In September during a holiday in Mozambique my son fell ill and we needed to take him to a doctor. The barman at Zavora gave us directions to the hospital at Inharrime. At the hospital we enquired at reception if it will be possible to see a doctor since there was a queue of about forty sick people. The assistant immediately took us to the doctor. I felt terrible because we were put in front of an old asthmatic gentleman and a baby with stitches on its head. Upon enquiring about a private doctor in the village the receptionist said that the nearest one was in Quissico about 45km away. We did not have enough fuel and the only service station in town was empty.
The doctor could not speak English and by using signs and gestures I could make him understand what was amiss. Within five minutes he made a diagnosis, weighed the boy and gave us a prescription. The pharmacy was just around the corner on the veranda of the old Portuguese house which also contains the consulting rooms. You are supposed to put your prescription into an old box on top of the others underneath a rock (because of the breeze). Every ten minutes or so the lady, without looking, sticks her hand into the box and starts preparing the prescriptions. After a while she starts calling out the names. Now you are required to pay for the service. When we received our medicine we were asked to pay 5 metical (about R1.80). I only had rand which she refused and I gestured with a circling hand that I'll be back with metical if I could change some rand at the market about five blocks away.
The old asthmatic, behind us in the pharmacy queue by now, learnt about our problem and offered us 5 metical. We gave him R10 and after many obrigado's we passed the long queue back to our car. No one complained about us being jumped to the front of the queue. What an incredible experience! Afterwards I told my son, who is ten years old, that now he also knows what it was like in the apartheid time.
