Back to Lilongwe (by Jim O'Meara)

An early start from Mvuu Camp found us listening to numerous birds, monkeys and the grunt of hippos. We departed by boat for an hour trip on the river to our bus which then delivered us to the Machinga District Hospital. Being the busy bees that we are, 100 chairs were set up and provided to the hospital by 9:30.

There are only four orthopedic surgeons in Malawi. The hospitals and clinics of Malawi have "Orthopedic Clinical Officers" (OCO) who do the basic care for patient, with the most serious cases waiting for the surgeon to visit the hospital, sometimes only once a month. Sandi and Alex are two OCOs who are traveling with us to deliver the wheelchairs. Sandi is from Lilongwe MAP, and Alex from Blantyre MAP (Malawi Against Physical disability). They give us tremendous help for the day-to-day organization of this trip.

In the office of the Orthopedic Clinical Officer at Machinga, we found displayed on the wall the "Operation Malawi" certificate and packing list that we gave to them two years ago. There was also a card from Judy Gallegos. It is nice to see traces of the project our District did two years ago.

We continued onto Lilongwe and attended the Lilongwe Rotary Club luncheon. Somebody showed us a newspaper, The Nation, main newspaper in Malawi, with a short article about our wheelchair delivery.

Following lunch we went back to MAP, a large hospital association that have several locations in Malawi. This location was in Lilongwe and they received 140 wheelchairs from us. We had stopped at this location earlier, but the chairs we left then had all been reallocated to other hospitals, so we had to give them more.

Our evening meal was shared at a local Italian restaurant. We enjoyed this very much since most hotel foods are similar here: potatoes, corn, onions, chipped beef or chicken...