BIRTHDAY BLUES vs GRATITUDE
He woke up bleary eyed and stared up at the ceiling, or more accurately, straight through the space where a ceiling should have been, at the rough wooden beams holding up the roof. He blinked. This wasn’t his ‘ceiling’. Then he remembered. He wasn’t at home, under his roof, on his bed, beside his wife, waiting for his kids to come interrupt his early morning moments, when those last sweet vestiges of sleep are being dragged away by the dawning day and the subconscious mind clings on for dear bliss. No, he was on yet another rural assignment, sent to a village outpost who had ‘settled’ his h.o.d to send one of his ‘boys’ as a way to avoid employing and paying a full time doctor for them, posted away from friends, family and civilisation in the name of providing health services to communities in need of skilled doctors, not the usual ‘local champions’ who, after some form of short apprenticeship or the other, proudly but criminally wore the title ‘doctor’ , or ‘ortuw