Smiling All The Way

Funny how mechanic people made it too difficult for us to know easily the difference between them and mad people over here. Since every junkie is a mechanic and mad people are allowed to roam about. So are choir people and graduates. Hard to tell who is who here too.

The only difference is the military people who out of vanity have refused the youths to wear camouflage even the trending ones all over the other nations. They don't want that here. They see that profession as something else its purpose isn't only to defend the nation but something to be proud of when in it's uniform, at times conduct coups.

" Why all these comparisons nurse Amaka, what brought about all this noise? Are they advising other professions to act in line with the military or something?- why all this noise for Christ's sake?"

" There is no news, I mean what we rate as news here in this part of the world so, the government is releasing what they have, and yet, there's no call for action at the end of the whole noise or any line that they are not through with what we are being bombarded with. Just wait till they land sister for they have not"

" let them keep themselves busy with building economy or let our ears rest in peace. Don't they know the damage they are causing the people? Are we to start releasing ours for them to read too?"

Nurse Amaka works in a catholic colonial hospital built in the nineteen-twenties by missionaries representing the Vatican for British were busy turning the nation into an Anglican one and the Vatican woke up about twenty-five years after them and went to work penetrating hinder lands and strategies came to work for the Vatican afterward. Cities started turning to Catholics for it was mainly those in hinder lands that later populated the same cities. The hospital employed about three hundred nurses forty percent of which were Reverend Sisters. There were the ones that controlled the place, employed others, ran the place, and were not under any priest as is always the case but under the Bishop.

The nurses that grew up in their homes, and went to nursing school not owned by the church seem to know about the medication aspect of their profession only and not the psychological aspect of it. They don't have the follow-up skills the nursing profession requires and they seem to be lacking in the empathy department too.

Every Wednesday morning from 9 to 10:30 am, the sisters managing the place would organize briefings as they call those weekly meetings almost all the nurses attend. Where they teach them what they are lacking about healing. Last week Wednesday, they had gathered as usual in their big auditorium for the same briefing and after roll calls, the briefing they had that day seemed to be out of their depth. They were smirking and laughing their heads out at what the majority of them saw as absurd. Not in line with what they grew up with or taught in nursing school. They were still smirking and teasing others as reminders of what the Reverend sisters urged them or rather demanded seriously of them. " don't you hear what the sister asked everyone to be doing.- I don't see you employing it as directed. The instruction is that you are to be smiling or laughing with the patients whether you feel like it or not. It's an order so go back to that ward you came from and start smiling to everyone bed to bed. Not complaining they are not doing this or that, go back and laugh"

Both will burst out laughing at the absurdities of the order. They believed that the Reverend sister had gone off-kilter, her approach could only work in white man land not here. Some patients are medication types, and some are prayer types but in the history of most nurses' professional careers, they have yet to see any patient that go for smiling and laughing as healing. They just don't believe in it. Written in their demeanor when you came to them with a smile is a kind of weariness.

" Sister Agatha returned to this country five years ago, for sure, he should know by now that here isn't a Western nation where such things work. Patients here want to know when to take any medication given to them and why their lots are not changing for good. They are not interested in suffering and smiling the nurses came to them with." Nurse Nneka talking with Nurse Amaka

"I think that not what they want matters, most of them come from illiterate backgrounds and need education once inside this compound. They need to feel the impact of here and know from day one that it is not how it is outside it is here. I believe that you see the sense in that instruction. Just like every other thing, it needs implementing correctly not anyhow. The patients are not kids, they can tell fake from real"

" But it hasn't working, since last week, I have noticed that"

" Not working or not working for you nurse Nneka, who is it not working for?"

" I have not heard any positive comment from all I have talked to about it since then. All are discouraged even"

" I have seen many it worked for and it has worked for me with the same patients in the same ward you are in this week, how come it isn't working again with people it worked for last week being there? Do you need to watch clips to see how to do it well?"

Nurse Nneka eyed her and wondered why she even raised this issue in the first place with her. She seems to be too close with most Sisters introducing all these funny policies here. She eyed the nurse again and silently went about doing her beat. She spent the whole day wondering if her days were numbered in that hospital. The firing squad seems the appropriate tag to attach to the new management that took over three months ago, about fifty nurses had been shown the door since they resumed duty. Now, this one beside her, she is not even sure she is an ordinary nurse as she parades around. Some of these Reverend sisters camouflage as married nurses intent on mass clearance of nurses and their fellow sisters. She eyed her colleague secretly from head to toe and toe to head searching for any telltale without any success. To be sure of her place not being jeopardized by her mouth, she decided to tell her that she needed that clip she suggested.

" You mean that some people achieve positive results by smiling to these patients?- why do I just find it too difficult to achieve, I think I would need that clip you talk about to see how they do this smiling thing"

" Not this smiling thing and it isn't even new to this culture. Just do it as you do to adults or friends who visit you at the wrong hours or those who come to you in your village. It's the same. Put life to it. You still need the clip?"

" Sure"

"Then you will get before you sign off"

Nurse Amaka walked off towards admin quarters and Nurse Nneka followed her with her eyes and heart hammering on its cages.