Sick but improving

After Lennox was in hospital and is now fine, we now have Oscar in hospital with the same diagnosis, food poisoning.

We were super aware that India was risky, I knew just how dreadful dysentery is, it's like diarrhea on steroids, but I had had the experience that after being the weakest I had ever been, that I fully recovered with just rehydration drinks in 24 hours. I should not have assumed that was typical, I should not have extrapolated my experience to children. I feel rather guilty and question the wisdom of this part of the trip. The benefit of hindsight.

We all caught it, and whilst the adults recovered in 2 days, the girls were about the same. The boys were so bad they were hospitalized for 4 days, a week apart. Thankfully, it's a fairly standard thing here, so the hospitals have clear procedures and well-defined drug treatments.

I don't know if we are selfish or stupid parents, hopefully not, but for sure we were niave, and our easy time in Africa maybe made us too relaxed.

The staff here are as always lovely, and to some extent, I could be the king of England. I can stay in intensive care for hours. I can sit in the Drs large air conditioned restroom, and I have the directors mobile for anything I want from him. Here, we also come into contact a lot with locals whose children are hospitalized. They wait all day and, in many cases, all night for glimpses of their children. (At night, they sleep in chairs, on benches, and on the floor, and this is a middle class private hospital) The people without exception help out in big ways and small. Lovely people.

Given our experience of the people, it's quite difficult to reconcile with the brutal day to day existences of the poor and the middle class. Why so much chaos, dirt, grime, lack of a social safety net, lack of a drive towards modernity? Is it corruption? Is it Religion? Is it the brain drain to Western countries? Is it politics that endlessly promises, but that seldom delivers? Maybe managing a population of 1.3bn is just too difficult? Whatever it is, it's a shame for all the nice people here.Read more