Short Story: A Better Life

Short Story: A Better Life

I walked to the battered, Toyota pick-up, which was the Mission’s only transport – when we could make it function and Father Claude could afford diesel. As I walked I felt like a hero, half the village had come to wish me well. It was wonderful to see those smiling faces shining in the first light. They stood, both hands raised in salute, as is our custom. Never hide a hand. Anyone worth saluting deserves to have all your attention and both your hands.

So I left, Father Claude driving me to the airport, with hope and love in my heart.

I was leaving to start a new life because I was one of five Father Claude managed to send abroad on scholarships for further training. I cried the day he told me. So too did my mother and my sister. In fact we all cried. I was going to have a better life than anyone else in the family.

***

I had not been back to the village for all the long years of study. There was no money for luxuries like air-travel and holidays. I had stayed in Europe studying and working, determined not to let Father Claude down. I’d have died rather than disappoint him and dishonour my family.

Of the five who went away to study, two are now doctors and each year we will be giving up our month’s vacation to Father Claude, in order look after people in the far out village and give lessons to the students who will work as nurses in the Mission’s dispensary. That is as it should be.

Even those who stay in the village have much for which to be grateful to Father Claude. He it was who started the school and training programme in my village. He also runs the dispensary and both the villagers’ sources of income: the wood-work and sewing workshops. Father Claude has also organised the village building programme: all the young men who go to the Mission school take a turn making the pressed-sand bricks we need. It is, I can hear you say, a slow way to build houses and you are right it is slow building anything one brick at a time and very hard work, but I am sure none of you can imagine the satisfaction our community shares each time we finish a house. We have a party, you know, to celebrate the good fortune of those in the new house and the hopes of rest of us who are waiting their turn. We have a good number of brick houses now, all thanks to that hand-worked brick press Father Claude brought to the village.

The job I have in Europe is in a large hospital in a large city. It is very clean, everything is shiny. It is also very depressing: there is so much waste, our whole village could live for a year with what people here throw away each day. I wish I could gather it all up and send the pens to the school and the biscuits and things to all those who have never tasted such things. But even that would be impossible – postage being what it is. I do gather lots and any visitors who are travelling back home to take with them a bag of goodies for the Mission.

I suppose the thing with having a better life than anyone else in our village has had is that it takes a bit of getting used to. My years of study have not been enough, perhaps; no doubt I will get used to it. I will also, I suppose, become accustomed to people not really looking at me; to people who shake your hand with one hand, while they are already looking away and moving on to something or someone of more interest. I am not sure I want to find that acceptable, but I expect I will – everyone else here seems to find it normal enough. It is, I think, only I who longs for the interest and courtesy of my people; persons who will put down their broom or their hoe and raise both hands to say “Mboté, Hello” and “I trust you will have a good day today and your people are keeping well.” They would never dream of turning their back on you and returning to their chores till I too have answered “All are well, I thank-you. A wonderful day to you too, and a good day to your family. I pray they are all well and will continue so.” Only then will I pass by, feeling good, feeling part of a friendly world, and they will continue working – till the next person happens by.

Now I am to live a better life. In this good life, it seems, there is no time for such lengthy courtesies, a raised hand turning a corner is the best I can hope for. I am thankful for even a single word and a smile. These are scarce commodities to one like me. This world runs so fast, I still haven’t caught up.

It is perhaps because I am new to this world and my new better life that certain things still impinge on my consciousness more than on that of the rest of the staff in our unit.

I work in the geriatric unit. It is a sad place. Respect for the old is another of the differences in our worlds, a difference that is extending fast to encompass our young people too -unfortunately. Our cities will soon be as bad as those in Europe and America. How fast the worst traits of civilisations cross-pollinate, leaving the best to die in the deserts of the fuddy-duddies and old-bores.

It is, perhaps, the poverty of our daily living that make our old people precious, as we try to learn from their experience of what we cannot yet know. Our nights are times for listening and learning and talking; here, in the fast shiny world, night has to be filled with a different kind of doing, bright and noisy, just like the light hours. Here there is no time for listening or understanding.

It is this noise and haste that make the geriatric unit a sad place; a place where people arrive only when they are reaching the end. When the final slippery slope is all that is left. Too many come in and never leave.

We do, however, have the occasional success and I had had just such a success with Mr. Thomas. He had come to us with a broken leg after a fall down the stairs, undernourished, and dehydrated. He had made an excellent recovery, his bones had knit, now he was well and ready to return home. Wonderful. A success.

I was so pleased. Mr. T was one of my favourite patients: so gentle, so courteous and in the night, when only we were awake, he told me such interesting stories about his life in the merchant navy. I felt sure he must have been a very active, adventurous gentleman. Now Mr. Thomas was going home. I would miss him but I was so happy as I waited for his family to arrive.

Chance wanted that I hadn’t yet met them, they all seemed very busy and their few visits had coincided with my off shifts. I anticipated their thanks as they saw how well their father looked. I imagined them saying “Thankyou Dr. Mbele you have done a wonderful job for us.” Perhaps they would shake my hand.

They did not.

They gathered round his bed: his son and daughter-in-law on the right, two daughters and a son-in-law on the other side, I stood at the foot.

Before I go on with my sad story I want you to understand that Mr. Thomas is a lively old soul, very aware of what is going on around him; always asking about the nurses’ families or about the progress of my specialisation studies. He never forgets anything we tell him, that’s why it was so wonderful for him to have made such a complete recovery.

Now you understand that you will perhaps share in the dismay I felt that day as I stood at the end of Mr. T’s bed, a useless witness to the saddest scene I had ever witnessed.

Far from being pleased with us and congratulating me on his being demitted, the family of that lovely old man stood there arguing about why he should not sent home; why each of the others should take him instead of themselves. Each of them had long explanations as to why they could not be expected to have ‘the old man’ in their lives.

I tried to tell them that he was well and could go home and should not be occupying a hospital bed, which could be needed by a sick person. They paid no attention.

Each daughter tried to out-do the others, in busyness and important commitments of self and husband; every family answered with reasons for insisting the ‘others’ were better placed to take him.

I felt like a jester at the court of King Lear.

In the bed that lovely old man sat in silence, the tears running uninterrupted and unheeded down his cheeks. What he thought no-one asked. Of his pain I alone appeared aware.

I still feel like crying when I think of the scene and his pain still reaches across to me, over time and space, to remind me where our first priority as a society really should be: with children, with old people. Those who have yet to start and those who have given all they could. The voiceless to whom all is due.

A doctor should not hate. A doctor has to try to maintain emotive distance. I did neither. I said we would gladly have Mr. Thomas with us a little longer, and I would try to find him a more congenial accommodation.

I hated those well dressed men and woman as I have never hated and despised anyone ever before.

For this I received a reprimand from the head of our ward, from the ward sister, from the nurse, only one of the auxiliaries was with me.

If this is a better life, I do not think I want to be part of it. As soon as I serve my contract I am going home to where living is difficult enough to make those who have survived it worth something.