Even after eight hours of sleep, I woke up this morning feeling like I had been hit by a freight train. Rapidly repositioning yourself on the planet can do that to you. Some say it is a result of your body trying to get use to a new time zone, where day is night and night is day. Others point to the tremendous dehydration your body goes through in flight- if that is the case I would not want to ever work in the airline industry. Still others say that your body needs to adjust to it's new position, relative to the magnetic poles and other mysterious earth forces. Whatever the cause, jet lag is real, and it is hitting me hard on this trip. Probably being awake for as long as I had been did not help.

I took breakfast at my hotel and then gathered my cameras together for the 8:00AM pickup from the ADRA driver. I spent an hour or so meeting all the staff at the ADRA Malawi office and getting briefed by the country director, Tayo Odeyemi on the impressive program that ADRA is administrating in Malawi. Food security, HIV/AIDS education, water and sanitation, health, mother and child survival, the usual things that ADRA does in so many countries throughout the world. But what was not usual, and what seemed to be the largest program that they were currently managing was emergency food distribution to families suffering from last years drought. With this year's crop not ready yet for at least another month, people are still suffering from the crop failure during last year.

After meeting a few more people and going over a few more plans and details, we were finally out for our day of shooting. Kingston, my driver pointed the ADRA vehicle down a beautiful road that he called the valley of pineapples and bananas. But the first thing that I noticed was the hills that seemed to stretch out forever, all planted in tea. In many of the fields, workers were scattered among the bushes, baskets on their backs, picking tea. They get paid a set amount for every basket that they bring in, but Kingston was not able to tell me how much. I am interested to find out if the pay has improved since the last time that I was in Malawi. At that time, in 1997, tea pickers made about 10 to 12 dollars/month. Not a lot for, back breaking work in the hot sun.

But today's agenda was not the plight of the tea pickers. We were heading out to visit one of the many regions where ADRA Malawi conducts an HIV/AIDS program. While we do not hear too much about HIV and AIDS in Canada and the US, it continues to be a huge problem in many poor countries of the world. Hardest hit is Africa, where HIV infection rates can be as high as 30%, and millions have died leaving a wake of personal devastation for surviving children and family members. HIV and AIDS is so much at the surface of thinking in Africa that it changes the way people have conversations. When you hear someone say, "she's positive" they are probably not talking about an optimistic personality. They are saying that she has tested positive for HIV. One of the most common events in Malawi and most African nations is the funeral. In most cases the person has died of AIDS.

Dominated by the beautiful and massive Mulanje mountain, Thembe, the region we were visited, is rich in agriculture. We stopped at a roadside stand and purchased some of the local product, five pineapples and a couple of bunches of bananas. "Much cheaper here then in Blantyre", Kingston said. I promptly sampled one of the bananas. If you have never eaten a banana freshly picked, you have not really eaten a banana. One of the joys of travel is to sample products in the countries where they are actually grown. The flavors are overwhelming!

At one of our stops we picked up Andiyesa Mhango, the ADRA project director for the HIV/AIDS program for the Thembe district. She would take us out and show us some of the work that ADRA was doing at the local level. Our first stop was to see a program where volunteers from local villages, trained by ADRA, care for those who are sick from their HIV infection. The ADRA training that they receive prepares them to not only treat the various illnesses that a person with HIV is likely to get, but also how to deal with the social and emotional needs of the patient and family members. We picked up two of the village volunteers and proceeded a short distance down the road to stop and meet a "client".

Angela is 10 years old. Her parents and sister died of AIDS when she was about three years old. She is being raised by her grandmother. This brave little girl is a survivor! No one knows precisely when Angela became HIV positive but it probably happened while her parents were still alive. That means that she has been living with this killer virus in her body for at least seven years. When she feels well enough, she attends school and helps her grandmother around the house. When she is sick, she stays at home and rests. The ADRA volunteer workers that come to her house care for her, teach her grandmother all that they know about HIV, and how to care for the rashes and infections. They teach her about the importance of proper diet as well as how to care for Angela without getting infected herself.


With the drugs that Angela is receiving from the Global Fund and National AIDS commission, and the local support that she is receiving from the ADRA program, there is a good chance that she will survive many more years. Hopefully long enough to see the day when a cure is discovered and this horrible disease is eradicated for ever.


From our visit with Angela we went on to the local school where we were treated to a display of AIDS awareness education that ADRA volunteers conduct regularly at all of the schools, churches and village squares in the area. Slowly but surely the word about the dangers of HIV and how it is transmitted are getting through to young people throughout Malawi, thanks in a great part to ADRA.

Our final stop of the day was at a training center for AIDS orphans. This is a huge problem throughout Africa. When parents die from AIDS, what happens to the children? Who protects and works the family plot of land? Who makes sure that there is enough to eat in the house? Who pays for the uniforms, books and school supplies so that the children can stay in school? Who makes sure that the child receives the life skills that they will need to survive? ADRA is addressing this problem by engaging local volunteers to teach the "AIDS orphans", as they are called, income generating skills so that they will eventually be able to become financially independent. Some learn to sew, others learn carpentry, bricklaying, or how to run a small business.


What a wonderful sight it was to see how the local people of Thembe were taking care of their own people who have been hit so hard with this disease. At the shop where we stopped, boys and girls were learning the skill of making clothes, something that will be able to feed them for life!

We made it back to Blantyre about 7:00PM where I collapsed in my small hotel room, but not before cutting up one of the pineapples that we had bought in the market. I don't think that I have ever tasted anything so sweet!