A Hospital in the Terrai

--> -->Birganj Hospital sits in the centre of the border town. A co-worker fittingly described the place as 'honky': noisy with the sound of car horns, rickshaw and bicycle bells, the dust settles only in the evening around 9 o'clock when the dogs lie down in the road and the people lay their heads wearily on their pillows to dream. 'Folk don't sleep deeply here,' Ed says. It's true. On a full moon night the hyenas howl and the dogs in packs reply in kind. Bats squeal and flap from tree to tree and crickets chirp the night long through till dawn.

At 5 am the town stirs with the sweepers brushing the debris from shop fronts and houses; coolies carrying pails of water and the waking dogs whine and simper. From a tea-house, music softly pierces the air, a holy bhajan repeated every morning on Radio Nepal.

The month is May and by midday the gusts of searing wind are like the blasts from a furnace. Inside the hospital the air is still and oppressive although a fan slowly revolves on the peeling roof of a ward and the sound of a fading groan threads its way along a dark corridor in which an old man lies, staring hopelessly, atop a stained sheet on a rusting trolley. The intermittent buzzing of the flies is the only other sound. From the smothering heat there is no relief. Mosquitoes having emerged from the dark, damp corners to gorge on victims' blood return to their corners, bloated and heavy.

May invited me to the hospital She's an American Peace Corps volunteer working as a microbiologist. The tasks are uncomplicated and involve no research. She only has to recognise different kinds of worm infestation such as the common ascaris. These are prevalent in the overflowing toilets where they wriggle and scurry in excrement on the floor. Hook worm is common, begot through the bare foot where they enter the bloodstream and work their way into the lungs and are coughed up, swallowed and hook on to the stomach lining, absorbing the goodness from pre-digested food. Tape worm is not so common.

I walk warily along the corridor my sandals flip flopping on the brown, concrete floor. The smell of decay, blood and the sharp smell of recently evacuated bowels invades my nostrils. I come across an old woman, dugs hanging loosely on her belly. A child lies supine like a rag doll devoid of stuffing, her face pointed to the fly-spotted fluorescent tube above. The old lady looks expectantly at me, her hands clasped over the bony frame of her legs, sad-eyed pools of hope reflect my passing.

May is saying, "That Dr Jah, he's always trying to kiss me. He's read this book about hippies and he thinks all western girls are ready for it."

As she's telling me this, we enter a "ward" where the light flickers strobe-like above. On the bed sits a boy, ill and wailing. "What's his problem?" I ask.

"He's frightened and begging me to get rid of the corpse lying on the next bed".
Then I notice the cadaver, black with flies. The floor beneath its bed is caked in dried blood. May tells me, "He's been dead for three-days now but nobody wants to move him. Poor child, he sees ghosts."

We turn around and leave the ward with a sense of the hopelessnes of it all.