3.20.2006

Kafka Would Recognize This

Well, Blogger refuses to post any more photos for me, so I cannot share my good ones from Tanzania, unfortunately.

But I can share one more story before it's back to All Ethiopia, All The Time.

I was sweltering through a meeting in our office. A sickening metallic crunch reverberated throguh the air and we ran out onto the balcony. A car had smashed head-first into a low concrete wall alongside the road. A large group of people congregated on the other side of the street as the car passengers shakily got out. Calls rang out, "Is anyone hurt?" but everyone stayed on the other side of the road. Something was up--I could vaguely see someone being helped into the back of the car.

I went out and asked why no one was running over there to help out. "They hit a someone. A child. Bleeding badly." People seemed to be straining towards the site of the accident, bodies tilted forward, but no one moved as they carried on a conversation across the street with the passengers. J. began to explain to me that when you get involved in a car accident in any way, you become part of the police investigation, and have to accompany the people involved in the accident to the police station, submit to all of their questioning, and it becomes your problem, in a way.

So, it appeared that the very people who hit the child were then driving him/her to the hospital. GREAT idea. People were yelling advice at them from across the road as they gingerly maneuvered away from the wall with a screech of steel.

Even worse, J. continued, they can't rush the child immediately to the emergency room without going to the police first. Apparently the ER won't take accident victims without an accident report by the police to ensure that people aren't just "taking advantage" of the hospital. They will actually turn people away without this form, bleeding or no.

Gotta love bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake. The cynic I've become muses that the police probably fine people involved with accidents on the spot before sending them on to the ER, which is why there is such a stringent/ridiculous rule and why they penalize people who would otherwise help.

posted by Margot @ 9:51 AM