After purchasing the jacket, we walked over to the bus station and found the Huruma bus to Madisi. To my delight we had the same bus driver that we had on the last leg of our first trip – Abeli who is a former student of the Vintons. He had this very low voice and he nearly scared me to death the first time we met him. (He had stuck his head in the front window of our first bus and said to us, “You need to get on the other bus,” without explaining who he was and where he was taking us.) He is a very good driver and takes very good care of his passengers.
We arrived in Madisi around 5 pm before sundown and the sun was shining and it was a nice cool day. We went for a short walk with Susan shortly after arriving and she took us down by their ram pump and we walked around it and found the spring that feeds it. She took to Bariki but kept calling him Barack or Baraka. Then we came back to the house. We had picked up our vegetable box on Friday and tried to cram as much of that into Dan’s pack along with some Anchor cheese, which is imported from New Zealand and Steve had clued us in that Susan really enjoys. Well, you should have heard the joy in Sarah’s voice when she saw the broccoli and cauliflower and snap peas. Sarah, who is from the US is one of the key people in the Village Schools Organization, is a real joy to be around. (I think that she helps Susan to keep her sanity and is really a great teacher with the kids – tough, but good!)
The following morning (Sunday) we “worshipped” by listening to a sermon on DVD, which was a sermon given by Oscar Muriu at the annual youth rally in Urbana Illinois this past year. He has a very large church in Nairobi, Kenya. His message still gives me goose bumps just thinking about how he started out his talk. It made me think of how Pastor Jan described the approach that was taken on the story of Christ this year at Oberammergau. I want to remember to look up the link to listen to it again! Steve Vinton mentioned the address in one of his most recent email letters.
Then we were off to round on Susan’s “friends.” Dan and Bariki came with us on the first visits.
We visited a young woman who was laying out in the sun on a grass mat and was obviously in a lot of pain. Dan took a couple of pictures of her. She cannot fully extend her right leg because the Kaposi’s lesion on her thigh causes her too much pain. Susan and I cleansed the lesion and redressed it with some dressings that she had and then we prayed with her and her family. Then we were on our way to see more patients. Later in the day, we, (Susan, Rashidi, one of the Vinton’s students and I) visited a couple with their three children. The couple has gotten tested and the husband knows that he is positive, but the wife threw away her first set of results because she did not want to know. Neither one of them has started ARVs yet. Well, Susan does not beat around the bush! Her first words were, “Do you want me to raise your children?” Then she launched into a lecture telling them that the wife has got to get tested again and based upon those results, they need to get started with treatment. Rashidi closed the visit by telling them that the stigma is gone now, because so many people in their area are getting treated. This young man is such a treasure. He comes to the Vinton’s home every night to enter statistics in their log and schedule for people to go in by bus for treatment. I cannot remember the details about his own family history, but I would not be surprised if he is an “orphan” of HIV. Among the other patients we visited included a young girl who may or may not have TB on top of her HIV as well as Jeska (whom I met on our first visit and whom I never expected to see again.) She looked so much better and so much more comfortable. She is able to walk now because her foot is so much better and Susan wants her to go into Dar to get chemo at Ocean Road for the residual Kaposi’s sarcoma on her foot. We also visited a witch doctor. Susan stated that he refuses to accept Christ because that would mean that he would have to give up his profession. He did allow her pray with him, however.
Late in the afternoon we visited a home filled with women who are all on ARVs and you would not know that they are sick unless you were told. They make baskets which Susan buys from them and this money allows them to sustain their households. Susan works with an interior designer who sells these baskets in the Houston area. The baskets are incredibly beautiful and if the quality is down, Susan will not purchase them. She does provide feedback to the ladies regarding her expectations and the next time she comes to purchase baskets, she sees much improvement. What pride they have in their products! At one point a woman stood up to bring her baskets up to Susan to inspect and Susan introduced her to us as “Mama Burton.” Then she explained to Mama Burton that we were going to visit Kising’a the following weekend. She then said something to us in Kiswahili and Susan said that she is asking you to please greet her son for her while we are there. Burton is a teacher at the secondary school in Kising’a. Dan took pictures, which you will be able to see, of the “basket ladies” and showed them to Burton the following weekend. It was so sweet. Burton saw his mother and wistfully said, “There is my mother.” He seemed so homesick to see her. At this point we concluded our visit with the ladies and it was now very dark outside. It also had been raining and we had to climb back up to the car and I was so sure that I would slip and fall. As we hiked up the hill, the women piled the baskets up on their heads and hiked up beside us, many of them in their bare feet. We piled all the baskets into the car and were off heading back to Madisi for a late dinner.
The following day was Tuesday and it was raining so much that Abeli cancelled the bus trip into town to deliver the people with HIV to the clinic, because the roads were so bad. That meant that our ride back to Mafinga was cancelled as well. Later in the morning, Susan said, “I am going to take you part way in with Abeli’s guidance and then we will have you three catch a taxi the remainder of the way.”
We started out with a prayer from Susan and were off heading down steep mud slicked roads which reminds one of icy winter roads in Minnesota. When we reached the point where we were to meet the taxi we pulled over and stopped on a side road/intersection. With some negotiation we arranged for Robert to drive us all of the way to Iringa and on the way he stopped off at Ifunda to visit a teacher whom Dan had met on the trip he took by himself to Tanzania in 2008. We also attempted to look up a few of the Madisi students who had started Form 5. We were able to locate one of the three students. Then it was off to Iringa. Road construction caused one delay, but we made it home that evening despite the rainy weather and muddy roads in Madisi.
Purchasing baskets in the living room. Susan is working on improving designs so they can be marketed to people who do not need baskets. In the village, function is what counts.:
Child who came to see us. Notice the coal heated iron in the lower left:
Women carrying the purchased baskets to the car for us:
At Ifunda Secondary school visiting Peter Mbata who was Juwata's roommate in Dar. Notice Bariki's new jacket, I don't think I have seen him without it since he got it.
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