The dentist

My tooth had proven to be a story of its own. Initially, a filling had come out from it a days before our departure for Bangkok and I had it replaced, no problem. Then, the night of our departure, a piece of tooth broke off and with that came the filling again. There was no time to see a dentist in Sukhothai, so we postponed it for the busy day in Bangkok. There I had the tooth fixed in a hospital only hours before we had to be at the airport, we were on a tight schedule. Just when we had finished all preparation and were back at the house to relax for another hour, the new filling came out as I chewed on a piece of soft chocolate. Now I had an open tooth for a five or six weeks trip ahead. I didn't like it.

There had been no time to replace the filling still in Bangkok. Even if there would have been more time, the dentists where closed by the time the filling had broken. So the only option left was fixing the tooth in Africa, in some ways bugging me as I just didn't know what to expect. When we met our captain and explained he pointed us to the hospital he usually used for such incidents and I was due to have treatment the next day, no appointment made. He promised I'd have waiting time.

At nine in the morning I met my taxi driver out the front gate of the yacht club. He took me to the hospital where I found the dentist in the corner of a side building that rather looked like a housekeeping room, not very promising. For the nurse, it was a huge problem I didn't have an appointment, but when I explained my urge and the situation she softened and put me on wait. Only an hour later, I saw the doctor, who made a much more promising impression. He seemed quite fit and didn't seem to understand the problem with the previous filling. I seemed to have been bad work by the dentist who made it.

While the doctor was all concentrated about his job, his nurse seemed off somewhere else. He had to constantly call her back to her duties, but then she'd at least instantly react, a fact that filled me with relief. Half an hour later, my tooth was repaired and the doctor had already explained all options I'd have after returning to land. It was service that couldn't have been better in surroundings with the appearance of the third world. Fortunately, the pricing was still third world as well.

The way back, I used the most common of African transportation, the Dalla Dalla, a minibus service with fixed routes and standard pricing. Our captain had explained how I would find the bus stop and which route to take. I had to wait an hour at the stop. All the buses where the wrong line or, if they were the right one, had no more space. There were no schedules. The drivers would try to outrace buses of the same line to pick up all the passengers of the next stop first. It was pure competition and there was no time to loose. Once in the small bus, where I hadn't even seen any space where I would go, more people were pushed in at every stop and soon I was stuck in the middle of a living human meat sandwich. Half an hour into the ride the first people started getting off the bus and about fifteen more minutes later I even caught a seat. I got off at the last stop and walked the rest of the way. The last issue that had bothered me before the trip was solved, my tooth was as new.