Travel now not tomorrow

  Probably the most prominent  friend I made while travelling is Melitta, an Austrian girl I shared a house with while in Zambia. She was, like me, young and idealistic, keen to improve healthcare in our little segment of Africa. We shared a house at the back of the mission hospital with an English woman. Helen was a difficult character, a woman who played There’ll Always Be An England every Sunday morning and corrected Melitta and me if we didn’t display perfect English manners. The work we did was challenging, and the nuns’ rules could feel petty. Melitta and I bonded over a daily beer and shared stories of our patients. Occasionally, a European teacher or an agriculturalist would turn up to take us to a party on a weekend and we would laugh and dance as though we had few cares. Melitta and I still drink beer, dance and laugh outrageously. Helen, however, took God’s wedding ring and joined the convent. Matrine was another Zambian friend. She was a law student when we me...

  “Good morning, Sister, how are you?” I didn’t have time for such greetings. I was a midwife at a mission hospital in the Zambian bush, running a ward with 24 beds and often had more than 30 patients plus their families. I had bush clinics to visit, and I was taking eight Zambian nurses through their midwifery theory. I had no time to exchange idle greetings. Or so I thought. It was when the pace began to wear me down, my chest felt permanently tight and I wasn’t sleeping well, that I started to slow down. And that was when I began to exchange greetings. “Good morning, Sister, how are you?” “Good morning, I am well, and how are you?” “Ahh, I am very well.” Smiles go with such greetings, and everyone goes on with their day. For me, happier than before. Greetings may appear superficial and a waste of time, but they provide a connection to those around us and make us feel part of something bigger. Where I grew up in Glasgow, we didn’t have specific greetings, but yo...