Esther Lupafya wakes up around six o'clock every morning. Before an hour has passed, before she can have her morning shower, several people have already knocked on her door seeking money, medicine, guidance and food.
By the time she reaches the office at seven, there is a crowd of people waiting for her. She goes to morning prayers and by 7:30 she is at her computer checking her emails, progress reports, the previous day's reports from the various homecare workers and so forth. At 8:30 she goes out into the community. Some days she may not get back home until 7:00 in the evening. Often by the end of the day she will not have accomplished everything she had planned to do.
Lupafya is a nurse — has been since 1989, and a midwife — and is currently the HIV coordinator at the Ekwendeni Mission Hospital in Malawi, which is supported by PWS&D. She is a no-nonsense sort of person, speaking plainly, freely offering her advice, especially on issues of childcare and rearing. She also has a quiet sense of humour and a subtle wit.
Everyday Lupafya visits some home-based patients; then she goes to supervise the school and visits some young people who live a long drive away. She tries to return by five o'clock to make notes at the office. From her waking moment to bedtime she encounters the same requests: food, medicine, school fees, money, soap, feed for pigs, drugs for the chickens, staples like sugar. One of the hospital programs is for income generation: they attempt a holistic approach to meet the social, mental, spiritual and physical needs but, as Lupafya says: “Their needs are huge but you only have so much.”
An estimated one million people, or about 15 per cent of Malawi's population are living with HIV; half of those are under 14 years of age.
Lupafya prays the developed world will not forget or tire of supporting the developing world. “In almost every walk of Africa they are suffering with HIV. We are all supported by donors and we worry you will start to think 'how long can we support those Africans?' So, we pray for you.
More important than donations though, Lupafya also seeks prayers that “one day the disease will be gone — that one day we should all be safe.”
Lupafya, and the Ekwendeni Mission Hospital, is one small force in this monster storm. When confronted with the numbers she says simply, “I love the people who are suffering.”
