a knock in the night

just when i think i’m having a day in tanzania with nothing worth blogging about, something happens and i’ve got to record it. the town is now very familiar and comfortable, and things we were shocked and amazed by at the beginning of our trip have lost their novelty, for the most part. but there are still surprises, and last night was a perfect example of : t.i.a.

I woke to knocking, sort of. I was not startled out of my sleep, rather gently roused to the point where I became acutely aware that the repetitive pounding was maybe not a part of my dream and in fact coming from the door to our room. that inbetween place is always interesting - when your dreams blur with reality and it takes a while to sort out which is which. I open my eyes to darkness and silence, maybe it was just a dream after all… I rolled over, closed my eyes and prepared to fall back to sleep. knock knock knock! annnddd we’re apparently talking real life here, ok, I get it, clearly someone wants into our room. but who? how late is it? my mind is telling me that answering the door is not a good idea. thu is getting up, sleepwalking? I’m still in a fog. she moves to the door and reaches for the handle as I hear amy say “wait!”… she agrees, you cannot just open doors here in the middle of the night (especially after the scare daaimah had). then we hear deepal’s voice. thu unlocks the door to let him in. he’s a shadow, the light from the hall shines in around him, he sounds as out of it as we feel. what time is it? two in the morning? three? almost morning? he says “sister rose got bit by something and came knocking on my door to get help” leave it to the dental student to come running to the med students for assistance in the event of an emergency :) “she thought I was a medical student and she needs medical students or something”. you should have been here to watch the scene that followed. the three of us wrestling with our mosquito nets, trying to ask deep questions he didn’t have the answers to, shuffling through our supplies bags to see what we brought that might be useful in the event of a bite. all of it seemed to happen in slow motion, and I’m quite sure my eyes were closed until about the time we were walking downstairs. quiet darkness. we’re led outside, into the noisy, cool night, and the real story unfolds…


a family from poland was staying at the hostel that night, and unfortunately for them they had been put in the rat room. yes, we have a room we call the rat room because when the canadians were staying there, the boys’ room was infested with huge rats. we took their word for it and didn’t worry much because our room is the main building and on the second floor. this poor, worried family, the mother, father and three kids, sleeping peacefully in the rat room when something jumps onto the bed and bites/scratches the mom’s finger. we’re getting this story from one of the sons, his english is alright but his accent is thick and the whole family is frantic with worry. the mom is sitting in the back seat of a safari-type jeep, she looks beyond distraught. she unfolds the dirty handkerchief from around her finger. there is certainly a scratch/bite but it is not actively bleeding. we were hoping it would still be bleeding, at least then we could flush it out, try to clean it better. they had taken her to a hospital where the doc had wanted to start an IV but failed. it looked like the finger had been cleaned with iodine. what were they trying to give her? we asked. the husband pulled a small vial from his pocket – hydrocortisone? seriously? what good’s that gonna do? this woman needs to be prophylaxed for rabies, given oral penicillin to treat the bacteria that causes rate bite fever, but no, she does not need an antihistamine.

we’re doing our best to council her, three babbling, half-asleep, medstudents who have only completed their first year and are examining the bite in the dark with a flashlight while taking a history from a teenage guy who doesn’t really speak english. what an ideal situation – not! probably the only good we did was to put them at ease a little and explain that she is in no immediate danger, they could wait until morning to seek better medical attention. the family thanked us and left, in search of a rat-less hotel to spend the rest of the night. well centre house hostel, this isn’t exactly going to do wonders for your ratings…