Dinner with the Vice President and a hike up Mt. Mulanje

Tonight we had the great honor of having dinner with the Vice President of Malawi, Right Honorable Joyce Banda.  Over the past years, VP Banda's story has become well known: in the early 1980's at the age of 25, she was married with three children and was being beaten by her husband.  She left her husband, which was rare for any woman in Africa to do, and she formed the Malawi Women's National Business Association which eventually grew to over 50,000 strong.  She eventually became the Minister of Women and Child Development and was able to get the Malawi Parliament to pass the first law outlawing domestic violence.  After later become the Foreign Minister of Malawi, she was elected in May 2010 as Vice President with President Mutharika.

Among Banda's many new roles, she is the African Union's Head of Healthy Motherhood which is making significant inroads to reduce the current rate of over 300 maternal deaths per 100,000 births.  She has worked with local chiefs who found successful interventions - encouraging women to deliver in hospitals rather than at home by charging a fine of one goat if a family decides to deliver at home - and spread this practice to many other villages.  The results have been dramatic, but as a result, the hospitals are now overwhelmed with patients and need more resources.

We are very excited to continue growing our relationships with such dedicated, innovative, dynamic leaders in Malawi.

Earlier in the day, we hiked up one of the highest peaks in Malawi - Mt. Mulanje:

We hiked nearly one third to the top of Mt. Mulanje to an amazing, refreshing waterfall.  In this photo you see a mother with an infant on her back.  She is poking a hole in the ground at the base of each corn stalk so that her children - using a teaspoon - can pour a little fertilizer into the hole for each stalk.  Fertilizer is incredibly valuable, but because of tough economic conditions, the government's subsidy is not enough to cover the costs.

Tomorrow is our first set of meetings with doctors, police, social welfare, judges, and UNICEF!