Bujumbura

I was in Bujumbura for the week. The main purpose was a visit to a local regional hospital.

The doctor in charge was tall and slim, his voice quiet, deliberate. I liked him. There was a reserved elegance about him — the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself.

I told him the equipment was finally on its way — a shipment I’d managed to assemble through  donors and contacts. It would arrive in a few days. In the meantime, almost nothing worked. There was no X-ray, no surgical lights, no functioning operating room. No tools, no mattresses, no supplies of any kind.

They managed more than fifty deliveries a week, though the delivery room had no proper lighting or delivery table. No anaesthetics. No autoclave. Not even antiseptic in the cleaning supplies. I wouldn’t have let my dog walk on that floor. Most of the ward mattresses had rotted, stained black and sagging around the exposed steel springs. They couldn’t afford a bandage.

A few days later, when the container arrived, I saw him stand by the side of the road watching, openly weeping as the equipment was being unloaded.

As we walked back down the paint-peeled corridor, I asked him if he was local.

“Yes” he smiled “born and bred”

“So how long have you been running this place?”

“Just over twenty years now.”

“Wow, that can’t have been an easy ride. Where did you train?”

“Johns Hopkins,” he replied.