Beautiful(55)
“Their families are very much a part of their care. Some come from very far away, others are from nearby villages.” You could see that it was a culture of family as they huddled together.
She observed as she walked through the wards with him that many of the children were missing limbs, and only had stumps. More than half of the land-mine injuries in Angola were children. They collected sticks for firewood in the fields, and the mines exploded. The children all got excited when they saw Dr. Dick, and he stopped to hug several of them and talk to them and their parents in Portuguese or Umbundu. He spoke both, and two other native dialects. It was a whole different experience for Véronique after the military hospital in Belgium, and her recent surgeries in New York. This had a whole other flavor, which combined local traditions and culture with Western medicine.
“I bring in a lot of American medicines they can’t get here. It’s a big help, and we get shipments from Germany and France too, and the United Kingdom. We’re grateful for whatever we can get. We run it on a tight budget. We don’t have a lot of funds, but we make it stretch. Most of the families do their own cooking on the grounds. Although we’re primarily surgical, we give all of them vaccinations they’d never get otherwise.” She could see how much he loved it, and how he thrived on the work he did there, and how much he cared about his patients. All the children waved and called him by name as he walked her through the immaculate hospital.
They went back to his office after the tour, and she had noticed how neat and precise the place was, and the equipment looked surprisingly new and up to date.
“We have a rotation of doctors from the United States, France, and the UK. I stay here longer than the others. Most of them can’t take that much time off from their practices. But Phillip is very good about it. He knows how much I love it here, and letting me do this was one of my conditions of opening the practice with him. If he needs me, and gets too swamped, I can always fly back the way I did in March, but I like to be here as much as possible. I’ll be here now till mid-June. Do you know how long you’re staying?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. I’d like to be useful while I’m here, as a volunteer in the hospital. It’s the only service I can provide.”
“We can use all the help we can get,” he said warmly. “The nurses and the nuns will let you know how you can help. Sometimes they just need you to sit with a child who’s come out of surgery, if we’re shorthanded. Some of the children get injured by dangerous farm equipment. We have a full house most of the time. The nuns used to run the place themselves with a doctor who came through once a month. We’ve recruited a lot of volunteer medical staff since then. There’s always a doctor on duty here now. We had some Australian docs here last year who were terrific.” The feeling was very international, while respecting the African traditions and how they cared for their sick. The nurses spent a lot of time teaching parents to change dressings, to avoid infection.
By the time she left his office, it was almost six o’clock. He had more patients to see and post-op patients to check. Véronique wandered back to the dormitory, and went to find the dining room, and when she did, it was a big room with long refectory tables, and more fans circulating overhead. The smells from the kitchen were delicious. The nurses she had already met in the wards walked in as she was looking around, and invited her to sit at their table.
More nurses joined them a few minutes later, and within half an hour all the tables were full with laughing, talking, chatting women. It looked and sounded like a girls’ school for adults, only no one was glum or unhappy to be there. There was an atmosphere of real joy and pride about what they were doing, and it was contagious. Several of the nuns made a point of introducing Véronique to the other nuns and nurses. They were all interested in where she was from, and how she had heard about them, and asked how long she was staying. They were an open, friendly group of women, who all made her feel welcome. They had chicken with delicate spices to eat for dinner, cornmeal, plantain, and some vegetables she didn’t recognize but it all tasted delicious. After she had eaten, the trip caught up with her. She could hardly keep her eyes open, as she headed to her room. She brushed her teeth, put on pajamas, and crawled under the mosquito netting, and before she could put her head on the pillow, after she turned out the light, she was instantly asleep. So far, she loved everything she’d seen and everyone she’d met at Saint Matthew’s. It felt like coming home.
The next morning, after breakfast at six, she took a quick shower according to the schedule, and arrived at the hospital as Dr. Dennis was starting his rounds. He had two nurses with him, whom she hadn’t met yet, and he introduced her. Both were British, Prudence and Felicity. She accompanied them to the wards, and observed what they were doing. Many of the children were severely damaged after accidents, and several of them had disfigured faces, mostly due to the minefields. One little girl, who appeared to be about four or five, cried when he checked her dressing. She had been in a mine explosion when walking to the river with her mother. She had deep scars on her face that looked similar to Véronique’s. She smiled at the little girl, and pointed to her own face. The little girl stared at her and stopped crying, and asked her mother in their dialect how the lady had hurt her face. Felicity translated it for Véronique, and Véronique answered without feeling self-conscious, possibly for the first time.