The Hospital

The chief of Surgery, "M", is a passionate, dedicated man who trained in China and France. But this hospital is very bad. How could he bear to work here, after he had adapted to a different standard? I asked him, “Why did you return?” He said, “I could go someplace else. But I care about my country. There are many problems here.” 

The military hospital is a series of outbuildings constructed of cement and sitting on red clay mud. There are dips and puddles of stagnant water, and a fine mist of rain beginning to come down. This time, right after the rainy season, is the most dangerous for malaria.  


I wasn’t sure what the plan was. I had come to see the work that had been done on the hospital: the sidewalk that had been poured across the open area in front of the emergency entrance - but the hierarchy here were upset that we were here. Whatever was going to happen next, it looked as though it was unprecedented. "M" was defiant. He said, "I don’t care what they do to me. This is important." 

When we finally had permission to tour the hospital, "M" said to me, “I protect you. So you must protect me.” I replied, “That is worrisome. What do you think will happen to you?” He didn’t answer me directly, waiting while the rain fell around us, then he said again, “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

We stood outside in the rain for a while before moving into the open waiting area outside the hospital director's office. This man was well fed with a clean uniform and shiny shoes. The only shiny thing in the hospital. He had a big congratulatory plaque next to his desk, and, like a good name dropper, pictures of himself with important people on the walls. There he was with the General; another photograph with important looking men looking solemn and very well dressed. There was a picture of him at the age of 27, decades ago when he studied in Greece.

The director began by shaming everyone soundly;  talking about the necessity for planning for the visit of a “delegation”. He even scolded us for contacting "M" instead of him. When he finished his rampage, I threw myself on my sword. It is of no consequence for me if I do this –  he merely needed to be appeased and stroked. I explained in a long, sincere, and flowery monologue that he must not hold these gentlemen accountable for my actions. That "M" and the LCDR were not prepared for this visit either, but that I had requested this at the last minute and that they were trying to help me. I noted that the LCDR was not even in his uniform because he was going to drive back to the Capitol city. I told the director, "we are not a delegation. We are friends."

He grudgingly agreed to the tour. 

The hospital is a terrible, contaminated place of suffering. People are piled into small, cement rooms, side by side, arranged like the grizzly offal of some meat processing machine.They lie on metal framed beds with thin mattresses made of packing foam. It is humid and unbearably warm and the flies from the nearby latrine buzz lazily around them. 

There are patients with infectious diseases, but there isn't much to be done about them: malaria, aids, syphilis, cholera. The director was noisy about his tour, his shiny shoes clipping against the tile floor. He walked boldly into rooms with women who were very sick and undressed. There was no regard for their privacy or suffering. No compassion. All this, while he said, “The important thing is not me. The important thing is the patients of this hospital. See what we are trying to do here.” This was a bullshitter, if I ever saw one. I watched the way the other doctors observed him. Mostly with wariness. He took us into the maternity ward, a room without air conditioning containing six beds and thin mattresses. There were four pregnant women in there. One was moaning and clutching her swollen belly. He would not take us into the delivery room because it was so awful. He said it was, “not nice”.

There was one generator for the entire hospital. And a morgue about 300 meters away, with mourners in black who had come for the body of a loved one. 

I learned this week that the director has brought charges against "M" for letting us in.