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.

First (work) Day

Well, wasn’t the picture debacle yesterday interesting? No, I haven’t gotten to fixing it yet, but I’m going to attempt fixing it after I finish writing this entry. Oh yeah, and I’ll also do my best to put the “, ”, ‘, and ! back where they belong.

The following, minus minor details, will probably be a good example of what my weekdays will be like for the foreseeable future.

So today was a busy day, up at four, out the door by 5. And for your information, you skeptics who know me too well, I was the FIRST one up. So after I ate some brekkist and did a couple sudoku, it was out to pack the truck for the day. We have to make sure it is full of the 10% and 25% chiponde, as well as the Soya. So when we left we stopped by the factory to get some more 25%, and also picked up two nurses…whose names are…wait…damnit…I tried so hard to remember them today…one starts with a C…whatever I'll figure them out later...After that it was a good hour or so until we got to…let me check…Mayaka. On the way my senior filled me in on many things. Like my job for today. And how Unqualified Palin is. And Lots of other things. You find things to talk about in a two hour car ride.

So anyway here’s my job. First things first, I need to make a clarification clear. Project Peanut Butter’s goal is not mainly to treat child malnutrition in Malawi. It’s simply not possible for a group as small as ours to make as large a difference as we would need to. Let me clarify. For example, today in Mayaka, population 57000, there are 14 Chiponde sites other than the ones we run. These are run by the CTC, a government run program. The blue sites I mentioned yesterday are sites that we now simply supply the Chiponde to, and they distribute it themselves. (The Chiponde designs were written up by a former volunteer here and sold to the government. The guy who sold them may or may not be profiting from that. Relations aren’t the best between him and PPB.) CTC makes its own Chiponde, and supplies it as well. Project Peanut Butter runs 14 sites altogether. In total. So we could not even run Mayaka completely on our own. Our main goals are determining whether the 10% is as effective as the 25%, which would allow production world-wide to be run more cheaply, and to see whether the Soya Chiponde is effective in treating moderate malnutrition. Dr Manary is attending a malnutrition council thing, group, get together, whatever it’s called, of malnutrition experts world wide to try to decide upon a treatment of moderate malnutrition.

So the 10% Vs 25% study is a double blind study, meaning that neither those receiving the peanut butter, nor those assigning who gets what know which version of the Chiponde they are getting. So basically, a nurse writes a random letter, A-F, drawn from a box, on every child’s “card.” (Cards record data such as height, target weight, weight, etc.) 3 of the letters correspond to the type 1, (25%) and 3 to type 2. (10%) So I read their cards, and depending on their weight, whether they are only moderately malnourished or seriously malnourished, (Moderates get Soya) and the letter, I give them a certain amount of the specified type of chiponde. Graduates (those who are now healthy) receive 3 bottles, a kilo of beans, and a gargantuan bar of soap.

We had a huge number of people today. Women and babies lined(nor really, more like clumped together) up as far as the eye could see. Ok so they only filled up the yard but there were still a helluva lot of them. You have never heard such a wailing and gnashing of gums.

Long day too. It was 7-1 just handing out the Chiponde, with a couple long (ten minutes to an hour) breaks in between mobs of people. I say mobs, because they never came alone. I always had either a line of 5-6 people or none. Wasn’t as hot as I feared though.

So anyway, afterwards we picked up some benches we had ordered from a local carpenter that we will soon make into bookshelves. And after that we went home. Oh and I really need to learn some Chichewa. All I know right now is Zikomo (Thank you) Madzi. (very much)

Oh and my parents are jerks. JERKS I SAY. They sent me letters. Tons of letters. Letters for every Saturday between now and January 31. YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?!?!?! I have two options. Open all of the letters at once and feel guilty, and regretful for the rest of my stay. Or suffer, SUFFER as I wait to find out what is written in the next one. Actually I haven’t even opened the first one yet but there’s something in it I know because its fat and has a lump and it might not be so bad after I figure out what the lump is but the jerks didntevensendmealetterforwhenIgotherethefirstisforSaturday…JERKS…Thanks…jerks…