Thousands of shillings (part three)

Claudia lived in and for the hospital, which was a small concrete building up the narrow muddy lane, opposite the convent.  Pregnant women arrived by motorbike taxis or pick-up trucks and Claudia and her team would deliver the new babies.  The hospital had no glass in the windows, reliable electricity or computers, but it did have Claudia.  And while her main work at the hospital was to look after the new-borns, she dealt with other sicknesses as they occurred and turned no one away.  We met her on a Thursday when the first volunteer in our group became sick.  We had thought it was merely some travellers’ sickness or food poisoning at most, but when Claudia tested his blood and his temperature she was able to confirm that yes, he had malaria.

She was cross with us at first.

“Why does he have malaria?” she asked us as if we were to blame.

“Is he one of the young people who sit outside after dark in short trousers and t.shirts?”  We promised her that he wasn’t.

“Did he take his anti-malarial tablets?”  We promised her that he did.

“Well he has 4 parasites in his blood which is very serious” she told us as she wrote-up her notes in a school copy book.  “He must drink a lot of water, take these tablets, and rest for some days. And he must not sit outside after dark with his short trousers on”.  We promised her, that as team leaders, we would ensure that he would follow all of these commands, and we left the hospital sheepishly.

The second time we visited her, she was angry again but the more frequently we saw her the less she frowned and we became like friends.

Claudia liked to peel oranges, she said that bananas were her favourite fruit, but I never saw her eat.  She ran the hospital, delivered the babies and healed the sick daily.  She was always either at the hospital, or on call and when I asked her if she minded not having private time or free days or evenings, she simply replied “this is my duty”.

Patients came from all parts of Morogoro for her care.  Everyone wanted healing from the good doctor with the kind smile and she did what she could with her ever growing waiting room and tired staff.  She was always available to us for our dilemmas, despite knowing that we had more in our travel first aid kits than she had in her dispensary.  Only one time could she not come to our beckoning and that was the day she had to deal with the man after the road traffic accident, the man with the burns.

But at all other times she was there for us.  She waved at us when she saw us getting on the bus to go on safari and she laughed at us when she saw us getting ready to go out dancing.  She smiled at us when she heard us trying to speak Swahili and she was pleased with us when we told her that we thought the project was a success.  “That is good news” she said when we told her how many computers we had brought over with us and how many lessons in English we thought had gone well.

On the last day we went to see Claudia, to say goodbye and to pay our hospital bill and she handed us a hand-written note for a few thousand shillings or 30 euro in another tongue.  We thought she had made a mistake, that this was for one visit only or one set of painkillers, but she assured us that this was the total bill and she wanted no more.  So we paid our bill and we left.  Madam Leemo and Sister Salome also wished us safe travels on the bus that would take us back to Dar-es-Salam and the Indian Ocean, and we well-fed worms went home.