A few months ago I went to see my general dental practitioner back home. Dentists, or former dentists like me, make terrible patients, offering the diagnosis and treatment suggestion no sooner are they in the chair. I told the unfortunate clinician that I had undoubtedly a crack in my top left molar. This happens often as one gets older; the fillings stay intact but the surrounding tooth starts to crack and crumble. He couldn't see anything wrong (as is often the case with this problem) and I agreed to live with the sensitivity until something more definitive happened. And sure enough, last night during dinner it did, with a piece of tooth joining my daily consumption of roughage. It feels like you could park a rickshaw in the defect but it's probably not as bad as it seems to the tongue. Vindication though - even if I realise now that I had indicated the wrong tooth at time of the appointment.
Suntali grouted the moth mosaic today and a nice job she made of it too. Maybe she can do something with my teeth. Come to think of it, one or two of these mosaic girls are brilliant with their hands and if they'd had the education would have made cracking (so to speak) dentists.
I learned today of a five year old boy who is at Tulsipur jail in the west of the country, just admitted with his father who has started serving a twenty year sentence for murdering his wife, the boy's mother. In the absence of anyone else to look after him we'll take him into our care at the Bhairahawa refuge where he can join other prisoners' children. That will bring to 24 the number of children that we are trying to link with sponsors.
I last went to Tulsipur jail in 2001 to bring four boys out of the jail. It's a long trip and it's rotten when you get there.
