waiting

"Talking of the General Hospital..." she says. - "One of the hotel clerks went there two days ago." The baby had gastric 'flu. It's been spreading fast round the town: the suspicion is -- as always -- that it's linked to water quality. When the clerk got to the hospital she paid for her admission card (7 rand). Then she sat down to wait. She quickly realised there were lots of other mothers like her with similarly-stricken babies. They waited. And waited. The babies got sicker and smellier. "No-one came until the baby two in front of hers died. In the queue," she says. "The nurses sent the parents straight to the mortuary." "Mucha said to me in wonder: "The father was crying like a woman." We're silent, a group of youngish white mothers chewing through cheap plates of chicken curry.