The night is as thick as coal dust

As the night shift starts

The electricity keeps going out

No lights, no oxygen

Who will die tonight?

Back on again

A Doctor sprays the room before the start of her shift

To protect against the dreaded fly

Among the sweat and heat the medics loose blue uniforms move around

With needles and gloves

Children cry with pain

Some vomiting again

How many tonight

Three or four maybe six or seven

 

A father is told his daughter is too young for herbal medicine

Her liver may pack up

It’s a quarter past three

She is sitting up with tubes in her nose being fed

But nobody complains in this suffocating heat 

The night passes amid parents singing worship songs

Interlaced with several halleluiahs

After twenty-six hours no one has died

A smiling tired Doctor relieved goes home to bed