Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa by Warren Durrant Read Free Book Online Page A

but
had failed to connect them. The case was one of perforated typhoid ulcer, which
occurs at the other end of the small bowel from where I was looking. The
article described it as the commonest cause of acute abdomen in West African
males. In the lad's condition his chances would have been small, even in the
best circumstances.
     
    A number of small children were brought
in, very ill. I had barely time to examine them before they all died. But I had
seen enough: a thick grey membrane over the back of the throat. Something I
doubt a living Englishman has seen in his own country - diphtheria.
    I informed the public health, and a
couple of Indian doctors came up from Takoradi with a lorry load of vaccine and
serum. They stayed at my house. Over sundowners and supper, we laid plans.
    All the cases had come from one village
- Bekwai. We had to vaccinate all the children under five in that place. The
doctors would offer serum to all medical and nursing staff in contact. I
excused myself as an already vaccinated Englishman.
    The village headman was notified, and
the vaccination programme planned for next day. News travels fast in Africa,
and so did this news. Not the news about the epidemic - that was no more news
than dog bites man - but the news that injections were being given out at the
hospital. There is nothing your African peasant appreciates more than a good
painful injection, and even if the babies are not actually born with the taste,
they are quickly trained up to it.
    I started my mornings at a separate
clinic at the sawmill, designed to get the malingerers back to work as early as
possible. The two other doctors went straight to the hospital.
    When I arrived there later, I thought
the revolution had broken out. Not one village, but the whole countryside, had
received the news. The hospital was practically buried in a crowd that would
have done for the Cup Final. The police were hard at work with truncheons:
village headmen were beating one another's flocks with not so ceremonial
staffs, each battling for his own .The Bekwai kids were a drop in the ocean:
how many got their rights was anybody's guess. The doctors ran out of vaccine
long before a fraction of the crowd was satisfied. Their only concern now was
to save their skins before the police could remove their clientele. When the
police had beaten a path for my car near enough for me to see the hospital, and
Dr Patel on the veranda to see me, he waved his arms and shouted:
    'The whole thing has been a disastrous
failure!'
     
    Two Ibo women staged a stand-up fight in
the market place. Such is the implacability of the race, especially the female
of the species, and especially the Ibo of the species, that the fight went on
for three days, knocking off for meals and sleep, like a test match. It ended
with one receiving a decisive kick in the abdomen; whereupon she skulked in her
tent for another three days, evidently hoping to mend her wounds and return to
the fray. If so, she was to be disappointed: she was brought to me instead (as
Mr Pooter might have said).
    In short she had a ruptured spleen, and
died on the operating table.
    An inquest was held in the club by the
district magistrate, when I gave my melancholy evidence; which was received
without question, or at any rate, without criticism. Nobody blames the doctor
in Africa who, like the pianist at the party, is credited with doing his best.
Years later, in Zimbabwe, a murderer had the effrontery to suggest from the
dock that the doctor might have done better, and was promptly put in his place
by the magistrate. (This was not a hanging matter, or I wouldn't be joking
about it.)
    The other woman, of course, appeared: as
like as two peas in a pod. She had her baby on her back. I suppose they must
have taken breaks to feed their infants. I forget the outcome of the case.
     
    Finally, my saddest case at that time.
At caesarean section, just after I had delivered a healthy baby girl, Mr Sackey
informed me that the