Steve Martin \u201900 and his wife, Eden, have spent a collective 15 years in post-undergraduate schooling.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Furman, Steve attended law school and was a practicing attorney for four years before changing careers to medicine. He graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina in 2011 and just completed a fellowship in pediatric hematology in Indiana this spring.<\/p>\n
Eden\u2019s path took her from Wake Forest University to the Medical University of South Carolina where she earned a master\u2019s degree in physical therapy in 2002.<\/p>\n
With medical school and fellowships in their wake one would think the Martins, both Greenville natives who grew up in the same neighborhood, would be anxious to settle down with their young children and reap the just rewards of their collective hard work.<\/p>\n
Instead, they have moved to Malawi, the fifth poorest country in the world. Their workplace is a four-story, cinderblock hospital where two children are crowded onto one bed and patient privacy is non-existent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the reward,\u201d says Steve, smiling.<\/p>\n
There is a critical need for physicians and nurses in Malawi where nearly 90 percent of the children who are diagnosed with cancer die. In the United States, it\u2019s 10 percent. While Malawi, roughly the size of Florida, is safe, the landlocked nation in eastern Africa is desperately poor. Only five percent of the population has access to reliable electricity and the per capita income is the equivalent of $216.<\/p>\n
The Martins and their three children, Chappell, 10, Lydia, 6, and Annie, 8, moved into a tiny neighborhood for international families in Lilongwe, the nation\u2019s capital, earlier this month. One of their next-door neighbors is Furman Earth and Environmental Sciences Professor Suresh Muthukrishnan who has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to research and teach at Lilongwe University for Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) during the 2017-18 academic year.<\/p>\n