The Oath - "Your child is My Child"

Thula was 6 years old but already mother and sister to her 2 siblings, 3 year old twins, Paco and Ponine.  Boys were hard work but she tried her best since their mother died of aids 6 months ago - their father worked the mines far away.  That's all she knew.  Adults had a way of telling children nothing.  The village of Mbizana had many women and all pitched in to help raise the 3 children. Thula however was their big sister and mother. That's just how it was.

The 3 were always hungry.  Thula often wondered why mines didn't pay her father a wage because no money was ever sent home. Neither did her father return after her mother's death. They survived on the cabbage and carrots that Mr Abujan dropped off each Friday. The twins were malnourished and often cried in their sleep. The hut creaked and the holes were illuminated in the moonlight that hovered overhead.

The African plains  - the big 5 and safaris that brought giggles to children were a far cry from Thula's existence of orphanism and hardship. One she was not oblivious to. Neighbours protected them from being taken to the dump everyone called a "safe house". The poverty stricken villagers raised them and were true to their oath, "your child is our child".

But 6 going 36 was no way for little girls to grow up. Thula was missing out on childhood - even from school.  She couldn't bring herself to leave the twins.

Thirst teased her throat - Paco cried in his sleep.  Ponine instinctively draped his arm across his twin.  Mr Abuja lived too far and Friday's drop-off seemed a long time away.  She wouldn't bother Mum Frieda tonight - They slept on a mattress. There was no stove or running water - no ablution block close by. Huts were far and wide. Mum Frieda lived next door; they thought it safest that way.

Mosquitos the size of saucers buzzed around her head then roared with laughter as she tried to take them out. They mocked her anxiety and threatened the boys' health.

The large yellow bucket cracked her knees as she walked in search of water, darkness menacingly closed around her tiny frame. Mum Frieda always had buckets lying about that was never quite emptied.  "Haibo, sies man Thula, you want to be sick?  She could just hear the portly neighbour reprimand her for scooping water from the open "emmer" - loosely translated, bucket.  Poor people didn't have many choices - and Thula Maima and her brothers were less than poor. They didn't even have parents. She would be 7 in a years time - grown up enough to know the truth, yet still the elders lied. Her father was long gone or dead too. What father left his children at the mercy of cabbage and carrots without a word; a dead one.

"Thula I'm thirsty", Ponine half moaned in his sleep. The more malourished twin. His belly protruded like a massive ball; perhaps a tumor even. Thula had seen growths like that amongst the village children before.

She dipped the sponge then squeezed the water into his mouth. The sponge held the bugs back. She cooled Paco's forehead. Her parched lips lapped up it's portion.

One day she would be a doctor - she would return to Mbizana and heal all the sick children. The poor orphans who lived on cabbage leaves and ate the skeletal rabbits Mum Frieda bred.

The twins didn't survive the bug that wheedled through the sponge. Somehow she did. She wished she didn't.  She was tired of being poor.  She held their little hands as she stroked Ponine's belly. "I'm sorry, I wish I could've done better". Anguish swept over her being as she mourned for her mother, her fathers absence and the loss of her brothers. Alone - she was born to be alone and poor.

Mum Frieda said she would take her to a leader called Winni Madikizela - an opposer of injustice who fought for democracy. She didn't understand a word but it sounded like freedom to her 7 year old ears. Ms Madikizela helped young girls go to school and be educated. She bought them pretty dresses. She trained them to be leaders. She was not the "dump" where children were exploited.

Thula wanted that.

She looked up at her class of young medical students. Her presentation detoured somehow yet seemed to have made its mark.

"I wanted to make a difference - to heal those who swallowed bugs because of poverty.  I wanted to heal all the Paco's and Ponine's.

Today you will as I did, take an oath that will make "every child your child" and I swore (though some warn not to swear) by the almighty God to be true to the call - it is through the next lines I wish to walk you.

She walked amongst the students and poetically delivered their future they were undertaking.

**I will hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physicians oath; but to nobody else.

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me**//.[3] - **Translation by James Loeb.

To the mothers of this world I say, "Your child will be my child".

A hushed and tearful awe fell as she completed the last lines.

Somehow in those last few minutes the short lives of Paco and Ponine mattered more than ever. Thula stood proud as she saluted the twins, Mr Abuja and the many surrogate mothers; Mum Frieda. In that very moment she was 6 years old in the village of Mbizana.

The students applauded and with tears they felt every painful shard of poverty.

Doctor Thula Maima was guided by the hand of loving leadership - The women of Mbizana did good by her and the twins.

"Every child was their child".

For Thula there was no higher oath.


(C) Jambiya Kai