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The voices of whimpering women sitting on the left flank as you enter the police station could be heard. Their statements will be taken as witnesses to the bloody onslaught that took place in the local clinic earlier that morning.
"Uwa, dan Allah zo a gaba", the sergeant said in Hausa with a whittled voice motioning to the oldest of the six women to come forward and tell them how the whole thing happened.
She came forward sluggishly, too heavy with grief to see clearly. She wiped her teary face with one end of her wrapper, sniffed and stood before the officer behind the counter. Fresh tears came to her eyes again as the incident replayed in her mind's eyes. She wiped the tears with the back of her palm. Her lips moved but no words came out. Her voice choked by the gruesome murder she has never witnessed in her entire existence. The two police men were growing impatient with her. She was an elderly, and so, they could not shout at her. If they were angry, it was their faces that showed it not their voice.
They needed to file the report because the matter had gone to the governor's ears who vowed to bring the perpetrators to book.
She came to the clinic with her granddaughter and accompanied by her daughter-in-law very early in the morning to see the doctor. Her granddaughter was running temperature. She is not the kind of woman that takes health matter with levity especially when it has to do with the youngest member of her family, her first grandchild!
They waited eternally for the young doctor responsible for a hundred or more people crowding the local clinic. He was the only doctor posted to the entire Tungeri village without any support. If the work load was very enormous, it never showed in his face. He seems to enjoy what he is doing. There is always a smile for anyone that came in contact with him. At first, the people were skeptical because they have never expected to have a young doctor who is also a corp member at that posted to their village. His first contact with the nursing mothers brought him to near tears. He remonstrated them for their nonchalant attitude to the health of their sickly children. They were accused of being dirty, not taking care of their environment, waiting for the response of government to help clean their environment which, of course, never came. His listeners could not fire back at him because they saw that they were indeed guilty.
They pleaded earnestly with him not to turn his back on them like the former doctor posted to the village did, who, when he discovered there were no nurses available to support him in the services to the community, left in great annoyance. It took several months unending before another doctor was posted to Tungeri.
