wrapped in sheets on a stretcher. 114 infants die for every 1,000 live births, so babies die all the time, but who can ever get used to seeing that small body on the stretcher? I take care of only women here in the hospital and most of them are my age and have HIV...and have HIV positive babies. It is sad.

Everyday I come home to a comfortable house where we have a gardener, a cook and housekeeper, and guards. In the house we have 3 computers, internet, and a movie projector. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that my world and the world of these desperate patients coexist side-by-side. It seems wrong, and I feel like I can't do anything to change it.


Sorry for being such a downer today. You can see why we try to do fun stuff at night and on the weekends. Later today we are going on a tour of the Carlsberg beer factory here in Malawi...rumor is that they give away free samples!

On a lighter note, our house favorite Chechewa word so far is Poopsya - it means Danger!


Love you all!

Niamh