I'll call her Polly. She lives over the lane from us in Kinshasa. The life and soul of any gathering, she'll stand on the table after a few drinks and recites all the old songs from the village. She's a lively character and, despite her being loud at times, we like her a lot. She works as a domestic in another part of Kinshasa. A few weeks previously, she had malaria and so came to take $50 of the money we mind for her, to pay for a course of injections at a local clinic.
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| Polly - after her ordeals |
Two weeks later, Judith rushed into our tiny sitting room, laughing. "Where's our tincture of iodine?" she blurted, still laughing as if she was up to mischief. We'd used it for appendicitice wounds. I got it down from the cupboard. "What's it for?" I asked.
"Polly's got a boil on her bum!" Judith giggled. "Well, it's a wound. She had an injection a couple of weeks ago and it's become infected. I'm going to dress it for her." She hesitated a bit and then said, "Well, it's quite big, could you do it?"
I'd dressed quite a few wound recently, including Judith's appendix wound. But the fact that it was on a woman's bottom was amusing Judith no end.
"Let's have a look," I said - a bit embarrassed really, but dressing a wound is dressing a wound.
The next thing, Polly's in the room, she's dropped her trousers and is showing me her bare bum! Around her waist was a long string of plastic pearls, which, Judith told me later, were some sort of charm). There, in the middle of one buttock was a hole, big enough for a finger to fit in. There was white puss inside.
The clinic that had given the injection was obviously a dirty, filthy place, with no concept of hygiene. The infection would definitely become worse, and possibly gangrenous as it progressed inwards. Our giggling stopped.
"No, Judith," I said, "this is serious. She's ignored it for too long. I want her to go to the lovely hospital that we use. They're proficient in cleaning wounds and they'll give specific anti-biotics for deep wounds. This is beyond us."
Polly and Judith looked at each other. It started to dawn on them the seriousness of the situation. They agreed - and off they went.
The hospital is a charity. It's not expensive at all - and only a 15 minute walk away. They specialise in all aspects of good childbirth practice, but treat all comers.
They made quite a fuss over Polly.
"Oh, là là ! How could you leave it so long? That's really deep! Who on earth did this to you? You must never go back there! We need to clean it inside."
They cleaned it inside by putting an antibiotic liquid onto gauze and pushing it inside and then removing it. They repeated this three times. They explained the gravity of the situation. "If you hadn't come to us today, it would have progressed further. Eventually, you would have become disabled - even lose your leg." They noticed that she had generalised swelling. Her face was puffy and her feet were also swollen. The infection had already spread.
Polly came to us with a prescription for lots of medicines that would be used - including those for cleaning the wound. She made 4 more visits to the hospital and when the wound started to heal, came back to show me. We could hear her a mile off - she's always loud and laughing about things around her. Judith saw her first. "Francis, I'm sure you don't want to see her bottom again!" We giggled again. She was out of danger now, and we could be light-hearted once again. Judith went to inspect and I didn't need to blush a second time.
This morning, about 6 weeks after it all started, Polly came to thank us. The normal loudness was turned down and she told us profoundly how much she appreciated our help. Judith winked at me, gathering up some bread and our thermos of hot water and took Polly to sit outside on the balcony area, to drink tea.
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