Day 6 in Malawi 15.3.2025
Today the Swedish medical team is taking a break after a week of long days full of operations and confrontation with a great deal of suffering. Every single case touches the heart. The very young children with congenital deformities, the older children, some with severe burns, and the elderly, some with decades of suffering that they carry around with them without complaint. Every hospital treatment costs money. Families therefore often wait far too long before taking their sick to the right place. All too often, “miracle healers” are consulted in the village, who often make the suffering worse. Only Swedish doctors offer treatment free of charge. Hence the ever longer queues. Those for whom there is no time are put off until October when the medical team returns.
But today it’s time to relax. We are going to Salima to the Safari Beach Lodge on Lake Malawi. Beach is right, safari is not! I’m the beneficiary of this recreational activity because I haven’t done nearly as much. We take the familiar road again until we finally arrive at the lodge. A beautiful garden reveals itself to us with a view of the huge Lake Malawi. Cäcilie and I move into a little house made of rough-hewn stone with a small wooden terrace, look out over the lake and feel a little like Tania Blixen a hundred years ago on her farm in Kenya. We let the week pass us by once again. How is the country supposed to get back on its feet? Without natural resources, almost no tourism and no access to the sea. Even the escape route to Europe is far too long and insurmountable. Corruption, poverty and overpopulation are the major obstacles in this country’s path. Should the commitment of the doctors, who take on a long journey, donate their vacation and bear the costs themselves apart from the flight, continue at all? I am beginning to understand what makes them return again and again to a task that confronts them with people we hardly ever encounter in Western Europe. Parasites, HIV, severe deformities, incurable diseases, the worst ulcers – these are the diseases of poor Africa here in Malawi. I understand that it makes them deeply happy to make people’s lives a little easier, to give parents back a child who is almost restored. Giving back the privilege of the environment we were born into.
In the evening, we eat in the tropically warm garden on the shores of Lake Malawi. The doctors, who are working very hard, slowly release a little tension. Despite the short vacation atmosphere, all conversations revolve around the patients. The severe clinical pictures, the years of suffering endured, sometimes with great patience and often resignation, leave us all with a sense of urgency.
I only got to know everyone – apart from my friend – this week. On this evening, I felt how much a shared commitment creates familiarity, how much the joy of a restored child builds bridges and how much the deeply engraved images in our minds connect us all.
