Do ut des -

Ten people were now crammed into the small consultation room – one of four in the antenatal clinic. I noticed that there were no windows or ventilation slats above the door: it was a room within a room. The air was filled with a sour aseptic odour, warming up with each communal breath exhaled by the room’s occupants. The door had been closed on account of the weather, and out of respect perhaps: we were in a private room after all, sealed off from the patients waiting in the hallway. A rudimentary examination bed, two plastic chairs and a veneered desk hugged the walls of the room and the students dispersed themselves amongst them. The lucky ones were sitting on the examination bed which was covered in transparent plastic, now opaque with fine scratches. The rest of the students squashed themselves backwards, into the wall, standing and leaning with effort. The further from the center the better. The ones in the front were always picked on: names were asked, politeness demanded, nodding was necessary. Two students managed to find space on the cluttered desk where they sat hunched over in waiting. The desk had packets of condoms, sheets of birth control pills and clean syringes all neatly partitioned and stored by cardboard separators. Some STI pamphlets lay folded and piled on the desk but toppled over silently when one of the students whipped open his bag, apparently to find something to eat. I caught a glimpse of the pamphlet: an exposed pubic region with text in blocks of primary colours. The stuff that fear was made of.

Sister Peppy or Dr Pepper or whoever was speaking deliberately and fervently. I only caught the gist of what she was saying because I wasn’t really listening. Daydreaming I suppose. It was a long drive out there. I was tired and my mind wandered to more immediate and prosaic things, things that concerned me beyond the clinic’s isolated needs. The word ‘community’ was repeated several times and suddenly I felt the conjured eyes of the clinic’s 200 waiting patients grow into thousands of expectant eyes – eyes that were depending on my lukewarm indifference to Sister Peppy and her plans. I shut it out. It was too late to care about anything, I had already passed my threshold and was sated. Perhaps with food or some other filler?

My eyes drifted to the wall above the desk, Sister Peppy’s desk, where various HIV posters and A4 sheets of paper with nursing schedules and friendly morale boosters like ‘I can only do 12 things at once’ shielded the paint beneath them from view. ‘Hope Worldwide’ was now being discussed somewhere in the room and I noticed that this organization, too, was represented amongst the chaotic wall collage that extended out of human reach toward the ceiling. Meetings could be held with them. Things could be done. Somewhere in the room someone suggested a ‘partnership’, a ‘coalition’ – the word ‘strive’ may have been used. Some-one mumbled the word ‘community’ again under their breath but it was hard to tell who had said it, or if, for that matter, it had been said at all. But I had already stopped listening. My attention turned abruptly to the postered wall where I allowed my eyes to go out of focus. The blur seemed to hum with the buzzing fluorescent light overhead and it seemed like only a moment passed before we were shuffling awkwardly out of the clinic into the harsh sunlight of the day.