6. TAHARA’S HOSPITAL

After having met with four different well builders everything is on hold.
Not one of them inspire me with confidence. I don’t know what to do anymore, I don’t have a well builder and cannot find a place to construct a well. 
I am not making progress with my mission but I’m not worried because I have time and during this first week of my stay in Timbuktu, another parallel situation has developed.
It all began when I started treating the people in the hotel with aromatherapy. There were simple ailments to be treated with essences, toothache, migraines, back pain or haemorrhoids …
The news that my remedies were good spread soon and the people of the neighbourhood started to show up at the hotel to ask me to cure them.
Then the elderly arrived with their joint problems and I treated them with acupuncture. The success of these treatments was such that after a few days I found 15 or 20 people waiting for me at the door of the hotel every morning.

There were many sick people and I could no longer treat them in the hotel lounge and I couldn’t do it on the street either. I then asked Tahara if I could set up her tent in the hotel courtyard to receive patients.

She accepted gladly without even wondering if this could harm her business. Tahara is a generous woman from a noble family, she is a Haidara, a noble family descendent of saints. She is known in Timbuktu and respected for her integrity and dedication to helping others.

Tahara also provided a hotel bed to treat people who need needles in their backs.

Therefore, I dedicate myself every day to treating the sick. It is above all the poor in the city who cannot afford to pay for hospital doctors or pharmacy remedies.

This is why I am not worried, even though I am at a stalemate with the well and with the windmill.
I have decided to wait a little in order to see if that situation clears in some way because I do not know what to do to unlock it myself.

On the other hand, how could I refuse to treat children who cry with pain or people too poor to access the health system when I have the remedies, of aromatherapy and acupuncture, that are capable of alleviating their suffering and healing them.

We installed a painted canvas wall to separate the patients from the hotel guests

 A mothers’ concern for a sick child

The Tahara hospital has been in operation for four days and I realize that we cannot continue like this. There are now too many people who come for treatment, I am literally besieged in my hotel from morning to evening. All the activity of the hotel and its employees has become conditioned by patients to the detriment of the clients.

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