wild fruit
In the middle of the night, Hezou awoke to the sound of howling wind.
The starry sky overhead was indeed as beautiful as I had imagined.
He Zou held the necklace around her neck, quietly gazing at the starry sky and listening to the sounds around her for a while, then patted the person lying next to her: "Tangtang."
Exhausted from the day, Lin Tang turned over towards her and mumbled sleepily, "Hmm? Aren't you going to sleep yet?"
She said it in Chinese, and He Zou didn't hear it clearly. She patted Lin Tang again and asked, "Tell me, what does it mean when we wake up in the middle of the night and see a sky full of stars while camping?"
Lin Tang, eyes closed and drowsy, asked, "Does that mean the campsite has good air quality and high visibility?"
He Zou smiled and said, "No, it means our tent was stolen."
Realizing what was happening, Lin Tang suddenly opened her eyes: "...Ha!" The starry sky came into view, and she sat up abruptly, the thermal blanket slipping off her body.
In April, Massabit is in the rainy season. After the rain during the day, the stars are brighter due to the thinner cloud cover, but the temperature drops at night due to moisture evaporation.
The cold air made Lin Tang shiver. After picking up the blanket and putting it on, she looked at He Zou, who was still able to rest her head on her arms and look at the stars. She was both annoyed and amused. "Hey Melodia, can you tone down your sense of humor at a time like this? Haven't you noticed it's getting colder and colder lately?"
"I guess I caught it from my Guoguang." Noticing that the wind had picked up a bit more, Hezou sat up wrapped in a thermal blanket, took out his phone from under the blanket to check the time, and said to Lin Tang, "There's still some time before dawn, we can't stay like this, let's go find the supervisor first."
—
"I'm so sorry..." The supervisor in charge of arranging their safety and accommodation, with an embarrassed smile, rubbed the back of his head and apologized to the two in broken English, "Please rest in my tent for the night. I'll report the loss to the police as soon as it's light, but given the current situation, it's probably impossible to recover the lost property..."
This answer and Zou were not surprising.
Given Massabit's circumstances, she and Lin Tang were placed in an NGO camp near the hospital.
Although it was called a campsite, it lacked strict defenses. It was merely an activity center set up with a simple wire fence and tents. The communal dining hall consisted of tables cobbled together from a few broken wooden planks, the showers were simply a few wooden planks enclosed by a plastic canopy, and the toilets were makeshift dry latrines dug haphazardly in the ground.
Most of the residents here are doctors from Doctors Without Borders, international project researchers, or independent travelers. This is to avoid disturbing the local nomadic tribes and to look out for each other and ensure their safety.
Who would have thought that on their very first day there, this land would give them such a "welcome ceremony".
This was a terrible start, and He Zou and Lin Tang silently raised the danger level here from intermediate to the highest level.
As soon as it got light, looking at the bare campsite where not even a nail remained, He Zou couldn't understand how he hadn't noticed anything. Right now, all he could do was comfort himself and Lin Tang: "It's good that everyone's alright. You know, stealing so cleanly and efficiently takes skill."
Lin Tang couldn't laugh. The lost items weren't valuable, but they were still money, and she was feeling the pinch. With a blank expression, she threw a disinfectant tablet into the kettle and said, "Our things were the only ones that went missing last night. They're taking advantage of us being new faces. When we have time during the day, we'll have the supervisor take us for a walk around the area."
He Zou poked Lin Tang's cheeks, which were puffed up like a pufferfish in anger, and, wearing the slippers that a kind scholar in the camp had lent her (the shoes she had left in the tent that night had also disappeared), bent down to take stock of the losses.
Fortunately, they had received relevant training at the school's project center before coming, and had already placed their passports, wallets, and other valuables in the hospital's safe during the day, as well as the portable low-temperature centrifuge; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to explain themselves to Professor Antberg.
As a public research university, one of Heidelberg University's missions is to advance the frontiers of medicine.
To gain access to more unique disease profiles and to help impoverished healthcare areas, Heidelberg University has a long-standing collaboration with the remote Massabit Hospital in Kenya, conducting cutting-edge tropical medicine and epidemiology research for many years.
This project not only provides a natural clinical testing ground for multiple medical laboratories at the university, but also offers internship opportunities for students, which is an irreplaceable educational experience for Heidelberg students.
This sounds somewhat callous, as if it were cruelly using local suffering as a research sample.
In fact, it is a two-way channel. Heidelberg gains valuable research data and educational platforms, while Massabit can obtain much-needed medical technology, equipment, personnel support, and even international attention. This is not necessarily a bad thing for a region that has been unable to escape poverty for many years.
He Zou learned about the project before enrolling and included it in his plans, constantly collecting information about Kenya and Massabit and making preparations in advance.
This project was spearheaded by Dr. Oluka, who studied in Germany and is now the director of Massabit Hospital.
Looking at the kind old man before him, He Zou shook his rough hand in return—it was hard to imagine that these were the hands of a surgeon—and said respectfully, “Thank you for being willing to provide us with such a valuable opportunity. I’m sorry to trouble you during this time.”
Oluka had naturally heard about what had happened to them the night before. He looked at the two young students and gave them a reassuring smile: "Conditions here are harsh, unlike in Heidelberg. Please forgive us. I have contacted the chiefs of nearby tribes and arranged for night patrols, but please still be careful."
He Zou and Lin Tang nodded their thanks.
Watching Oluka slowly walk away, the two exchanged a glance and saw a sigh in each other's eyes.
Dean Oluka's smile carried a hint of pity and helplessness, making it impossible for the two women to utter any words of worry or complaint. Besides, they were adults who needed to take responsibility for their choices and find ways to ensure their safety.
So, at Lin Tang's insistence, the two of them went to a nearby tribe with the outreach medical team in the afternoon, and the supervisor even took them around the area when he had time.
After a round of visits, the two became familiar faces in the tribe. Lin Tang even managed to lure the tribe chief's crying, chubby grandson to come for a medical checkup with a chocolate energy bar.
Their outpatient clinic was located next to a large tree at the entrance of the tribe. The medical team temporarily set up a small tent to provide basic treatment for the women and children of the tribe.
Most of the children who came were very thin due to malnutrition, with arms and legs as thin as sticks, while their hands and abdomens were swollen due to lack of protein intake. They followed the adults listlessly or came alone, looking at the medical team in white coats, forming a circle but not daring to step forward.
Whether it was Lin Tang's pediatric internship experience or not, she was very popular with the local children.
During their rest days, Lin Tang laid out a few nylon bags next to the tent and gave them an empty medicine barrel to use as a drum, which made them more lively and less shy.
She sat cross-legged on the ground, waving a pretty bunch of deworming sugar pills in front of a barefoot child, then pointed to the protruding red wild berries in the cloth bag at her waist, and said in broken Swahili:
"This is for you. That is for me."
The child's eyes, which appeared unusually large due to the indentation, lit up. He pursed his lips, nodded, and handed Lin Tang a soft, mushy fruit from his pocket.
Lin Tang didn't mind the dark, sticky fingers that were handed over, and even waved them smugly at He Zou, who was helping with the diagnosis, before happily putting them in his pocket.
He Zou glanced at her with amusement. The pills were meant for the children, and she hadn't even felt a little embarrassed taking them to trick people out of their fruit.
Later, they discovered that the children were using the deworming sugar pills they were given as marbles to play with in the mud.
Watching a pill roll into the grass and disappear without a trace, He Zou said, half-laughing and half-crying, "Next time, give me a red one. Green ones just roll into the grass and you can't find them."
Not far away, there was a strong woman who had been caught hiding medical forceps in her clothes and, after being asked to return them by the doctor, was now lashing out at him, grabbing his white coat. Beside her, the child who had been "tricked" out of the fruit by Lin Tang earlier was tugging at her trouser leg, sucking his fingers, and giving them a shy smile.
It was evening, and it was probably going to rain again; the air was so stuffy that it made people restless.
He Zou and Lin Tang helped take inventory of the medical equipment, but they kept finding things missing. The two of them had to keep looking. An experienced doctor in the team pulled them aside and pointed to the dark sky: "It's going to rain soon. We need to get back as soon as possible."
In this place, a single rain shower can paralyze traffic, and if they are trapped here on a rainy day without enough heating equipment, they will face the risk of hypothermia at night.
Despite their haste, rain started falling on their way back. The dirt road quickly turned into a muddy mess, making it extremely difficult to drive on, and the car eventually got stuck.
In the pouring rain, He Zou and Lin Tang got out of the car and, stepping through the sour, rotten water flowing from the garbage heap, worked with the experienced seniors to rescue the car.
When they returned to the hospital, the group was in a sorry state.
The dilapidated hospital didn't have any extra facilities for them to shower and change. He Zou and Lin Tang, wearing the only dry clothes the hospital could provide—hospital gowns—stood in the simple director's office, holding hot tea, watching the raindrops outside the window making small bubbles on the muddy ground, and occasionally swatting away the annoying mosquitoes around them.
Looking at the dead mosquito he had swatted, Kazusa murmured, "The risk of malaria transmission is too great."
In the weeks following the rains, mosquitoes multiply explosively, turning what could have been preventable malaria into a deadly disease. Poor infrastructure and a fragile healthcare system create a vicious cycle of poverty and malaria, making the rainy season the most difficult time in Massabit.
“Based on past data, this area is still a high-incidence area for cerebral malaria.” He unconsciously twirled the ring around his neck, recalling the treatment options for cerebral malaria.
The critical case required surgical intervention, but Massabit lacked any equipment or facilities to perform the surgery, and didn't even have a surgeon capable of performing neurosurgery...
Wazou paused for a moment as she fiddled with the ring.
No, there was one. Dean Oluka was once an excellent neurosurgeon.
Lin Tang looked at the wild fruit he had tricked into giving him in his palm and said without any emotion, "That child is extremely malnourished. If he gets infected, he probably won't be able to fight it off."
He Zou also looked at the fruit in Lin Tang's hand upon hearing this.
He Zou always knew that she and Lin Tang had one major difference, which was also the part she lacked—Lin Tang paid more attention to specific people than she did.
Just like with the case of Massabit, she tends to have structural compassion, worrying about the tragedy caused by the limitations of medical equipment and technology, and how to change and optimize the system in the future; while Lin Tang's heartache is specific and subtle, she sees a child's body and wants to do something for the child immediately.
It was only after meeting Lin Tang that He Zou discovered that she possessed a hidden arrogance stemming from her elite upbringing.
Fortunately, Lin Tang reminded her.
He Zou smiled and patted Lin Tang's head: "If you're worried, we can send some more preventative medicine and supplies to that child tomorrow."
Helping just one person won't change Masabit's situation, but Lin Tang cares, and so does the child.
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