A few weeks ago, I had a wicked chest cold. Unfortunately, chest colds are not uncommon here in this part of Afghanistan as the weather is a bit cool, it rains often, the air is thin, and there is a severely unhealthy amount of pollution in the air. Almost everyone gets sick at some point during the beginning of their deployment here. It is almost a right of passage. In my case, however, the environment plus the dungeonesque open bay living area I was temporarily housed in made my first weeks a tough burden on my respiratory system.
Thanks to the chest cold and my near constant coughing, sleep became difficult for a few nights. I knew I was waking not only my roommates but the entire barracks with my coughing fits. So one night, at the height of my bronchial blight, I decided to do something about it. When a fit of coughing woke me at 4am, I rolled out of bed, put on a jacket, and walked to our base clinic. As it was four in the morning, the only section of the medical facility open was the emergency room. And of course, going to the emergency room meant the doctors were going to check for everything, even if that meant giving me chest x-rays and hooking me up to an EKG.
By the time I was completely scanned, screened, poked, and prodded, it was close to 8am. With my results in hand, the Czech doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. Before I could check out however, I had to walk from the emergency wing to the routine admission wing to pay for my visit.
(As a contractor, I have to pay. Military folks get free health care. They also get paid a lot less than I do. Fair is fair.)
As I sat awaiting to pay for my medicine, I saw several local Afghans sitting on nearby benches. I heard the hospital tended to locals, but as my workplace is on the other side of the base, I never saw the medical staff in action nor anyone from the community arrive.
Although we all had a definite language barrier - my English, their Dari, and the medical staff's French - we all seemed to understand the basic process of what was going on in the waiting area. All except an elderly Afghan man with a wicked cough who wandered past the staff desk and started walking down the hall towards the patient rooms. He was quickly caught, herded back to the waiting area, and a bi-lingual staff member instructed him on the proper protocol.
While the elderly man sat to my immediate right, to my immediate left sat a young father and his three children. The father appeared to be in his late 20s, and his children looked to be somewhere around the ages of ten, seven, and maybe three. They were dressed in typical Afghan garb, with flowing robe-like outfits, sandals, and scarves wrapped around their necks. The girl of course had her scarf up on her head to cover her hair as is the custom.
It didn't take long for me to realize why the young family was in the hospital that day. They were there because of the youngest boy. Not only did he look fatigued, and his cheeks were a rosy red, but like me he also had a wicked cough, although his sounded much more meager than mine. No doubt he was hurting.
As the other two children bantered, the young boy sat quietly besides his father. The man wrapped his arm around the boy's shoulders and held him close. I could see the young father was concerned and I felt for him. While I watched the boy the father's eyes moved from his sick son to me, I wanted to tell him that his son was about the same age as my nephew; perhaps we could have built a bond. But I could tell his English was limited, and of course my Dari is non-existent. So I just smiled and he smiled back.
After about 10 minutes of all of us waiting, the young father's healthy children started to get impatient. Seeing they needed something to occupy their interest and something that might cheer up the young boy until he could finally be seen, a French nurse brought the children a handful of beanie babies. The eyes of the sick young boy lit up with presented with the gift. I saw him smile for the first time, temporarily forgetting his illness. His brother and sister, seeing his happiness, started to engage him with their beanie babies and the young boy started laughing, before another cough stifled his fun and reminded us all why he was there.
Eventually, after only 35 minutes of sitting in the waiting area, I was finally able to pay my bill and leave. A few moments before I walked out, however, it was the little boy's turn to be seen. As his siblings remained in the waiting room, the sick little Afghan boy took his father's hand with one hand and clung tightly to his new beanie baby with the other. The pair followed another French nurse down the hall and into one of the patient rooms.
I walked out of the clinic wondering about the sick little Afghan boy. Were they able to give him something to cure him? Did he only have a common cold or the flu or was it something much worse? Did he have a capable home life where he could take his medicine, get plenty of rest, and eat and drink what he needed to stay healthy? What if international military forces weren't in Afghanistan? Where would his father have taken him?
There is a lot of talk about why the international community needs to leave Afghanistan. They say support for international presence in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. But I am positive on that day a few weeks ago, the young father of the sick little Afghan boy was among one of our greatest supporters.
