Meanwhile, Agnes opened the area’s first medical clinic. There, she likely faced epidemics of cholera, small pox and influenza along with countless other maladies such as tropical ulcers and black water fever.

I imagine her bustling around a bamboo hut in a high-neck Victorian dress with puffy sleeves and corseted waist dispensing tablets and tonics from her medicine chest. Or perhaps she wore a simple cotton frock with a pinafore, an outfit more suitable for cleaning and dressing wounds caused by lions and leopards. Yet, I suspect none of her clothes were suitable for the heat and rain of Africa.

Eckwendini
BY Toccoa Switzer

After Donald Fraser’s death in Scotland in 1933, Agnes traveled back to Embangweni with her husband’s ashes. She laid him to rest in the cemetery at Loudon Station next to his Malawian friend, Reverend Jonathon Chirwa. In his anniversary lecture, Professor Thompson said, “Nothing could speak more elegantly or movingly of the love and respect which Fraser and the Ngoni had for each other.”

Today, the Frasers’ devotion for the Malawian people continues to thrive. I saw it in the faces of all those I met at Embangweni – the nurse, the doctor and the administrator. I also see it in the faces of Jim and the engineers.

As we make our own pilgrimage towards “the source,” one of the engineers waves and yells, “We’re almost there.” The incline of the last hundred yards is steeper and shadier than the rest of the trail. Tall blue gum trees hover above me, their whitish-grey branches reaching out like long slender fingers. An open trench snakes along the side of the mountain. Inside, clean spring water rushes through the man-made channel just as it has for the last hundred years.

Change is slow in Malawi. It is like water moving through a low pressured pipe. It trickles. It purls. Sometimes, it chokes. But eventually it flows to where it is going, drop by drop — each one making a difference.

According to W.P. Livingstone, Dr. Robert Laws left Livingstonia in 1899 to travel to Glasgow where he solicited funds from the Free Church of Scotland for the first water works project. I picture him standing before the Foreign Missions Committee pointing to diagrams and drawings of the settlement pond, the open flume and miles of steel piping. Members nodded their heads in approval but voiced reservations over the cost, estimated at 4,000 pounds, an extravagant expense in those days. In the end, the committee voted down his request.

Lowering his head in disappointment, Laws rolled up his plans and tucked them under his arm. But before he left, one of the committee members tapped him on the shoulder. It was Lord Overtoun, an industrialist from Glasgow. Overtoun offered to bankroll the entire project.

Walking along the banks of a spring-fed stream, I listen to the engineers banter back and forth about the updated water supply system — its sedimentation traps, holding tanks and improved water pressure. The Tanzanian rattles off a series of impressive facts and figures. It all sounds good. Even I know more liters per second mean more clean water for more Malawians.

After the engineers finish their tour, Jim looks to the sky. “It’s time to head back to Livingstonia.” Lifting up my skirt, I leap over a mud puddle and head down the mucky trail towards the mission. As I emerge from the canopy of trees, the green plateau unfolds before me, radiating its Oz-like glow. But to the west, dark blue rain clouds, round and doughy, roll in our direction. Afternoon showers will soon drench the fields of tobacco and maize. Women in their bright-colored chitenje will scramble for cover. The smell of wood smoke will dissipate. The only sound will be rain pounding the bare earth.

My friend was right. Change is slow in Malawi. It is like water moving through a low pressured pipe. It trickles. It purls. Sometimes, it chokes. But eventually it flows to where it is going, drop by drop — each one making a difference.