Yarrindi

It's 3am.  I wake from my sleep to the sound of a terrible wailing.  Eerie and seemingly unending, at first I cannot understand what I am hearing.  Then I realise... it means Mohammed has died. Mohammed was a young boy who had been bed bound since before I knew him.  Very sick from a very young age.  One evening I took him and his mother to another Doctor.   The Doctor examined him and told me in English, so the mother wouldn't understand, that this young boy was riddled with cancer, that the huge swelling was not infection, but out of control cancer cells, that he was going to die.   He refused to tell the mother this bad news, believing it too much for her to handle.  In such situations to tell someone such terrible news directly was seen as 'wrong'.  The news needed to be shared in a gentle, indirect way,  What should I say, and to who?  What should I do? Now, two weeks later....   the terrible sound, of ‘mourning and great weeping’, the sound of a mother ‘refus

The electricity cut.  I assumed it was just a normal power cut, that the power would come back fairly shortly.  It didn't. We had battery backup.  I could run a fan and a couple of lights for a few hours, but not the fridge or an air cooler.  I was hoping the fridge would stay cool enough that the food wouldn't go off.  My husband was away for a few days with the car.  Pots, Chops and Moo were aged 3, 2 and 0 - the afternoon went slowly. Later that evening, looking out of the gate and seeing that all my neighbours had electricity, I realised it wasn't a power cut.  Somehow it was just our house that was affected. Maybe the boys playing football in the maydan had knocked a wire by mistake, and somehow disconnected the electricity.  It was a long, uncomfortable night. I wanted to be at the electricity office as early as possible so as to be first in line to report a problem. With the temperature already over 90F and Moo in my arms, Chops and Pots toddled along beside m