Part 1: The man on the ground

Latest in the list of grievances is the man at the hospital. Lying on his side in the dirt between the maternity and pediatric wards. Bare feet rest atop each other. He eats the dust.

Everyone passes by.

No one comments. No one assists.

Then we arrive. And Rose stops.

“Hello. How are you?” she asks, bending down to speak to him on the ground. “What’s your name? What’s wrong?”

His mouth moves. I can’t hear the answers. They’re mumbled, jumbled.

A crowd gathers. Those standing on the ramp to Pediatrics lean in. Spectator sporting at its best. Or worst.

Some of the onlookers guffaw. One woman’s face splits with a smile resembling a leer. One man comes alongside Rose, hands behind his back, leaning in and over the man on the ground. Looking down at him.

Beverly and I stand off to the side. Looking on. At a loss in the face of this loss, this lack.

We shake our heads.

“Does he need water?” Beverly asks.

“W’ap bwe dlo? Will you drink water?” one of the onlookers asks.

The man agrees.

She hands him a water sache and he squeezes it empty in a gulp or two. Like dust absorbing moisture.

I want to take him up. Dust him off. Tuck him into a clean bed with crisp sheets. Tuck an IV in his arm and watch the nutrients flow down into his stick-thin legs.

Worse than the dust around him, the emaciation of his limbs, is the solitude. The abandonment. He is alone.

“Who brought you here? Where are you from?” Rose asks. “Where is your family?”

There is no one.

No one to take hold of his hand, assure him. Ease him into bed and care.

We go to the director’s office—the boss of the hospital. He frequently consults for us, prescribes medicine, advises.

He shakes his head and smiles when we speak of the man on the ground.

“We’ve done what we can,” he says.

He tells us the man has been here a few days. The staff tried to take care of him. They put him in bed. He went back to the earth, laid himself back down in the dust. He’s ill. No one knows how to care for him.

“We’re going to get him up, give him clothes, and bring him to the poor house,” the director tells us. He doesn’t know more about mental illness. The only word for that here is “crazy.”

The director’s shoulders shrug under their brown corduroy. His suit jacket fits over a button down, with fitted slacks and polished shoes. His manicured hands lift.

I read the plea for absolution in every gesture.

He smiles with well-rounded cheeks and groomed chin.

The man on the ground is not a concern. Soon he’ll be off the hospital campus.

“I’m glad you have a plan,” Beverly tells the director as we turn to go. “We’ll see you soon. Another student has scabies!”

She and Rose speak briefly of our latest discovered scabies victim; several of our students now are afflicted with the skin parasites.

“So we’ll see you on Friday with Woobins,” Beverly says.

Thank you and goodbye.

As we exit the building we can see between the maternity and pediatric wards. The crowd is dispersed. The man on the ground is gone.

“Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” ~ Isaiah 58:6-9 NIV