I used to work in a hospital in a remote part of Kenya.
I went for a walk one lovely sunny afternoon, and followed a barely-there footpath through the lush green equatorial undergrowth. I tripped on something, and looking down I saw it was a fragment of bone. That didn't seem at all out of the ordinary, because stray dogs often leave scraps lying around, so I thought nothing more of it and continued. Before long I discovered another piece of bone, bigger, and looking suspiciously like the end of a human tibia. "Hmmm" I thought, and continued. Rounding the next corner I saw something that made me stop in my tracks: there in front of me, in the middle of the path, looking right at me, was a skull. A real, human, muddy, dead skull. It was at this point that I noticed a smell. If you've smelt rotting flesh before you'll know it is a very distinctive smell, one you'll never forget. Now I was faced with a dilemma (and a skull, but you already know that). Should I go on and discover something worse, or get the hell out of there? I went on. Around the next corner I found where all the bits of skeleton was coming from. In a small clearing there were rows of shallow trenches, some empty, some filled in but showing obvious signs of being dug up by wild dogs. Bones were scattered everywhere. The stench was terrible. There must have been dozens of people buried there, possibly a hundred. I was worried that I had discovered evidence of some genocidal atrocity. I hurried back to the hospital and told the boss doctor all about my discovery. He explained to me the sad truth: it was the hospital's burial ground, where dead patients ended up if no families came to claim their bodies. Apparently people have to buy a license to transport and bury their relative in Kenya, and if they can't afford the transport-a-dead-body license they simply don't collect the body and leave it for the hospital to deal with. My sunny stroll had not been as pleasant as I'd hoped, but I still have a very good photo of the skull. Maybe I'll scan it and post it some time.
( Purple Martin is board sigless, Mon 4 Jul 2005, 6:47, Reply)