VISITING CHICUMBUTSO
06/07/03
Chicumbutso’s house was empty. I sat on a bench beside the door, the bench I had been sitting so many times in the past. A little girl wandered in to the house, happily came to sit in my lap and we started playing.
Soon a familiar figure, an old lady carrying a child in her back, came towards the house. She looked puzzled, obviously wondering who was sitting at her porch. I stood up and walked towards her. Suddenly she raised her hands, smiling and half running came to hug me. Nobody outside her family had been visiting her since I left, so no wonder she was pleased.
Chicumbutso had grown, but was still very thin and weak. I had brought a food parcel, Brenda’s Teddy and Joshua’s old car. When I pushed the car towards Chicumbutso, he started crying. "He thought it was a snake" explained Mai A…Only a child who has never had a toy can mistake it for a snake! Before long though, Chicumbutso was curiously studying the wheels of the car and I am sure he is driving it by now.
As for the girl, Frocy, Mai A had inherited another orphan. I was saddened to hear that Frocy’s mother, whom I thought I had accidentally ‘saved’ when visiting them previously, had died. I found this young beautiful girl suffering from shingles on her head and eye when taking a food parcel to Chicumbutso last year. Our nurse was then able to get antibiotics and pain killers for her. She seemed recovered when I saw her before my departure in October, but recovered one day, dead on the next, seems a gloomy reality among these poor, malnourished Malawians. Apparently Frocy is not well either and I am wondering whether this deadly HIV virus is lingering in her body as well.
Like her mother, Frocy has most beautiful big eyes – but how much sorrow those eyes were carrying already at the age of 4. Tonight though, Frocy is hugging Brenda’s little bear and Chicumbutso is dreaming about cars rather than snakes.