SAVAGE SUN

ENT ZAMBIA

The sun was savage.  We were in Monze.   Stepping out of the shade felt like stepping under a grill that had been turned up to  max.   My pale Celtic skin was frying.   But the Hospital in Monze did not have a switch  that allowed us to turn down the sun!   We had checked the weather for Zambia.  Rain, they said,the rains are coming. But they lied. Either that or the rain-clouds were mocking us from afar.

 

This was our first trip to Monze and people had gathered from all arts and parts.   Alfred, the Zambian audiologist, Pattison the Zambian technician and I were put in a tiny examination room.   It was a room within a room.    The window was high  and did not open.   So three adults plus three patients plus the parent/ granny /brother/ who’d come with the patient, were all crowded in this tiny room.  And that’s not counting the people who craned in to see what was happening.   At one point I found three curious people leaning over my shoulders to see what I was doing.

 The temperature outside was in the high thirties perhaps up to 40 degrees.  Inside  it was hot enough to bake bread.   Well it felt that hot to me.   Alfred and Pattison’s  foreheads had a slight beading of sweat.  I was dripping from every pore.  I dripped so much that the patients’ charts looked like I’d left them out in a rainstorm.  Someone brought me a towel and that helped.   I drank water by the gallon.

“Are you all right?” a worried -looking Alfred kept asking.

“I’m fine, I’m just hot.”

But he kept checking on me.   I suspect he was afraid  I would  spontaenously combust in this little hot room.

“What on earth  is wrong with you?” he demanded as I continued to drip all over the floor.

“I’m Irish.” I replied, ” we’re not used to heat.”

I finally saw the last patient as the sun was going down. But Alfred and Pattison who were issuing the hearing aids and making the moulds had to stay on until after seven. They were the heros of the Monze trip.  

 

All hail Alfred and Pattison.

That night we stayed in the Holy Family Centre with Theresa and Moe.   Theresa made dinner for the whole team and gave us a bed for the night.   I got a room with a fan.   Oh the joy.   The rest of them sweated the night away.

 

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