Something unsettling happened yesterday.......
I had meetings setup all day with students and their guardians. I was just getting started on the first meeting when Junior came and told me he'd more or less stumbled across someone who had collapsed in the compound of the school where I'm working from (I borrow a classroom when it's not in use to use as an office and somewhere I can meet the students and guardians).
I went out to see if I could do anything to help, there was a young pregnant lady laying on the floor. Someone carried her into the shade. She was kind of shivering, very floppy and we couldn't wake her. Someone went off to call her husband. It seemed to be taking ages, and the lady still wasn't waking up - a few tears came from her closed eyes. We waited and waited for ages for her husband to come, and still she was unresponsive - while we were waiting someone who knew the woman arrived. Between us onlookers we decided it would be best to send her off with the women who knew her in a taxi to the hospital where she's registered for the pregnancy and for her husband to meet her there.
It must've been at least 20 to 30 minutes since she was first spotted to getting her off to the hospital, and in that time she didn't come around at all - the general feeling was that it was something quite serious.
By coincidence one of the teachers from the school happened to be at the hospital doing her government workers registration......she knew the pregnant lady and in fact had some familial link and had let the woman stay in her house the night before - she popped in to see me on her way home to let me know the young lady was awake and talking later in the day, but they didn't know yet what the issue was.
I was left feeling pretty useless, I had no idea what to do or how best to help her.
I wish the lady (whose name I still don't know) a speedy and full recovery.