The Hospital Grounds

The hospital occupies 17 acres, enough land to house a small University campus. Every ward, which in a normal hospital might be made of a hallway or a floor, is comprized of a cluster of buildings, cabins built for communist youth. These building clusters are very spread out. From the front gate to the emergency room, for instance, is a hundred yards, and another hundred and twenty to the first set of patient-wards.

The hospital's wide-spread condition is perfect for African style health-care. The patient's family is responsible for feeding the patient, taking care of linens and laundry, as well as keeping track of their records (cheap composition books with handwritten notes). All this family activity takes a lot of room, and the hospital has plenty.

This man, whose name is Joachin (Zwa-say), has a broken humerus that is not healing correctly. He is a friendly man, but whenever the doctor comes by, he says he feels "very, very bad."

The little girl on the left is Peya. She has a pretty bad burn on her leg and I've been doing exercises with her to restore full motion.

Here are some of ghosts of the hospital's past: play equipment for good communist youth.