Toothache

It’s been two weeks since I last heard from a friend in the second of my worlds. Two weeks ago she texted asking advice for a toothache. She had taken antibiotics for two days and it still hurt so she gargled with raw whiskey. Didn’t help. She then tried putting kerosene on the tooth. That made it even worse. The last text message was that it hurt so bad she was ready to die. I advised her to get some oil of cloves (they grow them there) and see a dentist. And I haven’t heard anything for two weeks now despite having sent several text messages.

Did she really die???? I would probably have heard if she had. Did she run out of load on her cellphone? Surely she would have had time by now to go to town and buy a new card. Did the phone get broken? Possibly. Today I texted another friend who will be going out to that village on Sunday and promised to let me know if she had really died, ha, ha, ha.

Everybody here laughs at the story, because they have all had that kind of toothache. The pain is all consuming, preventing sleep, preventing thinking, preventing anything but PAIN! People in that kind of pain DO feel that death is preferable. I have seen adults cry and groan, and children scream all night long.

There are dentists in town. But at the local market in my friend’s village there’s a guy with a pair of pliers and a big glass jar full of teeth he has pulled. He doesn’t use anesthesia but people say they don’t care because by the time they come to him the pain is so bad they are desperate. Something so few ever have to experience in the first of my worlds.