Deadly Politics

Last Tuesday it was Tanzanian Independence day. In the hospital this meant that Dr Pim was the only doctor on call and that all elective surgeries had been postponed till Thursday. So we, three interns and Dr Pim roamed the wards, discharged, made treatment plans and even delivered triplets, but all in all the day was done around 13:00. That gave us more than enough time to walk to Ubwere to listen to the political rallies. Two political parties were screaming at each other and playing deafening music, their supporters where waving flags and drag racing their Piki Piki’s all up and down the sandy main road. My first thought was “how many of these drivers are patients tomorrow?”

We fled the market square before either party had time to pull us up on stage and make us the star of their campaign. It was off to the tailors to buy new fabrics, for the guys wanted to get some dresses made for their significant others. My measurements were taken and here and there some inches were added or subtracted, depending on the dress’ recipient.

The next morning at morning report my predictions painfully came true. Eight admissions, two dead. All because the following happened: the son of the first president visited the Rorya Mara district, and he came by helicopter. To show his respect to his party members in Shirati he did a fly over in the late afternoon. We don’t get any planes or helicopters here normally, so the fly by must have been quite the sight. So much of a sight apparently that a driver of a Dalladalla (Mazda van) stuck his head out of the window to get a better look, and promptly drove his car into the ditch. He was killed instantly, an eight-year-old boy that was standing in the ditch died hours later at the hospital.

Deadly politics indeed