A Remarkable Sound

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Another day at the children’s hospital.

Not a good day, overall.

Chaos on the streets outside, under a searing sun.

Chaos inside, the junior doctors overwhelmed. Patients and parents line the corridors.

In the hospital courtyard, my little friend Ibrahim – covered in scars from a long-ago kerosene burn – in hysterics. “I beat him for playing in the gutter,” says a man nearby.

A meeting with the maintenance team. Frustration all around. A suspiciously inflated invoice. Still no plan to fix the water pump. Another deadline.

On Ward 2 a little girl close to death, her eyes glassy, her mother terrified. A nurse adjusts the flow on her blood transfusion. “She’s improving,” she says, unconvincingly.

We trudge upstairs to Ward 3, short on optimism.

And then we hear it.

A remarkable sound.

A child laughing.

Towards me, down the center of the ward, runs a little girl in a flowered dress. Her belly peeks out through a missing button.

She laughs again. The sound brightens the ward.

I run towards her and she shrieks with delight, turns and runs away. Her steps are those of a typical toddler, unsteady but fearless.

Children nearby watch us through the bars of their beds. One or two smile weakly.

I ask her mother, who sits grinning on the windowsill, how long she’s been here. A few days, she says. Before that, another hospital. They gave her blood. Her feet and hands still have marks from the IV.

I ask the nurses. She has tuberculosis.

Her name is Mary.

She is playing hide-and-seek. Behind the curtains, around the cement pillars, under the worn metal cots. She giggles while I search.

I catch her and she collapses under my tickling hands, squealing with pleasure.

This is the best part of my day.

I say goodbye and walk away. I have to work.

She sneaks up behind me. I turn and see her impish grin, and can’t resist.

The game begins again.

Mary is laughing.

So am I.


To help support the hospital described here, located in Freetown, Sierra Leone, please visit the Welbodi Partnership.