the way you found me

He’s about 80 pounds now, my Mozambican colleague. I sat on his hospital bed last week and we talked about his work, the family, what he expected for the future. He looked like a Holocaust victim. He smiled at me, lying flat, his eyes now focused, now withdrawn.

A sheet covered his lower half. There was an IV stuck in his hand, hooked to nothing, and a spot of wet blood, red-black, on his metal bed frame.

All around me were women, strong and solid, wives and sisters, lifting and bathing, feeding with a spoon, as to children, rearranging sheet covers, setting these men to rights, putting them in place. There are not enough staff at the hospital to do these tasks for them.

The Central Hospital in Beira is the biggest hospital for hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometers, in Mozambique. The inside of this hospital spans two worlds, in my mind, two different moments in time: here and now, with good people working the best they can to save each others’ lives; and the past, the end of World War II perhaps, a medical camp on the front, the devastation and liberation of Dachau.

Second floor, the gray hall, turn right – that’s the men’s ward. Walk down the hallway in a zigzag, avoiding the thin mattresses on the floor and the people lying on top of them, naked,  frozen in pain. Especially avoid the IV bags strewn on the linoleum beside them – you must not trod on those – bags limp like jellyfish washed up on a beach. Hold your breath as you pass the lavatories, stride quickly. This ward is very quiet but full of people. Room 9 is just to your left. Pause, turn abruptly. Slow. Enter.

There are four beds to a room, sometimes two patients to a bed. He is alone in his.

His head is the only thing that has retained its normal shape. His arms have become thinner than your wrists but he is not a Holocaust victim. People die, emaciated and hurting, when their HIV has turned into AIDS.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

He says he’ll be out by the end of the month.