Rift by Beverley Birch Read Free Book Online

week.
    We’re SORT OF getting into gear for life in the wild – slowly! Whole day spent sorting out ‘toilets’! Digging long trenches, leaving soil piled up behind. When you’ve used ‘toilet’, you tip soil over with a spade – the ‘flush’ system! We dug the 1st trench too close to the stream (Our Leader knew exactly how to do it – she Has Views on Such Matters, even when she’s out of her depth, literally! Wouldn’t listen to advice from Tomis and Likon – he’s the other ranger). Surprise surprise – trench fills with water from below! Had to start again, already tired, got slower and slower, finished too late indark, still had to erect tents over it. Endless groans from kids (some) and teachers (some) about the labour. Wonder what they thought they’d be doing here?
    There was a rumble of wheels, and Ella looked up from her reading. A man trundling a trolley stacked with large metal urns from the kitchen: breakfast for the wards, she guessed. She checked her watch: nearly twenty past eight, Inspector Murothi might be here already –
    She stuffed the emails into her pocket and hurried back down the corridor, through the side-door and into the main hospital. And there she halted suddenly, mid-stride, facing a framed newspaper cutting on the wall. ‘Minister Opens New Health Centre’, was the heading.
    She’d seen it last night. The memory brought a sharp flush to her face: on the way to Joe’s room, the young nurse, Pirian, scornful, tapping the glass. Aha! Smart picture, hey? Smart Minister at very smart new hospital. Beautiful new building!
    Startled, Ella had paused, mesmerised by Pirian’s emphatic finger, Tap-tap, tap-tap : See here? Aids! Measles! Tap-tap . Tuberculosis, malaria, burns, snake bites, buffalo-goring, children crushed by an elephant! We can deal with everything, the Minister says! Tap-tap . No problem, he says! We have no money, antibiotics, ointments, vaccines. Of course the Minister of Miracles does nothing about this (he is a very busy man). But he leaves us a nice picture to show that he came all the way to Nanzakoto to say there is not another hospital like this for hundreds of miles. Oh yes, we are very much open !
    Now Ella took a deep, steadying breath. All this, yet a region-wide search was needed for four lost tourists! She had a painfully vivid picture of how she must look to Pirian and the other nurses, wandering vacantly round a hospital that had big problems to deal with. How unbearable to spend even one more hour here, useless, and in the way!
    Decisively she turned away from the newspaper cutting, dodged past the wards and into the waiting-room.
    Already people sat and leaned and lay on every bench, between the benches, against every square of wall; children played in spaces in between. A single, slow ceiling fan barely moved the air. Dust, sweat, and antiseptic-smells mingled, and Ella was assailed by the astonishing scene around her: trousers and dresses, shoes and handbags mingling with spears and sticks and pouches, blanket-cloaks and beaded braids, neckcollars and lip-plugs, armcoils and anklets. People chatted and called to each other, even laughed. Yet in one corner a woman lay on a blanket, listlessly fanned by a child, and an old man stood in the middle, erect and gaunt, one bony foot propped on theother knee, eyes closed, as if he’d remain there, unmoving, for ever.
    The buzz of conversation slackened as Ella entered. On all sides eyes turned towards her. Then the room seemed to absorb her existence and the hum resumed. She was alone again, on the edge, with no visible corner to wait in.
    She glanced round. No sign of the inspector yet. Through an arch was the clinic treatment area: tables, wash-basins, curtained cubicles, a nurse emerging from one, fetching a bowl, returning. Nearer, a baby lay in the scoop of a weighing machine. Another nurse was busy adjusting the weights, while a young woman watched with such a look on her face that Ella’s