About That Night...

She turned to face him and met his gaze. “I think it’s for the best. If I can get started straight away it will help build some relationships with the villagers.”

She could almost hear his brain tick, trying to decide if it was the best thing to do. “I’ll come and find you in an hour, okay?”

She nodded and smiled. “That’s fine. If there’s anyone needing immunization I can do that as I go.”

“You’re happy with the protocol for recording?”

“It seems straightforward enough. I’ll give you a yell if I run into any problems.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if he wanted to say something else, but she didn’t wait to find out. She walked to the doorway. Olabisi was already talking to some of the mothers waiting outside, forming them into two separate queues.

“Ah, Dr. Violet.” She pointed to the queue on her left. “This one is yours, all these mothers understand English. The other queue is mine. These villagers only speak Hausa. We should be able to get through more this way. Okay?”

Violet smiled. Olabisi was already looking like a professional rather than a local volunteer with rudimentary training. She could learn a lot from these people.

She turned to the first woman in the queue, who was clutching a baby in one arm and holding the hand of another small child with one limb showing clear signs of atrophy. Already they were too late. This child had already been affected by polio.

She gestured with her hand. “Please come in. I’m Dr. Violet.”

The afternoon flew past. Polio had blighted this community. Most villagers had probably never even realized they’d been affected. Ninety percent of sufferers had no symptoms.

But then there were the few poor souls—children and adults alike—where the virus had entered their central nervous system and destroyed their motor neurons, leading to muscle weakness and acute flaccid paralysis.