Tricycles and wheelchairs Update3

The suspense on MF is officially over. Her rather delayed delivery was a reflection of some realities particular to Malawi and indeed of the various mechanisms that exist to get around them. MF, now a 40yr old woman, lost the use of both her legs well in her childhood to that terrible disease called Poliomyelitis. She has learnt to get about since by shuffling on her hands and knees. She didn’t actually appear on the radar of MAP (Malawi Against Physical Disability) until 1.5 years ago quite incidentally after a routine admission to hospital. Now many of you will have wondered why Malawi Against Physical Disability uses the acronym MAP instead of MAPD! Well the reason is that MAP was actually an accurate initialisation of its original name Malawi Against Polio, but then had to be rebranded when the disease (thankfully) became quasi-extinct in the early 2000s.

To get back to our unexpected delay in delivery of the tricycle, this is what happened. The tricycle was actually ready more than 2 months ago. We then tried to get hold of the ‘client’, as they are known in MAP, whose waiting list the patient was selected from. Since most people don’t have a postal address in Malawi, they have to be located through their village or if they are in a big town, by a prominent reference point- e.g. “Ntcheu Boma, behind Petroda”. Sometimes, they use a well-to-do neighbour’s address. This is a service that often applies to mobile phones too, when the client does not have a handset of their own. Our first attempt at tracking MF was unsuccessful and we assumed that she must have moved away. So we sent a volunteer from her neighbourhood to investigate and after a while, he got back to us triumphantly having pinned her down. We probably had got her whereabouts misspelt and got misled as a result. This also isn’t uncommon here, where names are often spelt as they sound. With some sounds being so similar, two completely different locations can end up being spelt the same, or even worse spelt as the other! (Just consider these town names for a second and judge for yourself: Lilangwe and Lilongwe; Bua and Mua; Lunzu and Lundu). If that wasn’t enough, occasionally, the client themselves give us a wrong address, for a number of reasons (embarrassment, social issues at home, no fixed abode etc).

Another interesting little hurdle that further complicated matters was the fact that our volunteer was initially chased away. Our volunteer is part of an outreach network that allows MAP as an organisation to provide services to even the most far flung haunts in the land. Now strangers are not always welcome in villages, often because they may have had some bitter past experiences from fraudsters. Thus when our man first came to the village, he was perceived as a crook who would run away with the tricycle and sell it once it got made for MF. It was not until a few months later, when they heard about other people in nearby villages benefitting from our volunteers’ efforts, that they finally called him back and welcomed him.

I have to say that to have eventually managed in imparting to MF her designated mobility aid is a success story of sorts. Now this 40 year old formerly housebound maker of snacks can finally take her delights herself to the selling stalls at the market or elsewhere. Her specialties are the famed deep fried doughballs called Mandasi (to which I’m sadly addicted) and coated fish called Kanyenya. So if you ever find yourself buying one of these near Lunzu, make sure you look around to see if you find a tricycle parked nearby!
Look up MF’s first spin on her new bike on my latest videoblog: coming up soon


With Alex and Sally (from MAP) at MAP


Girl Power


Empowered!