The Prisoner of Azkaban

The boy sits strangely apart from his mother. He plops into the chair by my desk leaving her the other at right angles. They don't look at each other much. She talks in rapid staccato tones to the translator. He looks off sullenly in the distance. Very out of place. He's dressed in European clothes that look remarkably clean. He sports newish looking trackpants and a dark tee-short that reads Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in large bright letters. Like all Ugandan children his hair is curly and short. An urban-dweller perhaps? A roamer from Kampala leaving traditional African values for the charms of the West. That would explain the aloofness that seems to permeate the room.

Ugandans, on the whole, seem to be very physical people. Gripping your hand for emphasis while they talk with you. Hugging for just a moment longer than would be considered polite back home. Even the standard handshake has at least three movements plus or minus the thumb tap favoured by the younger generation. Most children his age would be clinging to his mother.

I don't recognise the town listed as his address on the file but then these are woefully unreliable at times. He looks roughly his stated age of 7.

It turns out to be a routine follow up for an incision and drainage at another hospital last week. At least I think that's what the problem is. I'm getting the story second-hand as always, with a nurse interpreter acting as intermediary.

Keen to churn through the waiting room that grows by 10 and shrinks by 1 or 2 a minute , I gesture him to the clinic bed. Suddenly the source of the mother-son disparateness becomes obvious. He shifts nervously and pretends he hasn't heard. The nurse repeats herself. His mother grabs his arm. Suddenly the boy shrieks with terror. Not even the hard-boiled sweets I had picked up from a street vendor in Kampala could console him. He flings open the door of the clinic and dashes howling into the hospital grounds.

Moving to the door I can just make out Harry Potter disappearing behind the motorbike shed. The Prisoner of Azkaban darts in and out of the parked boda bodas.

Perhaps the experience at the previous hospital had been traumatic?

I guess pain and fear need no interpreter