It is difficult to write about teaching in Malawi because it is so intense. Everybody involved has a whole lot wrapped up in the venture. Some badly want to help members of their families, some are full of excitement about homoeopathy and know that their chances of learning are limited to this one week because we don't know when we will be back, some are reaching out to a possible future, an education, a chance to make a living, some are just power hungry and knowledge is power. I for one am cranky; I want to teach them ALL I know, every scrap of it. I want to cram it into their heads so that they know as much as me and can deal with the huge need for homoeopathy which is all around them. Impossible of course, you get to learn a lot as the decades go by and you just can't pass it all on in a week no matter how much you might want to. And not the best way to teach.


The days are intense too just because they are so full. In every spare moment Jane was writing out the remedies we were teaching so that we would have something to leave them at the end of the week and I was writing out explanations on the case of each patient we saw so that the students understand what to do when they check up on that patient in a month. We were also preparing our lectures each day and seeing patients when we were not teaching. Just as an example of the intensity, on Sunday having seen 18 patients each, I heard Jane say my name and realised I had not spoken to her all day though we were working in the same room. I hadn't spoken to Davy either who was stationed on a bench half way between us making up the remedy for each patient as we saw them.


That day was a particularly gratifying day for me because the last time we had been in that village I had seen nearly all very old grandmothers who are difficult to treat because they are just old and in pain from a life of hard work and loss and struggle and the remedy picture is not always clear. Seeing them again with smiles on their faces and less pain or no pain was amazing. Having met them all last time I could vividly imagine an old age full of the accumulated strain and injury and pain of the years gone by with no hope of relief until death. Old people are central to the community so having a village full of grannies who are smiling instead of moaning is definitely making a difference to the world!! Homoeopathy could change the world one granny at a time.


Our students translated for us each day and it shows their dedication that they would do that hard work all day without complaint. The very dedication of the studants also made the week intense.


On Saturday we saw as many people as possible in an AIDS support group that one of our students who is a nurse is involved in. The day wound on and on and still there were queues outside the door. It got dark but there was electricity so we carried on but then the rain came – a little at first so we raised our voices over the sound of the drops on the tin roof but then the crack of thunder was directly overhead, the rain increased to the loudest possible downpour and then doubled in volume and the lights went out, the whole queue of patients bundled inside in a rush with Davy and his remedy station trailing behind and the room was packed with people to the extent that you couldn't put your foot any where on the floor.


For a while we sat inside the pitch black explosion of noise thinking we couldn't possibly carry on working and then we carried on working. Alwin, who was translating, held his phone so that I could see the paper I was writing on and we literally put our heads together with the patient jammed between us on the bench and shouted.


By the time we finished the last patient the rain had stopped and we stepped outside to see a bright but wet three quarter moon and a large tree fallen in the yard.


This is Thursday, it is dawn and outside my window the birds are doing exotic stuff with song. We traveled all day yesterday and two hours the day before but when we reached Mbeye last night we heard that there is no room on the bus to Moshi until tomorrow so we are stuck in Mbeye for another twenty four hours. We might just have to spend a whole day doing nothing!

A mud filled river in Mzimba

Green things happy for the rain