A day at the court...

Wow I'm sure surprised at the amount of comments on that last post...One? I know my parents were freaking, and immediately called/emailed me. But still, one comment? Were you guys just to dissapointed? Well, no matter, the blog shall continue as long as at least one person other than my parents read this.

So Monday Monday Monday...Pretty normal day, all things considered. One or two things of note at the site. I apparently have magic hands for applying suppositories. (The ones we use to make the stubborn ones poop) One kid pooped right as I put the suppository in, and the other pooped as I layed him on the towel. Maaaaaagic hands. So thats now my job. Yaaaaay. Hahaha.

I spent the rest of the day playing with little babies while we waitd for Leslie to get back and check Edema. (The swelling by water getting stuck in the body, a sign of Kwash.)

Tuesday is going better than I had hoped it would. I woke up as early as I usually do, and waited around, entering data cards. At 7:20 our manager picked me up, and she drove us to the police station. We got a good prosecutor, and left for the courthouse after about an hour. When we got there, since the judges were in a meeting, and she didn't want to make us wait, she let us go, we are going to skip the court case, as I am pleading guilty, and she will call us when our fine is ready. She said it will probably be 1-3 thousand kwatcha, but could be up to 5. I have 8 thousand on me, so I should be OK for the fine.

I'm just going to spend the rest of today entering cards. Not much else to say.

Also, I was told that my explanations of the studys was kinda spotty, so here's try number two.

Stool study is trying to determine what causes kids to get Kwashiorkor. Marasmus is caused by a lack of food in general, whereas Kwash is caused by an undiverse diet (Eating bread paste every day) But it is unclear what is the exact cause of Kwashiorkor. There may be some evidence the difference in those that develop Kwash and Marasmus in the bacteria in the bowels. SO...the study takes twins, and we monitor them until their third birthday, taking stool every three months, unless they become malnourished. If they become malnourished, they get put on chiponde, and we take stool at every visit. In this way, we hope to get many samples from kids with both Kwash and Marasmus, and be able to determine a difference in their "bowel flora" or the bacteria in the stomach and intestines. If it works, The Doctor may be able to determine the cause of Kwash.

The other study is trying to determine whether chiponde that is 10% milk and 10% soy can be used to treat children as well as chiponde that is 25% milk. Now, for some better background on it. Milk is very hard to come by here in Malawi, and very expensive. Soy milk, on the other hand, is not as hard. There are right now, three types of chiponde we use in the field. Soya Chiponde, 10% milk, and 25% milk (the original). Now some amino acids (might not be amino acids, but its SOMETHING) present in milk are needed for a baby to put on some serious weight. A few are present in soy milk, but not all. It has been shown that a baby that is only moderately malnourished can be treated on soya, but babies that are severley malnourished cannot. However, if we can treat severe children with a chiponde solution that has less milk in it, it would be possible to treat more children. So we, completely at random, treat children with either the 10 or 25 solution, and see if they recover. So far there hasn't been any major, visible differences with the two types, but once we have treated 2500 they will check to see exactly how much of a difference there is.

If that wasn't clear in any way, please let me know.

TTYL
---He whohopes people are still reading this.