Bodilys on a mission in Zambia Lusaka...: Humanitarian Projects in Malawi

October 23 we left Lusaka for Blantyre, Malawi to conduct a Helping Babies Breath training with our partner, the Malawi Ministry of Health. Elder and Sister Humphreys, Public Affairs missionaries, went along with us to guide us to our destination and help with the project. In the past these projects have had specialists from the US come and help with the training but for this one there were native people who had been trained by the US staff so they were conducting the actual training. Our responsibility is to make the arrangements and do the logistics. We stopped along the way in Lilongwe, Malawi and stayed in a mission flat in a compound where other MLS senior missionaries live. They live in this compound.

Here is the flat we stayed in with the Humphries. It has two bedrooms, both master bedrooms. Because there is so much traveling by the senior missionaries the mission rents this flat for the seniors when they are here in Malawi. It ends up cheaper than hotel rooms.

This is the dry season in Africa but hopefully you can see why they call it Eden Estate. All of the Senior missionaries think that this is a vacation home. You come here and don't want to leave.

While in Lilongwe we were able to check on another humanitarian project, clean water. There are several bore hole projects that have been done in Malawi in the past couple of years. We were taken to one that is over a year old. It was out in the bush north of Lilongwe. Here is one of the sites.

The next day we visited another more recent site with the site monitor. This one has some issues so we went to all of the 10 bore holes. This area is very close to the city and has about 80,000 people living in the villages. It was interesting driving to all of the boreholes as we drove on trails between house were the mirrors on the truck almost touched on both sides. Some of it was not fit for a car. Here is one of the 10 bore holes.

Here are some views from the villages.

We then went down to Blantyre to particpate in the HBB training. Here is the chapel that we used for the training. It is a real nice building. There were 28 nurses or midwives that were trained for 2 days on how to care for a baby that is not breathing when delivered. We didn't do much else in Blantyre except for the training and then we returned to Lilongwe.

Here is a picture of the road heading into the roadside market in Blantyre. Every city,town or village has it's roadside market. The sign is advertising for the cell phone service here. Cell phones are everywhere, even in the villages in the bush you can buy cell phone air time.