Cameroon letter #7 - Rahimatou

She didn’t speak for hours after she arrived,

walked in holding her father’s hand,

standing straight, so small, her head barely reaching his hip,

sat absently on the cot and watched the adults talk,

received her CHG bath from her father,

held her teddy bear and idly wound her fingers round its little legs.

“Is she always this quiet?” I asked her father,

as he sat discussing politics and rain with adult patients.

He laughed. “Oh no, just wait, soon she’ll be

just like home, just like she is, talking kullum kullum.”

Night fell and grown up patients all lay silent, weary on their cots,

awaiting sleep or already in its rendezvous.

And the little one skipped in the hallways

and sang in the wards and followed me, long-faced,

eyes wide and keen, while I asked, “aren’t you tired?”

just so that she could shake her head emphatically

and say a’ah. We turned the lights off, and the ambiance

of sleep-breathing filled the ward, and there

in the middle, on a stool she’d pulled out

to eyeshot of the nurses’ desk

sat the wide-awake humming child, dark form lost

in the dim of the ward, bright eyes shining beacon-like,

like a tiny creature in gentle headlights on a misty summer night.

I picked her up and carried her back to her cot

and tucked her in. She stretched and snuggled down

the way contented children and secure pets do,

clasping tight her teddy bear and giving me

the first smile that I’d seen from her, awaking in my chest

a hesitant maternal softness as I pulled the curtain closed around

her cot so sleep could take her too

and sat down at the desk to finish up my notes.

Two minutes passed, and then there was

a soft-edged movement underneath another patient’s cot.

She scurried through the shadows under all the beds,

evading my investigations, grinning when I caught her,

leaning bold back in my arms to watch me gleefully

while I carried her back to her bed.

As I tucked her in again, firmly this time, and shook

my finger kwance mana at her smiling face,

I felt less motherhood and more in common

with this child who is not mine

but is so much like me.