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her eyes, blinding her. Her mother had told everyone who came to sympathize with her that she believed that a nurse had said they’d cut off the scar tissue in the hospital and the girl would be able to see again. Actually, she had been told this not by a real nurse but by a doll-baby nurse. This was the name given to auxiliary nurses in the general hospital where she had stayed with the child for three months, watching the eyes covered by gauze and gentian violet.
    No one blamed her for what happened to the child. No women in the village spent all their days watching their children. A woman had thousands of chores—fetching water and firewood, washing clothes, cooking for the family—and looking after the children somehow fitted itself around these activities. She had left the child by the boiling oil and had run inside to fetch her salt container. She needed to sprinkle a pinch of salt into the boiling oil to knowif it was time to dunk the ground beans into it. By the time she ran back out, the little girl had grabbed the boiling pan of oil. She screamed, and a crowd gathered quickly. As is traditional in the village when such things happen, many took a look at the child and ran back to their homes to bring different medications, some useful but most useless. Some came with an expired bottle of gentian violet, another came with a smelly black bottle filled with the fat from the boa constrictor killed five years back. One came with a lump of wet cassava that she said would cool the skin and leave no scars. All these were dumped on the girl’s face. Someone screamed for the midwife. The Mid ran the village dispensary. She did more than deliver babies: she wrote prescriptions, sold drugs, and gave injections. Mid took a look at the child and ordered that she be taken to the general hospital in the local government headquarters, which was a good ten miles away. A commercial motorcycle taxi was called, and the woman, holding the child close to her, rode away to the hospital. The crowd gathered around the fire, which had grown cold, and began to talk about the incident.
    “It is always money, money, money for the young women nowadays. In my time this would not have happened.”
    “It was not her fault. She has to take care of herself and the baby. You know her husband simply woke up one morning and walked away.”
    “I have seen worse burns in my time. She is young, and the skin will heal very nicely. You’ll be shocked when you see the same child many years hence. There will be no single blemish on her skin.”
    “My boa oil can heal anything. They need not have taken her to the hospital—just a drop of the oil on the burn every morning and she would heal perfectly.”
    “Oh, the oil from the boa constrictor that was killed years back, I remember it was so big people thought it was a log of wood that had fallen across the road. From the black marks on its back you could tell it had lived for close to forty years.”
    “I have a bottle of the oil myself. I simply forgot to bring it.”
    “I wonder why Mid told her to take the child to the general hospital. With the different medications we have applied, even if the skin was burned by the fires of purgatory she should heal.”
    “You know she is the eyes and ears of the government among us here. Her job is more than giving babies with running stomach salt and sugar solution to drink. They sent her here to speak as the voice of the government. If you disobey her, you could get into trouble.”
    “You know, since she got here, the tax collectors now know the best days to come, they now come on days when everyone is at home. Who do you think tells them?”
    People in the crowd looked at each other as if they had spoken too much and began to disperse. Toward evening, the driver of the motorcycle taxi came to tell the woman’s neighbors that she had asked that they bring a few of her clothes to the hospital. She also told them to search under her sleeping mat and bring