Monday 30 May 2016

Many people supported our trip to Malawi. People gave us money and all sorts of different help we needed to get us on our way. I have been writing all these posts for you so that you will have some idea of what you have paid for.


Starting with possibly our weakest student; you have helped Blessings. Lameck describes Blessings as vulnerable because he doesn't really have a secure place or secure work. He has been to both our previous courses but didn't do brilliantly and hasn't been using homoeopathy. He went away from the last course without even getting a book – I am not sure why that was; possibly he was supposed to share but people disappear to far places where they might get work or a better chance and the book went too. All Blessings wanted from this course was the book. He got the book. But he also got two weeks of food and friendship and computer training. In the random way that chances come and go in this place that may stand to him.


The other students are using homoeopathy in their communities so you have helped communities spread across Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Most of the students are treating serious cases because the serious cases are there and no-one else can help them. They are making a difference to the lives of people with epilepsy, paralysis, HIV/AIDS, asthma (a crippling disease if you don't have access to inhalers) and others. After this two weeks they understand a little more about the people they have not yet been able to help. You have provided them with more resources; books, repertory on computer or phone and remedies to fill the gaps that have grown in their remedy kits. They leave with renewed energy to learn this difficult but so rewarding therapy and help more people thanks to you.


Lastly you have helped Flyness and Angelina, our two most brilliant students – secretly and quietly the most brilliant. In a class full of loud and confident pastors these two 22 year old women have the brains, the discipline to study and the ability to listen. They have more knowledge but less confidence than the others who hold positions of power in society and who are going to turn around one of these days and find themselves far out stripped. In every class there will be tortoises and hares but their patients, the people no longer in pain, whose CD4 counts are going up, who have one epileptic convulsion a month instead of 30 are not going to care if they are treated by a tortoise or a hare. All the students share a compassion for their patients and a desire to help.


Everyone has worked hard these two weeks. We have a graduation ceremony and hold together for the last few hours as a happy little band before we go our separate ways. That is what you have given, that classroom where magic happened for two weeks, where all of us learnt something and renewed our drive to help other people, where we worked together before scattering, where we found wealth in the poverty; you have held that in your hands. Thank You.


I have been home for a week and Africa has not faded from my imagination yet as I know it will do. I feel it in the breach when I try to explain to people I meet, people who don't get it and I know that in another few weeks that will be my reality too. Africa is very far away and this is my last Malawi post for now. Thank you for reading

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