Burns and Bravery

Wednesday afternoons, following Mphatso, we visit a girl named Naomi. Two months prior, Naomi suffered from an epileptic seizure while holding her infant, and rolled into an open fire. Her infant was spared- her arm was not. A skin graft was attempted to repair the third degree burns covering her left arm, but has left both her thigh and arm open, raw and vulnerable. Kneeling in dirt, swatting chickens, I attempt to make a sterile field with an old ziplock bag and clean gloves. The smell of cassava soaking in the sun is a pleasant odor of vomit mixed with gangrene, and I briefly wonder if it could be marketed as a potent weight-loss scheme back in the states? Back to Naomi! Today is my first time providing wound care alone, and as I unwrap her dressings, I brace myself. Her left arm is completely blackened, with areas of peeling skin and oozing flesh. She screams as I attempt to clean her open wounds with soap and water, and I am forced to have her brother and mother hold her down. My apologizes sound weak, and it is with urgency that I attempt to redress her arm without trapping one of the carnivorous flies beneath.
It is 5:30, and hour before darkness, before I make it back to the tarmac where I might catch transportation back to the roadblock. From the roadblock, I still have a 35 minute walk down to Mwaya Beach, where I stay. As if a lifelong fear of the dark is not enough to send me into a fit of tachycardia, it is also much more difficult to see (avoid) snakes, past nightfall. For 30 minutes I walk, and wait, yet not a SINGLE vehicle drives past. With the petrol shortage, and the increasing black market prices, I am not surprised. Still 10.5 kilometers from my destination, I start to panic, and flag down the first vehicle to pass me- a 16 wheeler truck. As I sheepishly ask them for a ride, the driver jumps out and hoists me up, from with point I have to climb across the labs of the six men who are occupying the cabin. As they grin at me and offer me Chakula, a white substance in a white carton (milk?), it is with increasing panic that I realize that not only does the passenger door have no handle, I have no local cell phone and dusk is falling. I quickly plan my escape, and wonder if I could survive the 10ft jump out of the window of a moving vehicle, if I aimed for patches of grass lining the road, with obvious care to avoid the crocodile-laden river. Can I fight off 7 men who are currently and actively being fortified with milk? As we reach the police roadblock of Matete I breath a sigh of relief, and thank the driver, who proceeds to tell me that he can not let me out yet, for fear of fine, and must past the bend, out of the site of the police, before I disembark. I feel yet another flutter of panic, my new close acquaintance, and envision a life of sex slavery in Lilongwe. I shout out that the police are my friend (I did meet them earlier that morning), and that they would have no cause the fine them (which is when I realized that the “milk” is really a disguised form of distilled beer), and that they are expecting my immediate and punctual arrival! With that, I climbed back across the men, paid double the expected fare, and vigorously waved to the police officers (who had changed their shift since morning), who peered at my dirt-encrusted body, and flushed face, with mild consternation.