“When I arrived in Kolkata and was about to start my first day of work, it was a mixture of curious excitement and a reassuring sense of routine, I thought, as it was not my first assignment.
I no longer had many of the questions that had made me so insecure before my first assignment. After a first assignment – so I thought – you’ve already got the worst behind you, you know what to expect, you know what you’ll be confronted with – something like that…
And then there was Howrah, Calcutta’s poor sister city. Everything was going to be different here. I knew that India had a completely different mentality and culture to the Philippines or other German Doctors project locations, but of course I couldn’t even remotely imagine that before I went into medias res.
The ambulance days in Howrah also start with a car journey – three days a week the ambulance goes to a nearby disused factory building on Forshore road, and two days by train to Chengail, a village outside the city limits in a more rural area. A second team travels to other ambulances. The journey takes between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on traffic conditions.
Calcutta’s traffic – a reflection of demographics?
When I observe the traffic, I suddenly have the feeling that the demographics are reflected here to a certain extent. Cars are crowded together in a “lane”, if you can even call it a lane, overtaking, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, regardless of the braking distance, regardless of oncoming traffic, regardless of the smaller and weaker road users, pedestrians, cyclists, there are also vehicles for which I can’t find a name… something like a bicycle, only with a large loading area at the back – a mixture of pick-up and bicycle? The same without a chain and pedal function, only with a person as a donkey in the front. 5 km/h, once the vehicle is running – certainly not easy to stop, avoid and start. They are skillful, there is no sign of a safety distance, with my eyes trained as an emergency doctor I can only see what could happen!
It’s exciting to see how “simple” things can be here too… the weaker one loses. A permanent weakness seems to be there all the time. In traffic, in people. I already know that the rules are different in developing countries, that seemingly banal illnesses stretch people’s lives here. Diseases that can never become a problem for us by going to the doctor as a matter of course…
Late visit to the doctor with fatal consequences
Like a 30-year-old patient who turns up in my second week of work because he has unbearable pain after an injury to his foot and has not been able to feel his toes for 5 days. When I remove the bandage, I’m shocked myself – I hadn’t expected this. The tissue has been destroyed to such an extent that he will lose part of his foot. He is already missing his left hand from a childhood injury. He should be fine with that.
Why didn’t he come sooner, one wonders. It could have been… treated better, seen sooner… “his own fault” you would say, if you didn’t suspect that there must be a reason that drives people to ignore their own suffering, their own discomfort, to put it on the back burner, perhaps out of a fear of not being able to feed the family if you don’t show up for work, perhaps out of the experience of the rejection you have to expect if you go to a state hospital as a patient without financial means.
Undoubtedly circumstances that really challenge my mind to imagine.”
