Dr. Anne Alaniz – A Rock In A Pond: Miracles, Medicine, & Malawi
Dr. Anne Alaniz
Pothawira International
On This Episode
In this incredibly impactful episode of Spark to Empower, Connie Maday shares a conversation with Dr. Anne Alaniz who is a Board certified gynecologist in Houston Texas. Dr. Anne Alaniz was born in a small impoverished village in Malawi, Africa, and is the oldest of eight siblings. At the age of 16, an ER doctor from Texas visited her village and saw Anne’s potential. The doctor, wanting to make a lasting impact, offered to host Anne for a US education. With her family’s blessing, Anne moved from Malawi to Texas where she attended high school, college and medical school. While in medical school, she held a garage sale with her friends raising $3,000 she used to buy land in the Salima District of Malawi near the village in which she grew up.
On this land, in 2012, Dr. Alaniz founded the US non-profit Pothawira International where she raised funding and subsequently built an orphanage, primary school, computer lab, farm, mill, birthing center, and outpatient health clinic – the ONLY health clinic in Daniel Village (population 10,000).
Dr. Anne Alaniz shares her life story, how she realized her purpose and the mindset she embraced to get her through the adversity and challenges in her life.
She is a true example of how one person can make a difference in the world and shares about the ripple effect when you throw a rock into the pond.
Podcast Notes: Parents and educators may wish to preview prior to listening with audiences under grade 6 to consider topics that may require further discussion .
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Originally from Malawi, Dr. Anne Alaniz is a Gynecological Oncologist at Houston Methodist Hospital. She is a co-founder of Pothawira project in Malawi and serves as the President of Pothawira International. Anne lives in The Woodlands, Texas with her husband Tony and three children. Dr. Anne Alaniz has been honored in the Black History Month Excellence Series for her contributions to the world.
About the Guest
Dr. Anne Alaniz
Gynecological Oncologist Houston Methodist Hospital
Co-Founder and President of Pothawira International
Leader, Many Hopes
Listen to Other Episodes
Connie Maday (00:12):
Welcome to Spark to Empower. I'm Connie Maday, educator, mother, entrepreneur. This podcast is about igniting the power within ourselves to bring about a positive change for the world. This is the place for inspiration and celebrating change makers.
(00:27):
Today I'm joined by a special guest who is a living example of how one person can make a difference, Dr. Anne Alaniz. She's a surgeon in Houston, Texas at Houston Methodist Hospital, a hospital named for being number one in Texas and number 15 in the nation. Dr. Anne is the oldest of eight siblings. She was born in a small impoverished village in Malawi, Africa. When she was 16 years old, an ER doctor from Texas visited her family and saw Anne's potential. The doctor wanting to make a lasting impact offered to host Anne for a US education. With her family's blessing, Anne moved from Malawi to Texas where she attended high school, college, and medical school.
(01:11):
During medical school, she and her friends raised $3,000 with a garage sale, the money that she used to buy land in the Salima district of Malawi near the village where she grew up. On this land in 2012, Dr. Alaniz founded the US nonprofit, Pothawira International, where she raised funding to build an orphanage, primary school, computer lab, farm mill, birthing center, and outpatient health clinic. Dr. Anne is an absolute inspiration. She has been honored in the Black History Month Excellence series. She exemplifies how when you follow your purpose and passion and your why, you can make a lasting impact on the world. I know you will absolutely love this episode. Enjoy.
(02:02):
Welcome, welcome, Dr. Anne Alaniz.
Anne Alaniz (02:07):
Thank you.
Connie Maday (02:08):
I'm so happy to have you.
Anne Alaniz (02:08):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be on this podcast. I feel quite special to have been selected for it, so really looking forward to our conversation. And thank you for inviting me.
Connie Maday (02:19):
Oh my goodness. Well, you are such a living testament to the power of education and the power of one person making a difference in the world. I'm just so thrilled to be able to share your story and celebrate all the important impacts that you've made in the world. And as I share, this podcast is really to help empower our young people to realize the potential that they have to make a difference. And your story begins as a young child, and I'd love you to share your story. Paint a picture for us. What was it like to grow up in Malawi, and how did you come to be... I literally pulled you out of a surgery. Here you are. You're a doctor.
Anne Alaniz (03:04):
Exactly. Exactly.
Connie Maday (03:05):
So tell us your story. I'm going to start there.
Anne Alaniz (03:10):
Yes. Yeah. I mean, for me it's miraculous. It really speaks a lot to, like you're saying, the power of a person and the power that each one of us has to really make a change. Sometimes that change may look really small, but can have a much bigger impact than you think.
(03:33):
So I grew up in Malawi. It's a small country, southeast of Africa. Often I can kind of joke a little bit about this, is people are like, "Where's Malawi?" And so for whatever reason, so Madonna adopted her two African babies actually both from Malawi. And so it seems like once Madonna went there and adopted, it kind of changed the geographical location of Malawi. Now when people ask me, "Where's Malawi?" I don't have to describe where it is on the map, I just say, "That's where Madonna adopted her babies." And suddenly just seems like it becomes very clear to everybody where exactly that is.
(04:11):
And so I grew up in Malawi, I actually grew up in the villages. I was really literally one of those kids that if you were on a tour of Africa and you decided to take a tour of the village, I'll be like one of those kids running around, no shoes on, literally had a little plastic bag that I would carry my little notebooks in when I was going to school. We walked really to most places. We had no running water, no indoor plumbing. Every morning I would wake up really early because usually sometimes school was 15, 20 miles away depending on where we were living. And so I would get up super early in the morning. We would basically walk up to the river where we would get water for washing, for drinking, for cooking. And so part of the duties in the morning was to make sure that we had adequate water at the house.
(04:59):
Most of the times it was just like a running river. Goats and cows were drinking from there and were getting water from there. There were people doing their laundry directly in the river. We would even sometimes go ahead and take our bats in the river just to make things easier. So by the time we were done getting water, you were already washed up. You get home, put whatever clothes you had on and run to school. By all means, we literally lived in the middle of nowhere where cars would occasionally come by and there were kids that were actually frightened of cars because they'd never actually heard the sound of their car since they were born.
(05:34):
My parents were educated people and they had options to actually live in the city. But my dad was always one that always believed 90% of Malawi, that's the neediest group of people, they live in the villages. He was a medical person, like a nurse practitioner, what would be a nurse practitioner/family practice here. But his job, he pretty much did everything. He was delivering babies, he did surgeries. And so he would work in the smallest parts of Malawi, which is pretty much where I spent most of my childhood. So I mean, we lived a life where it was mostly agricultural so we grew everything that we ate. We grew the corn that we would turn into flour that would make food from and porridge that we would eat in the morning. We group peanuts and we would dig them up and basically shell them. So life was very much, for me, simple. It was all I knew, right? And so we would get periods of time where there would be droughts and there was no food and scarcity of food.
(06:41):
Before I knew even much about the United States of America, I remember one of the things, some of the droughts that we had would get these yellow corn. The corn we grew in Malawi was usually white. So one of the things that actually associated with the United States is that they made yellow corn in the United States. Because usually there'll be donations of these bags of corn that would come and then hundreds and thousands of people would line up, because we have a drought and there's no food. And you would line up to basically get donations of bags of corn that would come from the United States. I was also a recipient of I don't know if you've ever heard, Samaritan's Purse does these Operation Christmas Child. I remember being 12 years old and receiving a shoebox with my very first Barbie doll that had hair.
Connie Maday (07:28):
Oh, my gosh.
Anne Alaniz (07:29):
I know. It was just...
Connie Maday (07:31):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (07:31):
Now I get to see that from this side of it, but I remember being a recipient of a shoebox. It had a little very sweet letter in it from someone. I had crayons in it. I had my first Barbie doll with hair and bows in the hair. I mean, I could not play with that hair enough. My brother had a yo-yo in his, we didn't even know what it was until he started moving and was lighting up.
Connie Maday (07:56):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (07:57):
So that was my childhood. By all accounts, it was the only life that I knew. It was a very difficult life, going through droughts, liking clean water, disease was very rampant. I remember many women dying, even in childbirth. It was just one of those things that my mom, she had eight kids, I was the oldest of eight. Each time she would go to the hospital, literally by the time I was 10 years old, she had raised me to be basically responsible enough to take over the care of the family. I remember her telling me where everything was. She would tell me how to take care of my siblings, how to take care of my dad. Because it was really a fate that most oldest young girls in their families would have to live through. So if your mother dies in childbirth, you just drop out of school and you start doing all the work that your mother would've been done to make sure that the family goes on. And there are many, many, many kids that live that way.
(08:49):
And so that was actually my first spark of interest that made me kind of wonder what happens in childbirth actually makes it dangerous. So she never really talked too much to me about it, but every time she would leave, I knew there was a possibility she may not come home. And so whenever she would come back, it was so significant to me that she did it over and over. I also never understood why she would do it seven more times, right? But I'll leave that to my mom and dad to explain.
Connie Maday (09:15):
Right.
Anne Alaniz (09:15):
It didn't make any sense to me at the time, but I was like, "You could stop." So we wouldn't have to have these conversations every time. So as I struggled through school, at some point it became very clear I wanted to go into medicine. My parents didn't have the money, they didn't have the means. I didn't know how it was going to happen. Even in Malawi there was no medical school at the time. But I just remember this is something that I really wanted and I just wanted to pursue it. And part of the interest was just seeing all this sort of episodes and epidemics that would come through of cholera that literally I would have classmates when I was in second and third grade that would pass away from this. Malaria, and like I said, women dying in childbirth, or going when they're pregnant and coming back without a baby and not knowing what went wrong.
(10:03):
And then watching my dad work and see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that would come to him every day that he would take care of. And I just wanted to know what that was. So I would spend a lot of time with him. So I knew I wanted to go to medical school, but there was no medical school in Malawi. I knew I would probably have to live the country, but the ability to do that was almost like nil. You were in a village literally living the forgotten people, right? We're just sort running around, growing everything we eat. There's not even official grocery stores close to where we lived. I mean the fastest transportation was a bicycle or ox carts because there wasn't really much around.
(10:39):
And so there was then a medical missionary who came to Malawi. And at this time I'd actually taken my national exams. I was selected as one of the top students in the country and went to a secondary school in the city of Blantyre. So that was the first time I got to live in a big city, was a boarding school. I took the bus, I had a little cardboard suitcase with a couple of outfits. I had my first leather pair of shoes. It was little leather pumps that my dad worked really, really hard to buy me, because up until then I was barefooted but he wasn't going to send me to a nice boarding school in the city with no shoes.
(11:14):
And so I still remember up to today those red pumps and I put them on with probably nothing else I had that matched it, but I just felt just so beautiful and so special because I was leaving the village. People were waving at the buses, I was leaving because it was such a significant moment that one of the kids from the village actually got selected to this big school in the city. So it was during the time that I was there that I would kind of travel back and forth that I actually came acquainted with Donna Ivey, who is an ER doctor here in the United States, actually in Texas, a very small town in Texas. She had actually come to Malawi for medical missions. And so she was working with my dad during the time that she was there and sort of saw a lot of what he did with very little resources.
(12:00):
So she tells this story, I started to ask myself like, "What more could I do other than just help this guy for the next two weeks and then leave and go back to the United States? What else could I do?" So she asked him, at some point did she even consider, I think, to see whether he could get more education. She would give him more training, but then she also realized he had eight kids to take care of and then started asking him more about his children and then found out about me and my interest in wanting to go into medical school and how well I had actually done for my little small village school where I actually attended school under the tree and managed to take national exams, do really well on the national exams and be selected to her school.
(12:41):
So when she came back to the US, then she said she just felt very strongly really in her spirit that she was supposed to do something more than just go on a two-week mission trip and come back. So she wrote my parents and asked them more questions about how I was doing and then started communicating with them. And then the next thing she wrote and said, "I really feel very strongly that I'm supposed to do something for your daughter and it will be really for Malawi. And so I would like to bring her to the United States, put her through school and have her achieve whatever it is that she wants to achieve and then be able to help Malawi in whatever way she can at the end of that."
(13:16):
So literally these things don't happen to kids that grow up in the village.
Connie Maday (13:20):
Wow. Right.
Anne Alaniz (13:22):
And I got a call from my parents, they're like, "Hey, the lady from the United States wants you to go to the United States for..." And I was in 11th grade at the time, it was just unreal. I was the last person anybody at that school would've thought would be actually the one to go to the United States. I had the least resources, the poorest kid at the school really. And so it was shocking even to everybody to realize like, "Hey, Anne's going to be going to the United States for school on a private scholarship.
Connie Maday (13:50):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (13:50):
And so literally at age 17 I got on a plane to head to the United States, to Dallas Fort Worth in Texas.
Connie Maday (14:03):
My goodness.
Anne Alaniz (14:03):
Yeah. Yeah. So very shocking, getting off the flight. Everything was big. There were cars everywhere. I remember just even being so overwhelmed with just the significant change, I went from a place that was very small. Even the city in Blantyre while that was big, I think the bigness even of Dallas Fort Worth as we were landing was so significant. I'd never seen that many overpasses in highways where there were four or five highways going on top of each other with four, five, six lanes of cars going the same direction. But that's really how I ended up going from living in a small village, really to finding myself on July 4th, landing in Dallas, Fort Worth-
Connie Maday (14:49):
Oh, my goodness.
Anne Alaniz (14:50):
... the airport in Dallas on a full scholarship to go to college.
Connie Maday (14:55):
Wow. Wow. I mean, goodness. And probably seeing the fireworks as you were landing amongst all of the chaos, like "Where am I in this place?"
Anne Alaniz (15:05):
Yes. Exactly. So it was actually in the evening. And so as we were driving at, I saw all the fireworks and I wasn't quite sure what it was. The sound at first was frightening, but then after the sound was this beautiful things and they were trying to explain to me, "Oh, this is fireworks. This is what we do here on special celebrations." So I was getting the full American experience very quickly after I got off that flight. So yes, yes.
Connie Maday (15:32):
Oh my goodness. And I remember you sharing a story of how... So you arrived, and then will you share the story of how when you went to the store and they said to-
Anne Alaniz (15:44):
Yes.
Connie Maday (15:45):
Will you tell us that story, please?
Anne Alaniz (15:49):
[inaudible 00:15:50]. So the simplest things about what would seem normal here was overwhelming to me, because imagine I'd grown up in a place where the best stores that you'd find with are like these little shacks and people were selling sugar that you would buy either by the teaspoon or by the scoop, right? And so then coming in, I remember the first time I went to Walmart, which is a big grocery store out here in Texas, a lot of people go there. It was so large, it was like this 24 hour store. I mean, they had everything I could possibly ever want and things that I never... I mean, I was so overwhelmed, I wasn't even sure where to look.
(16:33):
They had some dogs and cats. I was shocked to know that they had this PetSmart. It was an entire store dedicated to pets with things that I would've wanted as a person. I mean, the places where the dogs were supposed to lie in this country was better than where I laid down when I was a child because we laid on the floor on these sort of straw mats. It was rough. There were no mattresses. And I was thinking, "The dogs here are living larger than I'm ever going to live." And so really, I mean unbelievable, just the experience of being able to go to the store or shopping, the amount of selection and like, "Do you want this with that?" I was just even overwhelmed with how many choices people were giving me because usually I would go and there was only one choice. You either go home with that or that's what you were going to eat.
(17:29):
Food was the same way, right? You'd be like, "I want a salad. Well do you want this with that?" I'll be like, "Okay."
(17:34):
"Well, but would you like this or this or this or that?" Any of those things for me were just beyond incredible in terms of experience. I mean, I felt like I'd really landed in the sort of Land of Milk and Honey as they would call it. It was a complete out of body experience. I remember my American mom even taking me to... She was doing a little weight loss class. It was at a church, like a Sunday school group. And the whole weight loss program was based on people learning how to feel hungry. It was like, "The problem with Americans and why we're overweight is because we just eat all the time and we don't wait until we're hungry," right?
(18:17):
So you can imagine, here's a kid that just came from Africa where hunger was pretty much a normal feeling. If you got one meal a day, you were doing really, really well. So I was used to feeling hungry most of my life. And so the symptom of hunger wasn't something that was foreign to me. But you can imagine that I'm sitting in a classroom with my American mom's friends who are in their 50s and 60s and they're sitting there describing their first feeling of hunger after they actually waited for it. Like, "I felt my stomach turning and I had this kind of pain." Like just the inability for me to reconcile how I could have gone through my 17 years of life feeling hungry, and I'm meeting people who have lived 50, 60 years and they have never felt an actual pain of hunger. It was definitely like an out of body experience.
Connie Maday (19:14):
Oh, my goodness.
(19:14):
I mean, how did you take that overwhelm, this opportunity, all of these feelings? And then I'm sure you're also thinking about your family at home and your classmates. How did you reconcile all of these? Will you share that part? I mean there's so much that must have gone through your mind and your journey and how did you take that and really harness that into all that you've created, which I want you to talk about next. But that piece, that mind set that you've had to really step into this, will you tell us about that please?
Anne Alaniz (19:54):
Yes, yes. So I think at first it was just excitement about all things America. I remember like Back to School shopping sort of thing. School is about to start and literally it's like just pick out whatever you want in the story, and I'm looking. I don't even understand the value of things at this point. I don't know if I picked something expensive or cheap, it didn't matter to me. It was like this is the first time I was going to have more than two pairs of underwear because I had one on and one that would be drying. I mean that's how I grew up, right? Same thing with clothes. I had something that I wore every day at home and then there were things that we would wear when we were going to a special occasion. And so your everyday wear, it would be torn, it would have holes or whatever. And then here I was, I had a closet that I was supposed to fill with clothes and shoes. And you have to buy shoes that go with what you're wearing. For me, my red pumps went with everything.
Connie Maday (20:49):
Everything.
Anne Alaniz (20:50):
Those red pumps, I was wearing them with everything I owned. And so at first I think there was a lot of that, just sort of being young and just sort of being handed this. I remember I'd never seen so much meat at a meal before and I wanted to only eat meat. I was like, "Why would I eat vegetables? I grew up my whole life eating vegetables. Now I can eat meat every day, that's all I'm going to do." And so at first it was a lot of that. And then just really feeling super excited and the overwhelming feeling of a blessing and just wanting to take it all.
(21:24):
The one year of high school I did here I was an overachiever. I was like, "If they gave me a book and I didn't understand it, I found a way to read it until I got what it actually meant." And it was shocking to me because I would go back to school and kids would be like, "No, this book was too hard. We couldn't read it." I'm like, "What? That's an option. You can just decide not to read something because it's hard?" So I was always overarching and really trying to just make the most of what I had done.
(21:53):
By the time I actually graduated the one high school year, I had done so well, I got to be valedictorian.
Connie Maday (21:58):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (21:58):
Because everything I was doing, I was just eating it up because I had never had access to books. I would have a book that I would share with 10, 20 other kids because we just didn't even have books growing up. So at first it was just all of that, just the excitement, just the take it all in, take advantage of everything that's really been given to you. But then at some point there was an awareness that I have family at home and what can I do to help my sisters? They're still in Malawi. Their only opportunity to get out of that village is for them to be able to go to school somehow.
(22:33):
So I remember even getting my very first job that was paying $5.15 an hour and I would basically keep $20 out of my monthly paycheck and I would send every single penny back home so that my sisters could at least be taken out of the village school and be put in nicer schools in the city, because I thought even if they don't come to America but they have a chance to go to a better school, maybe they can get private scholarships from a school that's recognized that would give them a better chance of results of doing well on the national exams and all of those sort of things. So then my whole focus at that point started off with, "I want to help my family." Just focused on my sisters, give them an opportunity for education. So I would send every penny I had pretty much back home except $20 that I would keep for the rest of the month for myself.
(23:19):
So that's how I started that process of really thinking. But for me the real sort of moment of recognition or just a moment of realizing was I had been here for two years, I was now in college, I decided, "Hey, you should probably go home and visit your family because it's been two years since you came to the United States." So I was now flying back from the land of everything back to Malawi. And I think the very first time it hit me, I was on the plane and they were announcing that we are going to be landing at Lilongwe National airport. I remember looking down the window and it was like a blank slate.
(23:58):
All I saw were little trees. I saw little dirt roads. I would see little clusters of villages, very much the life that I had. I think until then I hadn't actually started putting Malawi and the US right next to each other until as the plane was coming, and then I was remembering how I landed at Dallas Fort Worth and the lights and the tall buildings and the cars and the vastness and the growth and the development. And then two years later I'm flying back to Malawi and everything is exactly the same way that I left it. Little dirt loads, little villages. And this is an international airport and it's really surrounded by not much of anything. The only modern building you see is this little airport there and then everything else around it are just villages.
(24:46):
So I think as I was landing there was just that recognition and now I sort of had a backdrop with which to kind of interpret the life that I had grown compared to the life now that I had found. And so it was me walking back into my old life and then sort of starting to think, "What does this actually mean before me?" Above me helping my sisters and my brothers, like "Why was this opportunity given to me?" It's got to mean a whole lot more. So I think really that trip back was probably really the beginning of me searching for how do I reconcile being given so much and then going back home and seeing what I was seeing as I was landing at the airport in Malawi.
Connie Maday (25:33):
Wow, that's incredible. And so tell us what have you done. Will you share about Pothawira? I'm saying it wrong now. Pothawira. Am I close?
Anne Alaniz (25:44):
Yes.
Connie Maday (25:47):
Pothawira. Tell us about what you've done and how... I mean, it started with the garage sale, right?
Anne Alaniz (25:51):
Yes.
Connie Maday (25:51):
It started with the garage sale with your friends in medical school and this idea and this piece of land. Will you tell us that story? Thank you.
Anne Alaniz (26:02):
Yeah. So on my trip to Malawi, actually one of the things that happened was I was with my dad in the clinic and working with him. At this point, now I know I can actually be a medical doctor because I'm in the US So I was straight paying attention to him in a different way, paying attention to whatever he was doing in a different way. I'd also spent a lot of time with Donna while she was working in the US and I could see all the resources she had, the things that she could do. So it was also the first time I was actually watching sort of the state of medical care in Malawi compared to what I had seen in the US.
(26:33):
And so while I was sitting there, there was a baby that came in who had actually had diarrhea over 24 hours. She looked healthy, she was beautiful. And in kids to make it to over five, there is an undertaking itself because most children actually die under five because malaria, diarrhea or diseases, those are the things that usually will take children's lives. And so she came in after an episode of diarrhea from contaminated water. She looked really dehydrated. My dad was trying to start an IV to give her fluids. She couldn't drink. She pretty much wasn't responsive, but they couldn't get a line. They make these needles called intraosseous needles in the US and I knew you could use those to be able to get fluid basically directly into the bone marrow. My dad knows how to do the procedure but didn't have that simple small little piece of equipment that he could use to do it.
(27:22):
I think the hardest thing for me was to realize that there was a small piece of instrument that was basically standing between this child living and dying. I got very desperate. I actually started calling Donna to see if there was anything she could suggest that we did. We really didn't have anything. She was like, "Go and find an NG tube," which is a tube where you could put through the nose into the stomach and try to put fluids through there into her stomach. We didn't have an NG tube. That's also a very tiny tube that we should be able to get, and my dad didn't have that. And then for the next two hours I just watched her breathe slower and slower and slower and slower and then just watched this beautiful little girl basically die.
Connie Maday (28:03):
Oh, gosh.
Anne Alaniz (28:03):
And then after that I watched my dad really grab her. The mom had walked 15 to 20 miles to get there. My dad was strapping her on her back. And I had this realization that this poor woman was actually now going to walk another 20 miles home with a dead baby. One of the things that they do if your baby's dead and the mommy is carrying on the back, that they actually wrap their head and cover their head so that as she walks, people will have this awareness that the baby on her back is not alive. And I watch some women sort of walk part of the journey with her sort of in support and solidarity because these are experiences that happen every day.
(28:41):
And I just remember thinking that somehow I was saved from that. Somehow my mother had the babies on the floors, cement and trash bags, which is what I saw when I was watching how women were going through birth and hemorrhaging to death. Somehow my mother lived through eight births and survived. Somehow I lived to the age that I was and survived and got the opportunity to go to the United States. So that was really the first part. So when I got back, I sort had a newfound look for a greater purpose in your blessing.
(29:15):
So I finished college. I worked really hard. I tell people my retirement plan when I'm 80 is to do all the things I should have done when I was 21. So I'll be like partying when I'm 80 because I did none of that in college. So I'll be the 80 year old that will be going to the clubs because I didn't do any of that. I was hammering away at school. And so when I was in medical school, after I got accepted into medical school, I started sharing some of the things that I wanted to do. So a group of friends of mine, we got together and I was like, "I don't know when this is going to happen," but we decided we'll just go and ask people to donate furniture, pieces of things that they wanted to get rid of and we would sell it and I could buy property close to where I grew up. And then there we would build something to help the community that I grew up in.
(30:05):
So we actually did the garage sale. We sold $1,500 worth of items and we found a very nice person that came and shopped and decided that they would match whatever we made. And so we ended up with $3,000 from the garage sale. That $3,000 is what bought, what now has become Pothawira, which is safe haven. Bought this piece of property. And then while I was in residency, I made some relationships with an organization that basically takes care of kids that are orphaned, kids that are on the streets and give them chance to have a home, have access to education, which is obviously I know the very reason why the gap between me and the people that are considered successful people of influence was. So for me, I couldn't partner with anybody better than somebody that wants to take children that don't have a chance to make it and give them a chance to actually live and give them a chance to actually go from a place where they're living a life of injustice, either through poverty or being orphaned and then give them education with the future.
(31:10):
So I ended up having that relationship with them and I told them that I had a property already that was bought, "We could actually start working together in this partnership." So really since then we built a clinic. There's an outpatient clinic there that sees 200 to 300 patients a day. We have a birthing center that we opened last October.
Connie Maday (31:29):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (31:30):
We've already had over 200 deliveries with women and they've all taken their babies home alive, which is a huge thing in a country where the maternal mortality rates are really, really high.
Connie Maday (31:40):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (31:42):
We also have an orphanage with our 126 kids that actually live in a homestyle. They live like siblings with parents. And then they have a school there that they're attending from kindergarten to eighth grade. We are actually about to build a high school because as I told you before, they there's limited access to high school. And so most of the kids actually when you pass your national exam, you have to get selected to a high school because there's not that many high schools actually available. So this has allowed the kids to actually do well in eighth grade to be able to go to high school. And so really we have a comprehensive... Our kids have access to education. I see future lawyers and doctors.
(32:28):
Like my whole family, the very sisters that I was supporting with my $5.15 an hour, they are all highly educated individuals now. I have one that has a master's in public health. She actually came here and she's gone back to Malawi. I have one who's just completed medical school. She's actually there working at the clinic in the birthing center. I have two who are accountants and they do all of their accounting work with their organization that we do. My mom and dad are actually there working with us. My brother is actually a principal because he did education.
Connie Maday (33:01):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (33:01):
And so it really speaks-
Connie Maday (33:04):
The whole family.
Anne Alaniz (33:04):
The whole family. So Donna always says this, when people ask her like, "Why would you have picked one child in Malawi?" In fact, she says that's what a lot of people criticized her for. "You go to Africa, there's millions of kids that are either orphan or in poverty or they have no opportunity and you pick one, what difference is that going to make?" And that's where she talks about the rock and the pond. You just throw it, you don't know what the ripple effect is going to be. And so for me, I was that rock. She threw it and now she gets to see my whole family, my sisters and my brother well educated individual from something that she did. Even though she may have not necessarily directly paid for them, indirectly giving me a chance at education and ability to support my brothers and sisters has done that.
(33:51):
Pothawira which is taking care of over 30,000 patients a year, she is part of that change because she opened the door for me so I could go back and have that ripple effect. The kids, 126 kids at the orphanage would've been on the streets with no chance of education. They're now getting educated, they're going to high school. We've got some of the kids, actually two of the kids we've educated are actually back now and they asked for this, we don't expect it from them. They're working now in the maternity award as our labor and delivery nurses. They were the kids that grew up there that had nothing. And now they have houses of their own, they have families of their own and they get to work with us and go back and support their kids.
(34:33):
And so really the ripple effect and the miracle for bringing me here and what has done, it's gone beyond just one person. So it was Donna making the decision as a single person to go to Malawi and then choosing one person that she could change and then me making the decision to go back and doing what I'm doing. And everybody we help at that clinic, I would never know all the stories that are going to come out of there, I would never know the potential of where this will actually go, but I have to believe that each person that we change has the same ripple effect in their community, in their family in a way that would've never been if this didn't actually start with Donna's decision to change the life of one child.
Connie Maday (35:19):
Absolutely. And I'll add also for you deciding to step into that power and to step into your potential. You decided that you were going to dedicate your life and have it be your mission to give back to the world. And I think that is just truly incredible. You have this opportunity and the ripple effect and everything, all the lives that you've saved and all of the people that their lives are transformed and inspired. I know that everyone that hears your story are and will be inspired by your courage, your strength, your passion and the desire that you have to make a difference. I'm so inspired by you, Anne. I wish I could reach out and give you a hug right now. Soon.
Anne Alaniz (36:13):
We will.
Connie Maday (36:13):
I know.
Anne Alaniz (36:13):
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Connie Maday (36:16):
Will you tell us, because people that are listening to this they're going to say, "Well what can I do? What can I do to support? What can I do to help?", can you tell us what are three ways that people can support this incredible mission?
Anne Alaniz (36:29):
Yeah. So different people feel like there's different ways that they can... What I'm learning every day is like because our organization addresses so many aspects, we have the educational aspect, we have some agricultural aspects where the kids actually grow their food on campus because this is also something that they learn because when they leave the campus, our goal is to make sure that they're productive citizens. So we have agriculture that goes on. We have the educational piece, we have the medical piece.
(37:03):
I actually climbed Kilimanjaro every year to raise money for the organization. The last three years I wasn't able to go because of COVID, but I finally went in July for my fifth climb.
Connie Maday (37:16):
Wow.
Anne Alaniz (37:17):
So one of the things that I actually do, which is one of the things that people may decide to help is that what I do is... Kilimanjaro is a bucket list item, there are a lot of people that want to go and Kilimanjaro. I've done it five times. I've summited five times so I know all the ropes, I know the good guide companies to work with, I've developed long-term relationships with them. So I do all the organizing of the trip. You get to pay for it because if you were going to do it anyway, you can pay for the trip. We work on all the processes and I usually provide the dates on it. And then what I do is I get the whole trip set up.
(37:49):
The one thing I ask is other than you paying for the trip expenses, is to reach out to your family base and tell them that your climbing Kilimanjaro, yes as a bucket list item, but you would like to raise money for an organization in Malawi, which is Pothawira. And this money goes towards supporting our clinic, the birthing center, the orphanage, the educational services as well as the agriculture things that we're doing. And so I just asked everybody to raise at least $5,000, because their trip is going to cost about that much. And so I think at least raise as much as you're going to spend in going on the trip. If you can make $5,000 to raise and more is always going to be better, but at least at the minimum if you could try to raise $5,000.
(38:32):
And then we go on this great adventure and climb the highest freestanding mountain, 19,347 feet.
Connie Maday (38:39):
Oh, my goodness.
Anne Alaniz (38:39):
It is an experience of a lifetime. You are literally above the clouds when you are up on the summit. We have the best guides. My groups have done well. Probably two years, I had one person that didn't summit, but every year everybody has summited.
Connie Maday (38:58):
Oh, my gosh.
Anne Alaniz (38:58):
And the one person that didn't summit, they actually decided to eat street food, which I would not recommend. And so that's the reason they didn't make it. So in day five they had to pretty much drop out because at base camp it just didn't make any sense to take somebody to the summit who had been vomiting and had GI issues from.
Connie Maday (39:14):
Right.
Anne Alaniz (39:14):
But I think otherwise this person would've made it. They were in good shape. They Just made a bad decision about food. So that's one way you can help, is join my climb to Kilimanjaro to raise money for Pothawira.
(39:25):
The other part is like, "Well I don't want to climb, but I just want to donate." And so she will share the website, but you could go to ww.pothawira.org. And so Pothawira is spelled P-O-T-H-A-W-I-R-A.org. And so there's actually options there to donate. There's options to just do a one time donations and there's donations to donate monthly. I love our monthly donors because that's what keeps our teachers teaching, that's what keeps our nurses working, that's what keeps our clinical officers working. Because most of the money we raise, we basically cover all the essentials. And so we've got donors. The monthly donors are what really helps cover the staff that's working there.
(40:09):
And again, keep in mind these are people that wouldn't have had jobs if we didn't have this organization. So it is really a gift that keeps on giving to the community there. These are people that depended on agriculture. Now they get to come and work at this organization in the middle of a village and they actually have a monthly paycheck, right? They don't have to wait for the red and blue bags of corn when the droughts come. They have an ability to actually take care of themselves. So it's just direct donations will be one way to do it.
(40:36):
And the other ways you can come to Malawi actually. I love people that come and actually see the work that we do. So we do yearly trips. And so I actually go more than once a year, so usually if there's other people that want to go at other times. But almost every summer, guaranteed between June, July and August, there are trips going to Malawi, multiple groups are going. And so you don't have to be a medical person to go. You could be a teacher. We had teachers that have come and they stayed six weeks and they helped empower the teachers there. I had a teacher that came and she taught English for about two months and taught the teachers how to teach English, and the kids loved her. She actually just went back recently. She just got back. She was there for another three weeks and she plans on really making this regular.
(41:21):
We have people that have gone and done permaculture, things that have to do with the agriculture, composting. I had a 15 year old girl that actually is planning on going back after she had come with her mom to go teach them composting. So she's learning everything about it. She's going to actually raise money and she's going to do this big composting project to kind of help enhance our agricultural project. So coming to Malawi. Sometimes even if you don't make another trip, there's something about experiencing giving to someone that can never repay you for what you're doing to them that changes you as a person.
(41:53):
So even just as a personal journey of discovery of who you are, what you are capable of doing, and what you can do to change the world, I invite everybody to come to Malawi. So if you are interested in that, again, you come on our website. We usually advertise all the trips that are going in the summer. There's a way there for you to send an email and let us know if you're interested in a trip and what you'll be interested in. We just usually plug you in with some groups that are going into making sure that when you're there, there are plenty of people to support. It's a safe country. They don't kidnap Americans for money. So it's a fantastic place to go for you to be able to actually have an experience of the lifetime. So those are all the ways I would encourage you to participate. So come to Kilimanjaro, donate, and then come to Malawi.
Connie Maday (42:41):
Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. And I'll have to say Kilimanjaro wasn't on my bucket list until I met you. Now I'm like, "Ladies, people, come bring my people. Let's do this."
Anne Alaniz (42:55):
Let's do this. Let's do this. I have a friend of mine who was in Alaska, she has got a ski mom group. I told her I'll make a whole ski mom Kilimanjaro trip where it'll be her and her 14 ski moms.
Connie Maday (43:06):
Oh my gosh. That's amazing. That's amazing. I love it. Well, I'll make sure to link everything on the notes. I have one more question for you.
Anne Alaniz (43:15):
Yes.
Connie Maday (43:17):
Before I ask this question, is there anything else that you feel like you want to add that we haven't talked about?
Anne Alaniz (43:24):
No, I mean I think we covered really all the centers. There's always stories about Malawi that feel like-
Connie Maday (43:29):
There's so many stories.
Anne Alaniz (43:30):
... the big part of it. We've definitely covered that. And if anybody has any questions or wants clarity on specific things, please let me know. I'm always happy to chit chat and fill in any gaps that you may have.
Connie Maday (43:42):
There's so many stories.
Anne Alaniz (43:45):
But yeah, I feel like we covered the majority of it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Connie Maday (43:46):
I love it. Well, you have overcome so much adversity in your life. I think that there is a lot that you've learned you've had to endure. I think we didn't dive into this, but there's some scars of racism in our country that we've had to-
Anne Alaniz (44:03):
Yes. Yes.
Connie Maday (44:03):
And that you've had to kind of... I don't even know how to word it, but just experience. And that's really tough.
Anne Alaniz (44:16):
Yeah, it is. It is.
Connie Maday (44:17):
And awful. So my last question is really about advice that you have for young people who are facing some challenges, maybe through different adversity, through specific... Just what's your advice for our young people that's-
Anne Alaniz (44:39):
Yeah. So big question. I'm not-
Connie Maday (44:44):
It's a big question and I didn't word it very well. Sorry.
Anne Alaniz (44:46):
No, no, no, it's perfect. I'm not a guru, but I have learned that I think we can't wait for life to get easier because it doesn't. And you can't get wait for life to be less challenging for us to achieve our greatest potential. My obstacles from growing up in a village and being struck with poverty, having no opportunities. I always believed in what I wanted to achieve. I didn't know how it was going to happen, but I walked in the belief of what I felt I was meant to do and I was born to do.
(45:22):
So whether I was ever going to find a way out of Malawi to medical school was almost irrelevant. I woke up at 4:00 every morning, stuck my feet in cold water and studied with a paraffin lamp because we didn't have electricity. And I would study at 4:00 in the morning until it was daylight and we could go fetch water and run to school. So I didn't allow the poverty, the lack of electricity, the lack of water to be the defining moment for who I was. I just lived the dream that I wanted to be a doctor someday and just hope that the doors would open. And the doors did open. I was the first kid to be selected out of that school in the middle of a village to go to a big city school because I continued to work hard. And I did the same thing when I was there.
(46:06):
When I came to the United States, one of the stories I didn't share about being in a store is I went shopping with my American eight year old sister who's white because the family that brought me here is white. And while we were in the store looking around at clothing, there was somebody just following me around. I didn't understand what that was about, but at some point they were convinced I was taking advantage of the little young white girl and I was a 17 year old, I would consider myself a young black woman in a very small town in Texas. This person followed me around and at some point was convinced that I was doing something wrong.
(46:44):
When I went to check out, she basically went ahead and hid the keys to my car and I was looking around for the keys and couldn't find them anywhere. She used that opportunity to basically call the police because it was a suspicious young black woman in this store and doing something very suspicious. And then picked up the track that we had used to pay for the merchandise to call the people who happened to be the family that had brought me here to let him know that there was a suspicious black woman with a young white girl with their check basically shopping. And she had already called the police. By the time they were like, "No, no, no, no, that's our daughter from the Malawi," it was too late. The police were there.
(47:25):
And I had many experiences similar even in college where I was in a nice car with a boy who was black and we got stopped because he was driving in Mercedes and there was something that was supposed to say we were not supposed to be in that car unless we were doing drugs or we had stolen it. So all those experiences could have put me in a place where I thought there's no place for me. My race was never in Eshowe, Malawi because I was living in a black continent. And so that was the first time I was realizing that living here meant something different. That my skin color had implications and there were not positive implications. Even as a doctor now, often I get mistaken for a cleaning lady, right? It's like I have to wear my white coat all the time to wear my doctor badge so I don't get confused to be [inaudible 00:48:10], "Why don't you clean up my tray? Why didn't you come here to sweep the room?" I'm like, "No, I'm actually the surgeon." Things like that happen.
(48:16):
But you can choose to have those things define who you are, or you can choose to rise above that and still live out what you think is your purpose in life. And so for me, I take note of those things. I have an awareness. I have a carefulness about how I navigate through the world, understanding who I am in a world like that, but I also have not allowed that to stop me from being able to do what I truly believe that I'm on this earth to do. So in my practice here in the United States, I have all sorts of patients from different walks of life. And I'm amazed at how I'm able to connect with somebody who's from a low income state because I grew up that life. I can relate to my African American patient who struggled being able to be listened to and to be heard and to be understood and to be seen for the complaints that she'd be having for the last year because nobody believes what she's saying.
(49:09):
I can relate to my white patients because I lived with a white woman who made a very brave decision in a small town Texas to bring a black girl to live with her and had to see this experience for the first time in her life in a world that she really didn't think did exist anymore. So to me, I feel that sitting down and letting the challenges in life stop you from being able to do something that you believe in really allows those negative experiences to sort of be the winning factor, right? So I think at the end of the day, it's really about choosing every day to live out what you believe in.
(49:45):
Even if it doesn't look like the door is going to open, wake up today and do what you need to do today. Because if each day you do what you need to get to your purpose, then each day is going to turn into a week of you working towards your purpose. It's going to turn into a month of you working towards your purpose. It's going to turn into a year of you working towards your purpose. And five years from now, you will be living your purpose of being on this earth. And I feel like that's what I've done. I just chose every day to live out my dream and then the doors opened as I went, and I'm living exactly the dream that I had. And I'm so thankful and I feel so blessed for that. But that is the way I just approach life. Just do it every day. And then five years from now, you're going to be exactly where you're supposed to be.
Connie Maday (50:34):
Well, that's the best advice I've ever heard. And I'm speechless. Anne, you are so beautiful. I've been in tears here. You're just an amazing person. You are an incredible... I mean, there's so many things we could talk about being a woman and all. There's just so much. But for today, I think we're going to end here before I completely lose it. I just want you to know how I'm just so honored to had the opportunity to share your incredible story and to have you talk and share your wisdom and your presence, your energy. You're just so inspiring. And one person can make a difference. Thank you.
Anne Alaniz (51:29):
Yes. And thank you.
Connie Maday (51:29):
Thank you. Thank you.
Anne Alaniz (51:29):
Thank you so much for having me. I really, really feel honored. I had come out there to Santa Barbara to meet some of you ladies. I think just even the reception, and for me it's really little things like that, is people making that decision to say, "I could spend my Friday or my Saturday doing something else," or "I'm going to meet this woman that I've never met, but I think she has something that I want to hear." And I think even you making that decision to spend your weekend with us and the things that you guys are actually doing right now as a group to contribute towards what's going on in Malawi, I think that's incredible. It just speaks again to that power of sharing your story, walking your story, and always being open to people that come around. You may not know them, but sometimes I think we all have a story and I think everybody's story is special and unique, and I think just giving people the time and the chance.
(52:27):
So I just appreciate you. I appreciate you having me here. I'm really, really grateful for this opportunity and I look forward to maybe Kilimanjaro one of these days.
Connie Maday (52:38):
Oh, yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Thank you.
Anne Alaniz (52:42):
Thank you so much.
Connie Maday (52:42):
Okay, well that's it for us today. Remember, I will leave the notes in the show notes. And remember, if you're interested to find out more, you can check out the links. So honored for this special conversation we had. Remember to be kind, be bold, be you. I'm Connie Maday. Make it a great day every day. Thanks for joining us.
