Студопедия

Главная страница Случайная страница

КАТЕГОРИИ:

АвтомобилиАстрономияБиологияГеографияДом и садДругие языкиДругоеИнформатикаИсторияКультураЛитератураЛогикаМатематикаМедицинаМеталлургияМеханикаОбразованиеОхрана трудаПедагогикаПолитикаПравоПсихологияРелигияРиторикаСоциологияСпортСтроительствоТехнологияТуризмФизикаФилософияФинансыХимияЧерчениеЭкологияЭкономикаЭлектроника






Various sights






 

At some of the camps they sat in the sun for hours in front of the signs: MALARIA DISPENSARY, TUBERCULOSIS CHECK. There were not enough doctors.

In the I.R.C. camps near Kohat he very often saw the malnourished infants, tightly swaddled in the heat, too weak to disturb the flies that crawled across their faces.

Then for his Afghanistan Picture Show a young boy whose face was spattered with fine birthmarks like a buttermilk pancake stepped forward smiling with mouth and greenish-black eyes and his friend set a watermelon upon his head!

The old ones sat still. They must know that they would die in Pakistan. The little girls tilted their heads at him and ran away coyly, as little girls seem to do almost everywhere. The men took him inside their mud houses and showed him photographs of the martyred ones — large, grainy black-and-white posters on the walls. They showed him their guns and told him that their sons, their uncles, their brothers were in Afghanistan right now killing Russians, and when the others returned they themselves would go. They smiled.

At Kohat the houses were sometimes grass-roofed castles whose ramparts were molded of mud and gravel. These had baked hard in the sun; they were very hot to the touch. Blankets and bedding lay stretched out on them to dry.

At the little soft-drink stands, fruit stands, cigarette stands, sat vendors indistinguishable from those about Peshawar. It was hot in the camps, though, and often there was no ice for the Fantas and orange sodas. — As for the Young Man, he sat in town, drinking his ten Sprites a day.

In the camps people were polite to him. They never asked him for anything.

 

HELPLESSNESS [4]: STATEMENT OF DR. TARIQ (Hangu Camp, Kohat — I.R.C.)

 

Levi’s van pulled up by a dispensary tent. It was only about nine in the morning, so it was not too hot yet; and they were up in the hills anyhow. Then tents and mud houses of the camp were widely spaced, but they went on and on. You could walk up the ridge and across the rolling plateau and up the next ridge and along the hill and up the ridge again and still see no end to it.

The dispensary was crowded. A baby cried. Women in chadors — red or green or black — waited silently. They drew back when the Young Man was brought in. Dr. Tariq had stopped his examinations for the moment in Levi’s and the Young Man’s honor, and his assistant brought them both cups of green chi. The baby cried and cried.

“How many people a day do you treat? ” said the Young Man, switching on his tape recorder. The Afghans watched in fascination.

“Per day is about three hundred, four hundred patients, ” said Dr. Tariq.

“What’s your greatest need here? ”

“Well, we would like funds for the X-rays, because most of the people are having tuberculosis. We would like to screen the patient’s immediate family. I mean, like about ten chaps are living in one tent, so when the mother’s got it, I think frankly the children must be having it also. They’re very crowded. And another immediate requirement, I should say, is caused by the fact that these people are from a cold climate. They’re not used to the Pakistani climate. It’s very hot here. And especially for the ladies with this thick garment of theirs.” —He pointed to a patient in a chador. — “You see this clothes that she’s wearing? It’s very thick, and they wear it day and night. We’ve been having cases of bleeding from the nose.”

“Too much heat can do that? ”

“Yeah, ” Dr. Tariq said. “And patients are coming in with a fever of 106°, 107°. We try to cold-sponge them and whatnot, but it takes time. We are hoping that they can have mud houses. In this heat it is too much for them to live in a tent, especially as these tents are nylon, some of them, so the heat is really wicked.”

“Are people suffering from malnutrition? ”

Dr. Tariq was surprised. “Oh yeah. About five minutes back I saw a very severely anemic lady, and if there was some hospital I would have taken her …”

 


Поделиться с друзьями:

mylektsii.su - Мои Лекции - 2015-2024 год. (0.006 сек.)Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав Пожаловаться на материал