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A YEAR of LIVINGDIFFERENTLYA C A N A D I A N D O C T O R 'S A F R IC A N L A B O U R of

W IT HO UT A CC ES S to theInternet or TV,.JoseeSarrazin and her familyreconnect with oneanotherwhile adapting to theirnew routine. In the cool offirst light, after the kidsjoin their mostly Africanclassmates in the tinyEnglish-speaking school,Sarrazin volunteers atlocal hospitals and teachesFrench. With time, worriesbegin to dissi pate: YoungJuliette stops wondering,Will a lion eat my clothes?Says her brother, Gabriel:"I'm no longer afraid whenpoor people here speak tome.Now I say hello back,and they smile."

Text and photography by JACQU IE LABATT

The four-year-old is terrified, her eyes pleading as her mother holds herdown on the hospital bed. Josee Sarrazin has just discovered a fluid buildup is criticallythreatening the child's heart. Using an ultrasound machine she has brought from Canada,Sarrazin guides a colleague who will introduce a long needle into her heart to try to drainthe fluid. Used syringes and meal remnants are strewn around the crowded, airless pedi-atric ward. There is no anesthetic. As the needle pierces the whimpering girl's tiny chest,Sarrazin's cellphone suddenly rings. An onlooker answers it: "Mom;' asks her daughterCamille, "can I watch a DVD?"In 2007, Sarrazin, then 43, a radiologist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences

Centre, and her husband, Michael Schull, a Sunnybrook ER physician, put an "X" on theircalendar. Itmarked the date when they and their children, Camille, then 8, Gabriel, 5, andJuliette, 3,would begin a year's sabbatical in Malawi, a small nation in southeast Africa."We've often told our kids how privileged our lives are;' comments Sarrazin, "but to trulyunderstand that, they needed to experience the world:'The family settled into a simple brick house in the city of Zomba. There were adjust-

ments: Life in Malawi is rife with power and fuel shortages. After dark, petty thieves, wilddogs and malarial mosquitoes own the nights. Undaunted, Sarrazin cherished new-foundtime with her family. When daughter Camille said, "I wish things were normal here;' Sar-razin replied, as much to herself as to her daughter, "For most of the world, this is normal:'


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N EA RL Y H AL F of all Malawians are underthe age of 1S.In a country where theaverage life expectancy is < + < + , childrengrow up fast, often becoming heads ofhouseholds. For others, days are filledwith work. Sarrazin's youngest daughter,Juliette, is acutely aware of unattendedMalawian girls, barefoot and half hersize, carrying heavy buckets on theirheads. Yet she finds these girls "nicer"because they are always smiling. "It takesmore to make girls at home smile,"Juliette tells her mom.A M ED IC AL W OR KER weighs a toddler ina community under-five clinic. Whilehealthcare statistics in Malawi are grim,one bright spot is the country's progresstoward reducing the mortality rate ofchild ren under five. Experts currentlyrate this global Millennium DevelopmentGoal,as set bythe UN,as being "possibleto achieve" in Malawi.


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out of w 0 mu t 0school Th s then dself- ,e conse ropMalawi per-petuating.L quences areIan wo ' ess tha hto 76 men are literat naIf ofper cent f e, compa ddon't 0 men "It" recount here" S' s hke girlsdaughte~ Carrazin's eldest, amille bROSINA ' ,0 serves,

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