District Tour

This weekend we spent a day traveling around the district that we live in, Dowa District. First we ventured beyond Dowa, the capital town of the district, to a ‘semi-permanent’ refugee camp for Rwandans, Congolese, Sudanese and others. Unfortunately we were turned away at the gate because we didn’t have permission to enter. Apparently one needs permission because many journalists go there and take pictures and the residents dislike it. Additionally, the security situation in the camp is rumored to be less than ideal as war criminals have relocated to the camp.

While we could not enter the camp, our peripheral impression was that the camp doesn’t look much different than most of the villages in Malawi. The two differences we noticed were that the homes were closer together and that there seemed to be a great deal more electricity running through the camp than through a typical village (which is usually none). Maybe we can get back there another day.

Our next stop was the Dowa District Hospital, which is where St. Mary’s sends it referrals. Visiting the Dowa Hospital was our first trip to a government run hospital. Our first impressions exceeded expectations. The hospital seemed to be very well kept and even had a couple of new buildings. But then we noticed a couple of things that brought our collective impression back down to earth. First, during our entire tour of the hospital we saw no doctors and 1 nurse (who was actually a nursing student). The hospital apparently has a fairly strong staff of doctors and nurses but none of them were around, even though the hospital was full with patients. It seems that morale is low and focus on patient care is even lower. Which leads to the second observation – the sharing of beds. We understand that this is common practice in many developing countries for patients to share beds, but seeing it first-hand was another story.

Our final stop was to spend a few minutes watching the Dowa Hospital Soccer Club take on the club from Nkhotakhota. The experience was cool, the crowd was fairly large and the match actually had quite a bit of excitement. Unfortunately our visit to the match ended with our first taste of anti-western sentiment. It was not that big of a deal and none of us felt remotely threatened, but when you’re used to everyone being so warm and welcoming anything that diverges from that seems pretty shocking.

All and all the day was fun because we just drove around with our Malawian friend John without too much of an agenda. We stopped at the places I mentioned as well as at the market and to meet a couple of John’s friends. All of these things contribute to us learning more about the place we live and ultimately how to do our jobs here better.