50 years of VSO: Malawi in the 60s
VSO’s health programme in Malawi is one of its biggest. Returned VSO volunteer Magdalene Sacranie proves it has long been one of its most ambitious, too. In 1968 she was known as Maggie Allard, a twenty-three year old physiotherapist who spent three years helping to rebuild the lives of leprosy patients all over Malawi.
I arrived in Malawi in 1968 to work with a Lepra project based at a purpose-built 36-bed unit in the grounds of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre.
I joined the 10-year project in its third year. The idea was that all leprosy patients in the 10,000 square mile project area would be identified and then treated as outpatients as far as possible. If patients became acutely ill or developed complications, they would be brought into the unit and I would be involved in their treatment. I was just 23 years old and had two years’ post-graduate experience.
Overcoming great - but preventable - challenges
I was very keen to try all ways to help the patients and some of them presented enormous challenges. As part of my ‘orientation’ I had visited the only leprosarium left in UK, but nothing could have prepared anyone adequately for some of the solutions I tried to come up with. I soon found myself working with materials like fibreglass and resin to produce a functional prosthetic attachment for someone without hands or feet or a below-knee amputation.
An American orthopaedic surgeon flew in regularly from Zambia and performed different types of reconstructive surgery and it was my job to rehabilitate the patients afterwards. So much of the damage done by the disease was preventable. Education with frequent and careful explanations to the individual was an obvious need and so I quickly assumed a teaching role.
Training locals for long-lasting change
With Lepra’s backing I invited the five leprosaria and one mission hospital involved in leprosy work in the whole of Malawi to each send two candidates to Blantyre to be trained as leprosy rehabiliation workers. I obtained textbooks and other useful teaching aids from the UK and USA and at the end of the course presented each candidate with a certificate. They then went back and put what they had learned into practice. To compliment the three-week training course I wrote and had printed “A Handbook for Leprosy Rehabilitation Workers”.
I would often visit the newly qualified leprosy rehab workers as often as possible. Some of them were in almost inaccessible parts of Malawi – I survived a catalogue of breakdowns and punctures to get to them. At one particularly remote leprosarium, one of my rehabilitation workers was caring for 90 inpatients and 3,000 outpatients with 2 untrained assistants.
Giving patients the chance to make a living
With the confidence or arrogance of youth, I revealed the dishonesty of the way in which funds were raised using lurid photos of the patients, and suggested that it was time some of that money was used to improve their lives. At a local leprosarium, I worked really hard to set up a rehabilitation and vocational training centre as a model for the other leprosaria to work towards. I shamelessly went begging and was given four new Singer sewing machines, brand new carpentry tools, sheet metal working tools and materials to facilitate basketwork, weaving, shoe-making and leather-work.
With 12 of the most severely disabled patients I set up a workshop where they learned to use simple screen-printing equipment with adapted handles so that they could produce cards, headed notepaper and calendars. Each Saturday I took items to sell at The Leprosy Craft Shop in Blantyre, returning with the profits for the patients. What a boost and an incentive that gave everybody. It was marvellous to see so many positive changes happening.
A chance encounter in a bookshop
I was really busy with the Lepra programme, but I still had plenty of time to enjoy time out and make lots of wonderful new friends. Quite soon after I arrived in Malawi, I went into the only decent bookshop in Blantyre - The Central Bookshop. To my great surprise I saw my father’s publication ‘The Psychologist Magazine’ propped up by the cash register. I’d grown up with the magazine – it was stacked around the house and my sister and I filled envelopes to post it off to distant countries!
Startled, I looked up at the guy behind the counter with all sorts of questions…and that was how I met Aziz. We have been married now for 36 years and have lived in Canada, Sussex, Shropshire, Lincolnshire and for the last 18 years in Perthshire, Scotland. We still have a lot of family in Malawi and we support a charity co-founded by Aziz’s brother and his wife. It’s called The Children’s Fund of Malawi and we hold regular fundraising events for it. I’m just about to produce a book called ‘African Dreamtime’ which I hope will go on to generate funds for many years to come.