Before my wife, Heather, and I left for Malawi in sub-Saharan Africa last November, many friends and acquaintances advised us that this trip would be a life-changing experience — one we would never forget. They could not have been more right. As we drove into Blantyre, the largest city in the south of the country, our first impression was “this is not right — this is not normal.” Now that we are back in Canada we look around and think to ourselves “this is not right — this is not normal.” We had both done our homework and had read in-depth the articles and publications relating to the AIDS situation in Africa but all the studying could not have prepared us for what we were about to see. In Malawi, which is called the warm heart of Africa, we looked upon the faces that went with the numbers. We saw the giants of faith and marveled at an inner strength the Lord bestows on those who reach out to Him during times of hardship.
If despair could be a place it would surely be the palliative care ward of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre. As we walked through the corridors lined with patients and their families, past small rooms of six or eight beds where the highest level of modern medicine was an intravenous unit, all the words and all the adjectives from all that we had read of the plight of this part of the globe that the world seemed to have forgotten fell silent and knelt before the sound of tears and the vacuum of hopelessness. We entered a room approximately 40 feet by 40 feet that would serve as the last light of life for 200 patients. They lay two to a bed, they lay on the floors or propped up against the wall. They were cared for by just two nurses who could offer them only aspirin for pain relief (which they would run out of frequently). As we shuffled through the ward I looked down on these poorest of people and from sunken and darkened eyes they looked up at me as if to ask, “Why are you here?” It was a question
I asked myself many times during our time in Malawi and I still ask myself months later.
From there we went to the orphan day cares established by the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, where over 100 children all under the age of five greeted us with joy and energy. The contrast was striking which made our surprise all the greater. We were met with cheers of delight whenever our cameras flashed and they would group around us in wonder when we showed them the images in the viewfinder. Here we found some of the answers to some of the questions that so many people have asked as they considered the solutions to the seeming unending problems of developing countries. Here was the physical result of human compassion. The real manifestation of our God's power at work in the hearts of those that care. We left knowing that the Lord was indeed moving in Malawi.
