On my fifth day in the City Clinic’s High Dependency Unit, (HDU), March 7, I was moved to a regular hospital room across the corridor from where Suzi is staying.  My room has a window overlooking a park strip where I watch an old man and young boy feed pigeons, couples walking hand and hand and kids playing soccer on the pitch just a little to my left.  The ambulance took me through the streets of Port Louis on the way here but laying on my back looking through the rear door windows I saw only second stories.

Almost as soon as I got to the new room in the “daisy ward” (They are all named after flowers) lightning was strobing and the thunder rumbled with an occasional punctuated crash.  Cyclone Freddy had hit the African continent, bounced off Mozambique and was making a return swing.  School had let out early so the kids could get home before the storm hit, again. 

After the rain, between the sundown call to prayer and the evening call when it cools down a bit, kids were out in force on the soccer pitch.  Our hospital is in the heart of the Muslim district of Port Louis and now, with windows that open, I can hear the call to prayer from at least three different locations.

Every day I get stronger.  On the 8^th they let me out on the Park Strip with an orderly to walk around (Not so on the 9^th because the storm returned, yet again). Every time I tired and sat on a park bench I was flocked by pigeons.  I am an old man but not “that” old man, I have no little boy with me to crumble a baguette into crumbs for the birds.

I am writing this on the 10^th.   School is out yet again, the kids are playing soccer and it sure looks like rain with the trees blowing.  They won’t let me out in case I get caught in the storm. (that never really materialized) But the question is Freddy coming back on the back swing, again?  To use the cliche “He’s Back.”

We are working out a plan with the hospital, doctors and insurance carrier.  Tomorrow (March 11) I may be discharged from the hospital but will continuing living here as a clinic patient.  That means that after tomorrow at 9 I will be free to explore Mauritius a little.  I will be here in the morning for an exam, get a cab for a few hours of “easy touring” and be back for evening tests and observation.  I will continue the regimen until I have a “fit to fly” certificate and the travel assistance company can arrange our transportation.

Note:  I am sending this more than a week after I wrote it.  I am “fit to fly” and am in Seattle waiting for a flight to Sitka.  Later posts will tell you of my Mauritius adventures.