letter from Mukinge to Cheryl

Dear One,
Them phone line was nonop over a few days last week and so mail got bunched.
I’m on call this weekend for the WHOLE hospital. YIKES. So far so good as I have yet to run into any major catastrophe. There has been a major premie epidemic since my arrival however. We are kicking a set of 2 day old twins out of their incubator (1.7 & 1.3 kg) in order to get two other Unrelated babies into a separate incubator each. NO IV’s just ng feeds. Gave a talk re NRP (newborn resuscitation) Thurs. It bore fruit this morning as a ZEN (Zambia educated nurse) bagged a kid for 30’ and got her back. I did rounds today and saw Burkitt’s (lymphoma), Kaposi’s (sarcoma), Hansen’s (leprosy) and a tree-felling accident (Newton's Disease??).
I sent an email yest for the 3-5 year old class. I hope it can get to them before I return. Walked into town yesterday and bought you two of the more fashionable kesapis about. It will make you proud. I spent a little over $5.
I am feeling remarkably fit, well rested and comfortable. The rains have stopped and nights are quite cool and crystal clear. The southern cross and alpha & beta Centauri are just over there. Saw the Coal Sack, Beehive, Large Magellanic cloud, Canopus and a bunch of constellations which are even less obvious than up Nawth. Orion is still very recognizable even if he has fallen on his front rather than his back.

Letter to a Christian sister from Mukinge 2001

Dear Lisa,
Thank you for the unexpected pleasure of your email. I really appreciate the letter here which is at times so different from home.
I can’t tell you how priveledged it feels to be here with these people. Today I was able to see a smile on a child’s face which is 1-3 Burkitt’s Lymphoma, to talk to a man about his Leprosy and to help a man with Kaposi’s Sarcoma (& almost undoubtedly AIDS) get some sleep. A little 1 day old girl who was seizuring all Sun & Monday is going to survive perhaps with my help.
But the greatest privledge is the amazing experience of coming so far and only to find myself in the middle of a Christian family. Cultural differences are real and language is a huge barrier but we are all just sinners who for no good reason have been forgiven and brought into the family. These subsistence farmers have a much better sense of who they are and what is important than many of us including me.
Tomorrow, the school here is going to climb the little hill behind the hospital for sunrise services. I am on-call this weekend but have traded off to get the time free for the service. I will have the joy of celebrating Easter a good 8 hours before you, the same time zone as Jerusalem, I find.
Your brother in Jesus our Living lord,
Walt B

Letter from Mukinge to a high school friend and believer 2001

Dear Nancy,
Sorry I havn’t written recently despite your long and interesting email. I have tried out some of the sites and they are most enlightening. But not alll yet! I havn’t even begun with your own pastors site, except for his opening discussion of the Talmud.
I am a little separated from web access at the moment. My most pressing problem are malaria (not mine) and trichuriasis (you don’t really want to know). I have been here over a week and it is quite liveable. The people are poor but wonderful and I enjoy worshiping with them. Rather to the point sermons also. I cannot believe the basic poverty. I see kwashiorkor (sever protein malnutrition, every poster kid you saw for Biafra in the early 70’s) kids and count them by the dozen. One died this AM. Overwhelming infections (another died this afternoon about 445P). But everyone younger than 40 has all their teeth and nobody smokes! Everyone smiles when I try to greet them with my misanta-mwanii and hand clapping. I am home on the 27th Keep me in your prayers.
Walt Boutwell

Excerpt from letter to brother from Mukinge 2001

Dear Joey,
It was so good to get your mail and to know that two way communication is not just a theoretical event!!
The seasons are cold then dry then rains then warm and dry. We are entering the latter which is from Apr. or May to July, a tropical Autumn…..
(about lecturing)…..However, it is fun to teach people who want to learn (and impossible to teach those who know they are well-informed). I usually start my own talk on infant feeding with the 1749 battle of Culloden (as all really good lectures do, you know), go on to the “Gin Epidemic” and then wing it! …..
Thank you for your prayers and kind words. However I can’t but help thinking that I should have been doing this with the fat of my life rather than the tail. Please keep praying for this mission.
I am well if a trifle punk about the edges at times. Sleeping under mosquito netting takes some getting used to.



Love ya,

W

Excerpt from a letter to David "Top" Moore, Mukinge 2001

I don’t feel that much of my training or experience is of use here. I have never seen malaria before and here literally everyone has it. For adults it means a nasty day of two with aches chills and fever. For kids under five it may kill, wreaks their nutrition and stunts their growth. Kids are weaned at 9m and the mother rapidly get pregnant again thereafter. The baby is breast fed (&therefore well nourished) but the older kid (now 1.5 years old) is fed slices of thick corn mush (called 'nsheema) almost exclusively; moderate calories and low quality, low amount protein. Picture the red-headed bloated belly, apathetic toddler. Many die.
As an experience it is astounding, as a service, I hope to be a little more help than trouble. In all humility, this is following the guidance I have been given. I don’t need to solve problems here, little or big. I have to be faithful

Letter to my sister from Mukinge 2001

Dear Bea,
Thanks for writing back. It seems like I should have a lot of free time but I always fill it. Today (sat the 7th) I had to iron my underwear as well as the rest of my kit. Had it washed yesterday & dried on the line (no dryers) and today I get to steam to death the mango fly eggs which were laid on it yesterday. It seems that if you don’t they hatch & mistake you for unripe fruit. Two rather painful instars later they emerge as maggots.
Went to the provincial capital yesterday, Solwezi. Luanda chief’s residence and all. He is Chief Solwezi, no less. Town looks like a clip from “A Girl like Alice” and your average western. Fewer horses and more people. Met a man who was starting a training school for older orphans, walked out to the site 2 miles away. He was a foster child of one of the missionaries at Mukinge. An interesting afternoon. Drove back with r hand drive. Only thing I couldn’t remember is to use the turn signal instead of the windscreen washer. Every time I forgot great peals of laughter from the 9 MH workers with me.
Zambia is a lot like one's prejudices suggest and not. A women in kesapis (1x2M brightly printed cloth, skirt cum baby-carrier, pot holder, table cloth, blanket, diaper (nappie here) carrying a load of wood on her head. Road side vendors selling corn on the cob roasted for 50Kwacha (about 1.5cents), beggars, piles of small dried fish, post polio paralytic limbs, cataracts, cobras (as road kill), lines of army ants (local name is pishuti), goats lying in the roadway, brilliant flowers, fruit on the trees, dust, bicylcles built for one but carrying three peddling the bare pegs in bare feet, malaria. It is also drinking a coke on an open veranda with painted disney characters wishing me a "cool yule" next to an advertisement for condoms. Wish Roz a happy bd.