Sunday, June 11, 2006

Pottuvil - 26-31 May

Crowd control in Pottovil. Funny how people who are used to wait for just about everything simply cannot wait for their turn despite anything we do or say. Different place, different rules and definitely no "wait for your turn" rule in this place.
The first clinic is set up in a disused village school in Pottovil. In spite of having heard we would be busy, seeing the crowd awaiting us in the morning is a bit of a shock. Later on I see myself having worked non stop in a heat approaching 40 degrees, while people try and push in to be seen first. This chaos seems quite unreal, and rather comical too. Regardless of what we say, people just will not queue. Threatening to leave unless everyone stop crushing everyone else and forms a queue seems to have no impact al all, so we just get on with it, trying to contain the crowd. Funnily enough, it is the old ladies in sari that seems to be the most aggressive at this getting ahead of the queue (what queue anyway) business.5pm and that’s the day over for us, 6:30 and it is night already, dinner and a bit of rest and I find myself going to sleep at 9pm. This will turn out to be a regular occurrence during the trip. We all seem to manage to stay awake until 9 or 9:30, then wake up with prayer call at 4:30, and successfully or not going back to sleep for another hour or two, until is it just too hot to sleep.

No comments: