Dwelling In Ignorance: A Third World Snippet

Olu leaned his head against the glass, relaxed, wrapped in nostalgia as brown valleys bearing grazing cattle sped past. Soft tunes from country blues enveloped him, putting him in an ethereal zone, wearing headphones, shutting out the blaring radio in the bus. He was going back home to the village to see his grandparents and extended kin. The atmosphere in the bus was taut with body odor and heat despite the small windows that were left open.

Next to him, a girl sat slouched, dozing as a saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth. He grimaced and turned away, keeping his eyes on the sights flashing past. He thought about seeing his cousins. The thought of them grown into men excited him and he smiled warmly to himself. He had bought some junk food from the city. He couldn’t wait to see their faces lit up once they saw it. They knew of no other dish except the local meals in their village. He bopped his head softly to the tunes enjoying his reverie.

While his thoughts jangled about happily in his head, from the corner of his eye, he saw the girl next to him jerk forward and drop to the hard metallic flooring of the bus. It was fast but it felt like time suspended in space and in those slow seconds he saw her begin to convulse, twitching violently, her limbs flapping limply around her and foam frothed from her mouth, her eyes wide and glazed, its pupils missing. His eyes widened in shock, too stunned in that moment to react.

The passengers next to them began hollering, some jumping to their feet and scrambling out of the way. Olu knew what was happening to the girl. As a medical student, he had seen cases like this before. This girl was having an epileptic seizure! He had seen it happen many times before. The girl looked to be a teenager no older than sixteen.

“Bring a spoon and put in her mouth! She will bite her tongue!” An old woman crooned expertly. Olu grimaced, that was exactly what he had hoped they would not suggest.
“Hold her! She will hurt herself!” Another cautioned and he watched in horror as the younger men scrambled to do their bidding, one taking off his belt to bind the woman’s flapping limbs. The man’s efforts only made her struggle vigorously, lashing out with her jerking hands and managing to nail the poor man in the face.

“STOP, YOU WILL WORSEN HER CONDITION! PUT HER ON HER SIDE!” Olu screamed,
but the frantic passengers ignored him and being a very short young man with a frail build, he could not get through the older men that were now blocking him.

“HERE! A SPOON!” A younger woman handed the man a plastic spoon and immediately the man thrusted it into the epileptic woman’s mouth to Olu’s dismay.
“NO, STOP! ARE YOU MAD?” Olu screamed and reached to stop him…
Just as the bus came to a jilting halt, throwing everyone off balance. The crowd that had gathered around the gurgling girl poured onto her. Olu had been holding a railing, his heart withered at the thought of all that weight pressing down on the suffering girl. Quickly, he grabbed at the groaning passengers heaped on the girl, frantically tearing them from her. He managed to clear a path only to meet a ghastly sight…

The girl was stiff and still, gurgling and wheezing as she choked on the rubber spoon which had lodged deeper into her throat, an inch of its rubber handle still jutting from her mouth! Quickly, Olu dived to her rescue, throwing himself on all fours beside her while willing himself to stay calm., He gingerly pinched the handle of the spoon and maneuvered the spoon by its handle out of her mouth. The girl coughed up bloody sputum, opening her eyes and he instantly knew she had been injured. He turned her over on her side while screaming at the onlookers, “GIVE US SPACE, I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!”
“What is happening here?” The driver barked from the front of the bus, disturbed by the clamour.

“Look at this small boy, he wants to kill somebody’s child!” some old women cursed.
“Get off her now!” some older men barked, glaring at him and reached to tear him away from the girl. “I’M A MEDICAL STUDENT!” Olu pleaded hopefully as iron hands grabbed him.

The villagers paused and sceptical eyes pried at him, and curious faces stared blankly utterly clueless as to what that meant. Olu deduced quickly that almost all the passengers were rural indigenes with little or no knowledge about Medical practices.

He proceeded to say, “I mean I am A DOCTOR.” He lied! But it worked! He saw understanding, trust and resignation register on their faces…

Image Source

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AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This piece is aimed at picturing a vast form of bondage plaguing most under developed countries. Drawn from life incidents, IT SHOWS THE GROSS AMOUNT OF IGNORANCE predominant in the rural areas due to lack of education. Although Education enlightens the ignorant, it is also rejected in some cultures.

Diseases are still treated and handled with primitive methods that often worsens the victim’s condition and sometimes leads to death. The instance portrayed here is typical in some Nigerian villages, there are many other dangerous and primitive methods from different cultures used to maintain conditions such as Epilepsy and Asthma which are wrong. Some insane methods include scrubbing the victim’s face with onions and administering herbs during the seizure.
Methods like this only serve to worsen the patient’s condition. Watching a seizure can be scary but there are some guidelines as to how to react and what to do for a patient having a seizure.