It is 3.30 on Tuesday afternoon and I have hit bliss. It is exactly a week since we set out from home, the end of our second day of teaching and I am sitting in one of the small rooms with Fulgensio, who is translating for me, our 24 year old patient, who suffers from epilepsy, and her mother. I have been hurrying, hurrying, we have crammed so much into two days of teaching and now we are seeing patients who have been waiting since morning. Of course I woke at 4am to work on yesterdays cases and at this stage I am seeing through a haze. I give up, what can I do? I have asked a question that seems to take a lot of translating and while I wait for an answer I zone out and watch the conversation. We are in a new building with unpainted walls which give a perfect grey saturation to host the bright sun blazing at the window and the beautiful black faces and vibrantly coloured clothes that fill the room. I am happy, and, in my moment of zoning out I understand what remedy to give the girl and I think she will do well – always worth giving up!


I am happy with our students too; SUCH hard workers, they have spent the day today captivated by their books. They cannot get enough, reading, discussing, listening learning. The stakes are high for them. All of them are helping a lot of people back home and they are keen to fill the holes in their knowledge and for us it is a great experience to teach such motivated people.


Or whole camp is happy! We have cooks and carpenters (the extra chairs), children (a four year old boy who has travelled from the South of Malawi with his mother who is one of our students) and the patients who wait and chat and wait. In the middle of the day everyone gets fed – the cooks, the carpenters, the students, the teachers, the organisers, the film crew (Davy), the patients waiting patiently, the patients mothers and the boy. Today we had nsima and goat. This may be an expensive way of running a course but every student we teach will help a hundred people and when a thousand people have been helped we won't regret the cost of those extra lunches. Which are very delicious by the way!