Mission to Malawi: Day 19 Prision clinic and Crisis Nursery

Day 19 was spent at the Maula Prision in Lilongwe. There are 60 women housed in the prison and approximately 2,300 men. This is a minimum security prison, so many of the prisoners are in for fighting, theft, and even wondering the streets at night. The justice system in Malawi isn't the best so many people spend several years incarcerated for false allegations. Some of their paperwork may be lost during their time and they may never even know why the person was incarcerated in the first place. The women's quarters are much better than the men's as the population is much less. The women can keep one child up to 5 years of age in prison with them. We saw approximately 10 babies during our clinic all very well appearing. The men sleep several hundred to a cell, which means they are basically all spooning on the floor together each night. Skin diseases are rampant among the prisoners, scabies being the worst. Those affected by HIV have a hard time keeping up with their ARTs as the clinic frequently runs out of their medications. This inmates don't last very long. Death due to disease is very common in prison. Unfortunately no pictures in the prison!

Our team at Maula Prision, Charles who was a previous inmate, now runs a ministry in the prsion. Our translators
are students at the African Bible Clinic. And Laci and Selina were are pharmacists. We had one guard!

Our afternoon was spent at the Crisis Nursery in Lilongwe. This nursery houses and feeds children from the ages of birth to two years old. All of their mothers have passed away either due to HIV/AIDS or due to complications in labor. You can visit the babies every day from 2-4pm. The have 12 babies at this time. Some of the children will go back to the extended families once they are able to eat table food at 2 years old, and some are adoptable.