Pharmacy

“This, three times per day. You de take’em 8 o’clock, 2 o’clock, 8 o’clock, okay?”
Bailor waved his arms, bounced his head, and generally spoke with his entire body. The gaunt old man in front of him nodded. Bailor looked around and grabbed another small plastic bag full of white and yellow pills.
“Okay. This one, this white one and yellow one. You de take’em two-two, two tem per day. You de take ‘em 8 o’clock, 8 o’clock, okay? One white, and one yellow, four tablet per day.”
“Yessir,” The old man was wearing a white brimless hat, like many Muslims in the area do.
I was counting pills with a spoon. Bailor had asked me to count out thirty pills of ferrous sulphate, multivitamin, folic acid, and something else that I’ve forgotten. The way we do it is by emptying out a bunch of pills onto a piece of paper or cardboard. Then we separate out thirty pills into easily countable piles, say, six piles of five, then we sweep the rest back into the bag. The paper gets scooped up carefully and then gently creased to guide the pills into the small plastic bag.
Bailor held up a packet of oral rehydration salts for the same man.
“Okay, now this one, you faut us clean water. You de get satchet water, you de use’em, and wey you no de get satchet water, you boil water, boil insigh pot and den you drink ‘e.”
I was sitting in the lone chair in the pharmacy, pulled up to a small counter. The walls are covered in shelves, and the counter is just an extension of these shelves. All around the counter were small containers of the most commonly prescribed medications – praziquantel for schistosomiasis, doxycycline for malaria and other infections, various analgesics, generic Tylenol, anti-hypertension drugs like nifodipine, multivitamins, and many other small unmarked pill bottles. A bit higher on the shelf, in front and back to the left, were the packages and boxes of medication. I could see the box of quinine that Bori had broken open to help Samba (earlier post).
“Okay Pa, so how many tem per day you de take dis one?” Bailor held up the yellow and white pills.
The old man narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth, shut his mouth, widened his eyes, and shook his head.
“Two-two, two tem per day. One white, one yellow. Okay?” Bailor looked at the younger man accompanying the patient, “You de understand? You de help ‘em?” The younger man nodded. He was also wearing an elegant brimless hat above a matching colorful shirt and pants.
The back of the pharmacy had a small window, but it was tinted so that the whole room was slightly shadowed, even at 2 in the afternoon. The shadows didn’t hide the boxes in which the medicines came, however. They were apple boxes – ‘Mountain grown from Virgina,’ ‘Golden Delicious’ with an unmistakably cracked Liberty Bell just below. There were also tomato boxes – ‘Sunripe Bell Roma Tomatoes.’
Above the stacked fruit and tomato boxes were the plastic bottles of glucose maintenance and saline solution. They looked like water bottles, maybe water bottles from a trendy new company called ‘D5.’
Bailor bent over pulled the next file from the pile of folders. “Okay, now we need,” he paused and grabbed a rectangle of individually wrapped pills, “we need fifteen of these, cut in half.” He handed me nail scissors, then scribbled on a small plastic bag and pushed it towards me.
I counted out fifteen pills and started cutting them in half, wondering whether it was worth trying to save the dust that fell to the paper after every cut.