Traveling with Che Guevara by Alberto Granado

Author:Alberto Granado
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Huambo, 14 April 1952

Today we saw the other part of the hospital, the patients’ section. If we got a sorry impression of where the staff work, the area where the patients stay gave us an even sorrier one. The two parts were divided by a wall, and the patients’ part is made up of four wings. Each of these was made up of several windowless mud huts, and each of the three huts that comprise each wing housed four patients. The poor patients were vegetating on mattresses made of reeds in these hovels, which were barely six feet high and entirely lacking in sanitary or hygienic facilities.

A little farther off is a patch of ground enclosed within an adobe wall, where the patients able to manage for themselves alleviate their boredom by planting cassava, potatoes, ocumos and maize. This is all there is to the Huambo leprosarium.

Just as we were returning from our tour a new arrival entered the admissions office. She was quite a young woman, originally from Iquitos, who had been diagnosed in Cuzco as suffering from leprosy. When she found herself in this poky little excuse for a room she could not help giving in to a fit of complete and quite justified despair. We tried to console her with a few friendly words, and sat on the edge of the bed as paternally as possible, trying to convince her that if she accepted the treatment, she would be able to go home fairly soon. We left her somewhat consoled.

Then we went to see another patient, a former teacher at a nearby school. She was very moved when we greeted her with a handshake and sat on the same chairs she sat on, and her tears—a blend of sorrow and happiness—moved us too. We had our picture taken with her and went on with our tour.

The visit presented us with yet another sad surprise. In the last of the huts are four children, all under six, living with their parents, who are suffering from lepromatous leprosy. We checked whether the children had been given a BCG2 injection to increase their resistance and, of course, they hadn’t. With the susceptibility they have inherited from their parents and living in continual direct contact with them, they are condemned to contract the disease themselves.

At the end of our visit some of the patients got together to show us their artistic talents. Among them was a remarkable trio, who played a kind of single-stringed violin they had made themselves.

Then we met the real anonymous heroes who are struggling to maintain the hospital and keep it running—Mr. Montejo and his three assistants, Vivanco, Montoya and Valdivia. They told us about all the shortages they suffer for want of a regular doctor, because the current doctor sometimes lets two months go by without turning up at the leprosarium.

We asked them about the children. They told us it was impossible to persuade the parents to part with them, and that if they separated them by force the parents would escape from the hospital.

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