Clinic and Culture

Half of watching my dad work is seeing surgeries, and the other half is sitting in clinic with him while he sees patients. I always thought of clinic as the boring side of surgery, but nothing is boring here. The patients that walk through the exam room door are always interesting. One of the patients that came through the clinic the other day was a Fulani man and his son. “Here they come, the real African gypsies,” Audu, the ENT assistant, told me as they walked through the door. And they do resemble gypsies; the father and son were small, worn looking people with much jewelry and heavy tattooing. The Fulani are a primarily Muslim tribe that live in the dusty desert of northern Nigeria. They live on meager means, scraping an existence by raising cattle. This family, however, was wealthier than usual and could afford a doctor’s visit. Audu told me, “They may be Fulani, but they are rich. This man, he have all the cows.” His son was small, malnourished, and had a large mass coming out of his ear. Dad and Dr. Aboiyar put a drain around the mass and prescribed antibiotic eardrops. At the end of the visit when the Fulani man pulled out his money to pay medical fees, he was very careful to turn his back to us so we would not see how much money he had or where he kept it.

About a week later, the man returned with his wife and another child. This time he also brought his wife with him to see this white doctor who could cure anything. He showed us the mass in his son’s ear, which had gone down significantly during the course of the antibiotic drops, and asked, “Can you also make my son a little fatter?” His wife insisted on being seen as well for headaches and dizziness. My dad agreed and prescribed Vitamin C and Tylenol in exchange for a photograph of the family. The Fulani woman was very pleased. She spoke no English, but she kept holding up two fingers and through a translator enthusiastically requested a second copy of the photograph. As the family left she swung her baby onto her back and tied him on with one hand, while with the other hand she waved two fingers to remind us, two copies! Audu told us that when they got back, they would gather the whole village together and tell about these people who were white from head to toe. Next time, he expected, they would come with even more people to be seen by the white doctor.

-Emily