Pigs and Politics

Yesterday was interesting lesson in local politics. I went to work in a village way out in the Maphaleng catchment area. I had arranged to work with the chief and the villagers on my last visit and was looking forward to seeing people again and catching up with the community health worker. After trekking out to the village (approximately 2 hour drive from the hospital on some really bad roads) I encountered a pretty grim looking chief. He proceeded to tell me that the villagers refused to come and talk to me that day because they were mad at him. A village fracas had erupted the prior week and he had hauled several prominent community members in front of the higher chief (the paramount chief as they say in Ghana). Needless to say those folks weren’t too happy with him for doing that and were currently expressing their displeasure by not working with him or me for that matter. After being here for over 5 months I have drastically lowered my expectations when it comes to getting work done in a day so I just asked the chief to send a message via the local clinic when tempers had cooled down and some of the issues had been “resolved” between him and the villagers. This of course could take 1 week or 10 years but one has to be an eternal optimist when working in Sub Saharan Africa!!!

After my fruitless meeting with the chief I went to look for the community health worker a wonderful older lady who has seen her share of sorrow in this world (her husband committed suicide by drinking rat poison after a horrible bout with depression last year). I found her sick as a dog with her grandchild (a cute wee guy who has an earring in his left ear!) who had a raging ear infection. She was totally dehydrated and her grandson looked miserable. She told me that she couldn’t go to the clinic because she didn’t have enough money. I told her to go to the clinic the next day with her grandson and that the hospital or I would pay for it (the least we could do considering all the health work she does for free in the community).

On my way back to Mapoteng in the deathtrap hospital 4x4 (which has wonky brakes and an exhaust pipe held up with wire!!) we picked up the chief’s wife (who was on her way to town), lab tests from the local clinic, and unbeknownst to me a couple of pigs in sacks!! I couldn’t figure out at first: 1) what the heck was grunting; 2) what smelled like an outhouse; and 3) what was making a racket in the back of the 4x4. Yep, it was the pigs. The irony of course is that my colleague (who is not a 7th Day Adventist) was transporting pigs in a 7th Day Adventist Hospital vehicle (pork is verboten to 7th Day Adventists!!). We both chuckled like evil children and he invited me over for pork the following week!! Just another day in Lesotho!!