Adelaide
“Hold him, please,” I say to Faraja, my assistant. “Tell him it will stop hurting in a moment.”
“Yes, Dr. Adelaide.”
I watch her turn to my patient and speak to him in his mother tongue.
He nods, clutching his injured arm, but his eyes are terrified. I can feel rivulets of sweat moving down my back and beading on my forehead, but I make a real effort to keep my expression composed and smiling.
Faraja helps the man lie down on the table, and I tell her to hold him around the waist.
“I’m going to pull on your arm,” I say to him in a calm voice, as Faraja puts her arms around him. I brace my foot against the table, gently straighten his arm, and start pulling on it.
“Oueee!” the man yells, then says something I can’t catch that’s probably the equivalent of Let go of me, you stupid bitch.
I keep my grip on his arm, pulling until I feel the ball of his humerus bone slide back into the shoulder socket. Almost like throwing a switch, the man stops yelling and blinks in surprise.
“Better?” I say, and he nods.
Then he climbs off the table and scurries away, almost as if he’s worried that I’ll start pulling on some other part of his body.
As I straighten up, my back and arms sore from wrestling with him, I hope that he’ll stay out of range of his mule’s kicks from now on.
And I thought I was fit. Workouts at the gym are nothing compared to this.
I brush ineffectually at the coating of dust and dirt on my once-clean shirt and khaki shorts and almost laugh at myself. Face it, Adelaide, you aren’t going to be clean again for a long, long time.
These are the joys of working for Doctors Without Borders in a remote, dusty village in Kenya. Oh well. At least no one expects me to be glamorous.
“Well done, Dr. Adelaide,” Faraja says admiringly as she cleans off the table.
“It looks worse than it really is,” I say, tugging the elastic out of my long blonde hair and fluffing it to get some of the dust out before twisting it into a ponytail again. “Kind of hard on the patient, though.”
Faraja grins, her white teeth flashing against her chocolate brown face. I was lucky to have her as part of my nursing staff at this tiny village medical clinic: university-trained in Nairobi, speaks excellent English, and is already one of my best friends here.
“It makes you look like a miracle worker,” she says in her lilting accent. “It’s no wonder that the villagers love you.”
I smile again, turning to wash my hands in the basin.
It’s an amazing feeling, to practice medicine in a place where people are so grateful simply to have the attention of a doctor, even a white woman doctor from the United States.
It’s taken me a while to earn their trust, but we’re getting there. As I scrub at the dirt under my fingernails, I can still hear my family’s voices echoing in my head.
“You graduated from Johns Hopkins top of your class,” my father said. “You could work in any hospital in the country. Why are you going to Africa?”
My mother: “With our family connections, you could have a private practice for only the best people.”
And my brother, Sten: “Are you crazy? White girls like you—especially rich white girls from prominent families—aren’t common in Kenya. You might as well be holding a sign that says, ‘Kidnap me.’”
They couldn’t understand that I have a responsibility to use my skills where they’re needed most—precisely because I don’t have staggering college loans to pay. Besides, I don’t want to run a pricey private practice. I need to be here.
“I could use some breakfast,” I comment, drying my hands by waving them in the air. “How about you?”
She shakes her head. “No. I will go home and eat. I will return in a while.”
I stretch, yawning. It’s early, and I’d been pulled out of bed by the man’s yells before the sun was completely over the horizon. Faraja must have heard him, too—hell, the whole village probably heard him—and she was here in a few minutes.
Good thing, too. Takes two to wrestle with a dislocated arm and get it back in its socket.
Coffee. I need coffee. Fortunately this is Kenya, land of coffee.
“Sounds good,” I tell Faraja. “I’ll see you later.”
She gives me a casual wave as she heads across the dirt towards her own hut.
Kichaka, who is also part of my nursing staff, has just arrived.
I smile at her gratefully as she brings me a bowl of ugali—boiled cornmeal—and bananas. I thank her.
“It is good that you could help Jel,” she tells me. “But he needs to get a mule that does not kick him.
Her daughter, Johari, appears in the doorway, dressed in her school uniform. “I think he is here every week because of something the mule did to him,” she giggles.
“If this happens again, I’ll teach you what to do,” I tell Johari.
Her face lights up. She’s told me she wants to be a doctor someday. She’s 16, and I’m going to teach her as much as I can so that she can get into a training school in Nairobi.
I take my bowl and the mug of coffee that Kichaka hands me and go outside the clinic to sit on the bench outside the door. Already, the sun is superheating the air, and the humidity is a thick blanket, even in the shade of the clinic hut.
I look at the other huts that make up this small village. With their thatched roofs, they cluster beneath palm trees, surrounded by hard-packed dirt that creates swirling eddies of dust with every passing footstep.
I drowse a little in the heat, grateful for a few moments of peace before the day’s flow of patients begins. I think about how very far away I am from the manicured green lawns and grand houses and air conditioning of Greenwich.
Mom would be having a fit if she could see me now, I think with a grin. It’s a pretty satisfying thought.
I wish my phone worked so that I could snap a selfie and send it to her. Here she is, your sweaty, filthy daughter in her dirty clothes…completely happy.
“Doctor Lady?” A soft voice stirs me out of my daydream, and I open my eyes.
A young woman stands in front of me, a small girl clutching her hand and staring at me with big eyes.
“This, my girl, Hasnaa. She…she is not…” The woman breaks off in frustration.
“Take your time,” I tell her gently in Swahili, standing up.
“My little girl Hasnaa does not want to move or play. Maybe she is sick.”
“Let’s bring her inside,” I say. I can already tell that, like many children and adults in this village, she is not getting enough to eat. “How old is she?”
“She is six years.”
I frown. At six, she should be much taller.
I gently lift Hasnaa onto the examination table, and the little girl does not protest but just sits listlessly. Another bad sign.
I examine Hasnaa’s teeth, listen to her heart, and take her pulse. “What is she eating?” I ask the mother. “Is she getting milk? Meat?”
The mother makes a small gesture. “She eats ugali. Sometimes, there is milk from the cow, but not much. A little meat when we have it.”
I turn to my supply cabinet and find some multivitamins and a powdered protein supplement.
“Take this,” I tell the mother, pressing them into her hands. I explain how to mix the powder with clean water. “This should help Hasnaa gain some weight. Then she will be stronger and have more energy.”
The mother listens intently, studying the packets, then nods. She gathers up her daughter and starts to leave, then turns back, slips something off her arm, and presses it into my hand. It is a beautiful beaded bracelet.
“Thank you, Doctor Lady,” she says.
As she leaves, with Hasnaa still clutching her hand, I slip the bracelet onto my wrist. I don’t expect payment from any of the villagers. That’s why I’m here.
But these people find small ways, small gifts of appreciation.
This is so, so much better than treating a bunch of fat society women with imaginary ailments.
“That is not all,” Kichaka tells me, smiling and brandishing a small plucked chicken. “Jel’s wife, she just brought this for you. To thank you for fixing his arm.”
My heart twists in my chest. “They don’t need to do that…”
Kichaka shrugs. “It is their way. And they want you to know that having you here is very important.”
“But so many of them don’t have enough to eat,” I say helplessly. “I don’t need to take food away from them.”
“Perhaps I can cook it, and we can share it with the patients who most need it,” she suggests. “Like Hasnaa.”
“Yes, that’s a wonderful idea!” I say eagerly. “After all, in America, we say that chicken soup can cure anything.” It sounds stupid even as I say it.
“So I guess that there is no need for all your medicines?” Kichaka replies, her expression clearly confused.
“It simply means food is one more way to help those who really need it,” I say, my voice firm. “And that’s what matters.”
She nods and disappears into the back of the hut. I lift my hair off my sweaty neck for a moment, hoping for a small cooling breeze, and swallow the last of my coffee.
This isn’t an easy life, compared to home. But right now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Sten was wrong, thinking I’d be in danger.
I am perfectly safe.