Francis Hannaway: Malaria strikes!

I started to shiver a bit. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I thought, and carried on as normal.

I’d been in Kinshasa, when I was called home to a funeral. I stayed for a week in Maidenhead, at Mill Hill Missionaries headquarters, before staying with my sister, Rose, in Middlesbrough.

The day after the funeral, which took place on a Monday, Rose said that I seemed a bit under the weather. “I know what it is,” she confided. “I suffer with hay fever, every year, myself.” So, she gave me an antihistamine. I took it – but I wasn’t convinced.

Tuesday, I started shivering and took a nap to overcome a fatigue which had gripped me. I lay in bed, still in denial about what this illness was. I pondered the days leading up to the shivers.

I take pills every week while I’m in the Congo, to stop me from getting malaria which I had 25 years ago.

Malaria is a parasite that lives in your blood and is Africa’s biggest killer. The day before I returned to England, I ran out of tablets - but having been free of malaria during my recent four years, I wasn’t unduly worried. “I’ll sort it out when I arrive in England,” I’d thought. But I didn’t.

Wednesday, I was as right as rain, and more than happy to join my brother and his children for a walk in the nearby hills. Thursday, I called in at my doctor’s to arrange more malaria pills for my return to the Congo. The same afternoon I started shivering again at my brother’s house, shivering so much that I ached. I walked back to my sister, Rose’s, and warmed up in the sunshine. I went straight to bed.
Eight o’clock, that evening, I texted Rose from my bed, “I think it’s getting serious!” Fifteen minutes later we were in the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department.

Francis Hannaway with
his sister, Rose Lawson.

I was very ill – low blood pressure, low temperature, alternating with a high temperature, headache, nausea...

After spending the night on a drip and having countless checks throughout the night I was allowed to go home on Friday evening.

One week before,
in Saltburn.

Treatment continued for another week, followed by another two weeks of building up my strength.

The treatment was for Plasmodium falciparum  malaria, comprising quinine, which is harsh on the body, tiring, and makes your hearing become dull. Really, it was three weeks of sleeping, but at least I wasn’t dead.

Anophelese mosquito
- pesky little critters ...

I’ve now arrived back in Kinshasa, to yet more political upheaval and yet another Ebola outbreak, this time in the east of the country. The number of children in my centres for malnourished children is starting to go down from 72, as edible caterpillars become available locally.

The biggest wish I have for my return, though, is never to have malaria again!

Basankusu: Rainforest Cathedral by Francis Hannaway

They demolished our cathedral, in Basankusu, in 2012.

It was never intended to last so long. Built during the Second World War, cracks had appeared as long ago as the 1980s. I visited in 2013 and the building was progressing well. A new cathedral was slowly rising from the middle of the rainforest – but this time, instead of fired clay bricks, it was being built of reinforced concrete and cement bricks. The foundations would also be much more substantial to ensure that it would last much longer.

Francis Hannaway outside
Basankusu Cathedral in 2007

Now in 2018, after many stops and starts, it is almost complete. The inauguration will take place in October.

There are other churches and chapels in Basankusu, and mass is always well attended. But there’s always a need for a central place for everyone to come together. So, the construction engineers made a concrete hardstand nearby, with a corrugated metal roof over it, which became known as ‘the Hangar’. For the last six years a familiar sight on Sunday mornings has been people walking to the Hangar with plastic chairs on their heads for Sunday mass, so they’d have a seat when they got there.

The all new Basankusu Cathedral
October 2017

I started my work with malnourished children three and a half years ago. I’ve walked past the cathedral building site every day that I’ve been to my centre. I’m pleased to say that in that time, as the cathedral slowly rose, we’ve treated 1,800 children with malnutrition and got them back on the road to good health. It hasn’t been easy – and there have been many times when I’ve thought that the money would run out. Until now, we’ve managed to keep afloat – and the vast majority of donations I receive come from people in Middlesbrough Diocese. So, it’s your success as well! We can’t be complacent, of course, I’m always about two months away from running out of funds ... but someone has always saved me at the last minute!

More good news from Basankusu is that our own Mill Hill Missionaries house, which burnt down two years ago, is almost rebuilt. And ... to top it all, we have just seen the ordination hįof the first Congolese Mill Hill priest since 1998 – with quite a few more coming up in the next few years. Fr. Placide Elia MHM just missed being ordained in the new cathedral, but the inauguration was delayed because of the Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Mbandaka Diocese (which, I’m pleased to say, seems to be over).

Congratulations to him!