Page 50 - Number 2 2021 Volume 74

38 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

any diagnosis had been made with stethoscope alone. Her skill in such diagnosis
was unsurpassed.
For all of her career she maintained a routine of a weekly visit to a
District Hospital, for she felt this was an important part of the work of a specialist.
She would drive herself on terrible roads to an (often far-flung) district hospital.
There she would conduct ward rounds and clinics, dispense wisdom, advice and
moral support to the (invariably) single-handed doctor - after which she would
drive home again, often without stopping for lunch or even so much as a drink of
water.
Needless to say, she not only wove clinical teaching into her daily work
but also lectured and examined all cadres over the years: nurses and nursing
students, clinical officer students at first and later medical students and paediatric
trainees as those too appeared. To her, that was simply part of the commitment to
improving health care in Malawi. Decades later, nurses still remember and quote
the lessons that Dr Mrs Borgstein instilled in them as part of their daily ward
routine.
In 1968, in search of more space for their growing family, Jan and
Ankie, bought a small farm with a large house at the end of a very bad road outside
Blantyre. With no mains electricity and no external water supply this was the
original sustainable living: generators, borehole pumps, windmills and paraffin
lamps for the homework late at night; solar power came only decades later. This
was a do-it-yourself household with the various children apprenticed in different
farming and engineering skills. With cows came dairy production and maize
grown for fodder. The homegrown coffee was a fixture at dinner parties and even
the small vineyard thrived!
The weekends then were short (all government civil servants were
required to work on Saturday mornings) nevertheless they were regularly spent at
the lake or on Mulanje, and there are many wonderful stories from those days –
weekly music making, bushbabies, duikers or bush pigs as pets, mis-timed
deliveries in the garage...
All those who knew her here at the farm will remember the daily routine
at the end of the afternoon: clinics of 20-30 patients sitting round the garden pump
- coughs, fevers, fractures and wounds would be caringly dressed and looked after,
one of her gardeners carrying the pharmacy (a box of ointments and pills) and
following her down the long line. Her unquestioning devotion to the unwell from
the surrounding villages was such that, when a gang of thieves came at night
calling her name, she immediately assumed that there was a seriously sick patient
needing her attention - and opened her door to them. Even during weekends at the
lake dozens of young patients would gather in the garden on the Sunday morning,
hoping to be seen by Dr Mrs Borgstein.