Kids’ Doc in Jos

by Barbara Blyth (c. 1995)

Lord, you know me quite well.
You know I’d much rather stay home
in my stifling hot kitchen and bake cream puffs
than take a liter of yogurt
to that Fulani lady down there at the hospital.

She doesn’t know my language
and I know very little of hers.

She seems sad and depressed and refuses to move
from under her blanket.
But I’m sure I’d feel the same way
if I had burns all down my arms and legs
and all I felt was pain
and somebody tried to make me move
and the pain was just too excruciating.

Visiting Zanaabu does not lift me up, Lord,
and I don’t want to linger
in her tiny room at the end of the corridor.
The dozen or so ladies resting on mats along the corridor wall
greet me as I pass them.
I have been this way before and they remember.
The courtyard of hard-packed earth
is strewn with plastic basins and cooking pots.
The chain-link fence is draped with freshly laundered wrappers
adding color and cheer to an otherwise drab place.

Why do you compel me to return to Zanaabu
with more yogurt when the jug is empty?
She seems convinced she will die.
She refuses drugs and treatment and food
but she seems to be eating my yogurt.

Do you want to take her to be with you?
She suffers a lot beneath those big white bandages.
Do you want to take her because you know
it will be too hard for her to live with her tribe,
now that she follows you?
Or do you want to heal the burns
and use Zanaabu as a light to her people?

Meanwhile, make me faithful in my small task
of carrying my one-liter jug of yogurt
past the ladies who greet me
to the end of the long corridor
to Zanaabu’s room
May I be your faithful instrument of hope and peace.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Barb's jottings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.