Life for the families around the hospital

Whilst Sarah's in theatre, I spend my day with the two 'aumoniers' (chaplains): Pascal and Martin. They're absolutely great and we've become really good friends. Plus: it gives me a chance to look around the hospital and try to understand how life 'works' here.

It's pretty tough. Some of the patients have been hospitalised for many months and so, of course, the family has to come in, to live on site, to cook, wash and clean, and to cater for many of things that we would take for granted from the NHS.

So first of all, as the family, you're setting up camp and sleeping outside, in a big 'hangar', right next door to another family, whoever you are:

Washing, then, gets hung up everywhere to dry around the hospital:

Cooking takes place in special areas provided just to the side of the hospital. It's usually a sort of millet-based hard porridge:

Along with a vegetable-based sauce; this, I think, is a kind of okra (ladies-fingers) that gets boiled down:

It's interesting to note that, with the hospital having sprung up here, a sort of add-on industry has grown up for entrepreneurs: there's a small market outside catering for patients and staff that provides food (where before there was nothing). Here, for example, are some lunches ready to buy (rather like that episode of The Apprentice where they do the fast-food challenge and end up selling pies to hungry businessmen...):

But if you're fending for yourself, another problem, of course, is wood for fuel. From what I gather, it's many km to get to an area where it can be gathered, so you can buy bundles like this:

And here are a couple of ladies who gave me permission to snap them at work:

In kitchen-rooms like this:

And, only if you're very fortunate, meat!

It (genuinely) has made me think about what it means to be a family in a time of crisis: what does it mean to 'stay together' in this context! Whatever you think, it is something truly sacrificial.