Immunizations, Weather and Other Fun Facts

Do you remember when you were little and you had to go to the doctor to get shots? You remember the anxiety and the fear of having to go and wait, all the while knowing that soon it would be your turn to get stuck with the needle?
Well, we experienced that with some of the children yesterday morning. We went with about 18 little ones who needed follow-up shots or had no record of previous immunizations to the health clinic in town to get immunized. You can't help but feel a little sorry for them, knowing how unpleasant it is, but it's certainly necessary.
In Mzuzu the health clinic does not at all resemble the health clinics I've seen in the U.S. The basic structure was kind of like an open area enclosed behind a brick wall with a structure that kind of resembles one of those picnic shelters in the county park at one end--a big open area under a roof with brick supports and a cement floor. Lots of women were lined up around and sitting on benches under the shelter area holding their babies, waiting to get them immunized. The general progress of things seemed to involve a nurse going down the rows of benches with needles, unceremoniously injecting each child and filling in the immunization card before moving on to the next one. It was so different from the way I remember getting shots as a child, but it is a very efficient system, which I think is probably very valuable here with all the children who need immunizations.
Our children were older than the others there, for the most part, so most of them were more aware of what was going on. As they watched their friends get immunized, the anxiety built up, and not even stickers and candy could completely ease them. But soon it was over and they mostly forgot about it pretty quickly. Some of them, however, were very brave, especially the ones who had already had shots before, and we were very impressed.

This week, we have also started preparing the medications for the medical clinic at the end of the month. Dr. Tan expects to have an incredible amount of people show up for the free medical clinic, to be seen by a doctor and receive medication. In this country, even pain medicines like Tylenol and Advil are very expensive for the average worker, so one thing that the clinic will do is dispense medication. To make it all run more smoothly, we are pre-packaging individual bags of pills for people, like vitamins, Tylenol and antibiotics, so when the doctors prescribe things, they are already put together and ready to be distributed. Hopefully it will make the whole system run more quickly.

As a side note, the rainy season in Malawi has not really been what I expected it to be. I kind of expected it to pour down rain every day, or at predictable intervals, but that's not really the case. It rains pretty frequently, a couple times a week or so, it seems, and often it rains at night, but there is a pretty fair amount of dry weather as well, and clear skies. When it is raining, the wind also tends to pick up, making it a little chilly even though it's summer here now, and most days are very warm.
Tonight the skies are very clear and there are more stars than we've ever seen before. Some of them are familiar constellations--Orion is overhead--but there are tons of stars and constellations we have no way of recognizing or naming. A virtue of this country's usage or access to electricity is that, unlike at home, there is very little light at night, making the stars brighter and easier to see. There are millions of them visible tonight, although we can't find the moon.