From Malawi With Love

Do you know the feeling when you are in a particular space and it just feels right? You feel this sense of relief and welcome that settles your spirit and anxiety and you think, ‘Finally, I feel like me’. Landing in Malawi was that exact feeling for me, in every way.

It was 17 years since I was last in Africa in 2019. 17 years and 254 days, but who was counting, right? Coming off the steps onto the tarmac of the international airport in Lilongwe, Malawi, felt like the Judgement before God; but Mother Africa was the Judge on this occasion. Was I welcome back here? Was I ‘African’ enough? I had constantly struggled to find a space for myself in Australia where I had a sense of unconditional welcome or where I didn’t have to sensitively curate an image of myself. It’s not for any particular reason, but maybe this feeling is related to never quite making it past the line of acceptance, no matter how well I consumed the values and ideas of the majority. This was no problem in Malawi, in Africa, where I felt a spiritual connection to where I was born, which was only now 4,867 km away, not 13, 577 km from Australia. It was calling to me, and I heard its cacophony of homecoming as I crossed the Indian Ocean; it was calling for its son.

Now I’m getting in my feels!

Why was I in Malawi? I hear you ask. I was in Malawi with a small contingent of Australian medical students, as well as doctors and nurses from the Pangea Global Education Group. The intention was to run global health workshops in Lilongwe and Blantyre to passionate medical students and health professionals. As with any programs that are implemented in countries with a low number of resources, it’s vital to make the program relevant, affordable and accessible to the needs of the population. This was exactly what the Pangea program did; it acted as a conduit between the health professionals in Malawi and a different aspect of their learning that included a focus on the basics of trauma management in the health context of Malawian society, i.e., focussing on Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVA) as this was a major cause of trauma.

I learnt that Malawians work hard…they don’t play. Some of the students were so academically inclined and gifted, it made me think that Malawi is lucky to have this group of students coming through medical school, and combined with their global perspective of health, it will be a force to be reckoned with. In one of my numerous interactions with the medical students during lunchtime, I asked them what they would do with their first payslip as a doctor. Many of them did not know, others wanted to help their families, while others wanted to buy watches and engagement rings. They were no different to us Australian medical students, with our inclinations and wants with our own future payslips. Me, personally, I’d love to buy a domain name for this blog with my first payslip.

This is how Robert, one of the medical students in Malawi, danced with only a year left of medical student for him and on the other side of that, an engagement ring.

When we weren’t running the workshops, we were out in the town, learning the basics of the Chichewa language, going to Lake Malawi and Sunday church in Malawi invited by a hotel worker, as well as getting deep vein thrombosis (DVT)! Oh wait, that was only me! Yeah, that’s right, unfortunately one of the highlights of my trip was a blood clot in one of the veins in my thigh, which wasn’t fun, to say the least. I had this nagging dull pain in my calf, which – every medical student learns- is a textbook symptom, almost pathognomonic, for a DVT. A medical doctor on the trip with me recommended I take aspirin, which is used to break the clot down into smaller parts that reduce the chances of ramifications, i.e., pulmonary embolism. That didn’t work. The pain persisted, as well as my persistence to find out how a healthy- relatively! - 22-year-old, with no pre-existing conditions or family history of DVT managed to get it. I still don’t know exactly how it happened, but all signs lead to an 8-hour bus trip with minimal stops along the way- a recipe for disaster. That’s why on an international flight, flight attendants in their angelic voices repeat ‘make sure you do some calf raises and walk up and down the cabin’, to prevent things like this from happening! Anyway, I went to a private hospital in the city of Blantyre, and 2.5 hours later, with a Doppler Scan* and some blood tests, it was confirmed that indeed I did have the suspected DVT!

As I was receiving this news, I said to myself, ‘Damn, I’m lucky to have all these medical doctors on this trip with me’. The collective medical knowledge was boundless on this trip, with doctors from every speciality, and none of them took any chances with my DVT, leading to my immediate presence in an emergency room. DVTs can deteriorate significantly and eventually lodge in an artery in the lungs, stopping your breathing and then you’d actually be on your way to see God. This experience made me think about my gratitude of going to a private hospital in Malawi and receiving the necessary treatment within a timely manner.

The morale of the story is: always travel with medical doctors when going on overseas trips! Nah, but seriously, it’s important to stay hydrated when going on long trips and to make a stop at a service station or on the side of a road, to stretch out those legs.

Apart from taking medical learning via experience of the pathology to its extreme, the Malawi trip was fulfilling and developed my perspective of the global health and its importance. Global health is everyone’s business, in the sense that everyone can play a part in the improvement of access to health and health education. Pangea does it through workshops and professional knowledge, with an underlining view of practicality that can be immediately used by the health professionals. At the moment, I don’t know which aspect of medicine I will choose and go into. It’s like choosing a donut from Daniel’s Donuts- there are way too many donuts out there! (of course, the passionfruit cheesecake donut reigns supreme, now and forever). However, I do know that whatever I decide to go into, global health will be at the centre of that specialty, as there is a need to bring health improvements to challenging situations of inequitable access and poor health infrastructure internationally, especially in my home country, South Sudan.

As I learnt from Blessing, a hotel worker in Malawi, ‘Bayi!’, until next time.

Stay safe…Eat those pancakes,

Anei

* A Doppler Scan, by using sound waves reflected back to a device, looks at how much blood is going through your veins and arteries. Recommended to diagnose a DVT.