Today, I took a friend to the local main hospital. She had broken her foot a couple of weeks ago and today was decision time, whether to operate of leave well alone.
Sitting around, my mind drifted back to last March when I took one of our little boys (a black little boy) to the hospital in Kisii, a) to treat him for an intestinal parasite and b) to check his HIV status.
People have said that I cannot compare my treatment in Kisii with my treatment here. In Kisii, I am an oddity, a mzungu in an area where there are few wazungu.
OK, maybe the staff helped me to jump the queue, but that is not the issue. I was impressed with the care and concern shown to an under-nourished, small, skinny orphan kid (in fact, he is, as far as we know, not an orphan, but was abandoned at birth).
The over-worked (and probably underpaid) staff were extraordinarily caring for this little mite. And he was one of scores of kids in the hospital that day. Do they treat all the kids like this? There is no reason to believe that they don't. I cannot believe that my little boy got preferential treatment because he was with a mzungu - or did he?
Either way, I think the staff at Kisii hospital are brilliant!
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