'The old mahogany tree'













Monday 5th July

Within the hospital grounds are some beautiful mature mahogany trees that provide nice shade areas for the patients and co patients. Just before I arrived in June, there had been a big storm and it had brought a large branch of one of these trees down, narrowly missing Dr P---- by a few seconds. She says she heard the crack, looked up and ran. This particular tree overhangs the children’s clinic, so is now looking very unstable.

The ‘Ministry’ says it must come down. Word soon gets around that work needs to be done and the price is good. Now - forget health and safety in the workplace!!
A man who is a relative of someone that knows someone, will do it; he also happens to have a child in the children’s ward (quite sick) so while he is here, he will take the job on.

One old axe is found, and some rope, and the chopping begins. Branch by branch, it is piling up around the clinic area, the wood is just so hard, chips of this beautiful red wood are flying. What a wood turner would give for this wood at home I can’t bear to think about it!! This wood will all go to firewood.

The sun is beating down, how he keeps going I just don’t know. By 7pm only one main branch is down, he promises to have all felled wood cleared by the morning so the clinic can run.

We arrive at work the next morning - the wood is as we last saw it. We all were muttering about ‘he promised’, ‘so unreliable’, etc. It transpires that his poor daughter died that evening on the children’s ward. How bad did we all feel!!!! Despite all this he said he would come back this weekend and recommence where he had left off. The clinic went ahead with the mothers sitting in the felled branches and the children enjoying their new mini jungle.

We are still thinking of a good movie for our cup night ‘Bend it like Beckham’ or ‘Madagascar’ would be nice!

But unfortunately we have neither. The new Slovakian Drs have only Italian speaking movies. We will keep looking. The cleaning goes on; it is really amazing how they are rising to the challenge - the main out-patients and out-patients’ pharmacy is one of the oldest buildings, very high ceiling, open beams. Covered in cobwebs - well, they were.....

Father A------, one of our judges, last week commented about them, and said it’s a pity that area could not be cleaned, so a few days ago, Saturday (Dept closed), one of the nurses came in on his day off and climbed up there and brushed all the cobwebs down. See photo, it is just so high. I was having a fit wondering about if he falls. Great job, he will definitely get a prize, scoring system or no!!!