I have ten minutes before the hospital rounds and have decided to spend it filling this blog with more background in the build up to writing about lessons learnt. On a walk yesterday I discovered more about the stark differences between town and country. The villages surrounding the CRHP seem relatively affluent in comparison to the market town. The yards of the farmhouses are swept clean; there are beautiful flower bushes (which the local children pillage for bounty to give to friendly visitors as they harangue them to take photographs - ' hi! one photo please' is the favourite salutation of children here). They have come up with an ingenious way of dealing with the massive puddles that cause water to stagnate and make ecosystems of mosquitoes an impasse on the roads - the puddles are piled full of rocks, draining the marshland. There are no stray animals save for foraging goats, and the cattle are tied up next to the barns which contain the yields of surrounding fields - it seems onions are in at this time of year. Work and leisure appear intermingled - women sit in the fields harvesting, but also chatting and laughing, while the children play and the younger women attend to domestic chores, coming out to say hello. And the men?
If on your walk you ignore the inevitable insects that this climate brings, you will begin to experience a rural idyll. So it seems that people are capable of coming up with the solutions to the challenges of their environment. On which more later, for my ten minutes are up.
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