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were.  A set of curtained-off areas with a hole in the ground, a bag of lime next to them, and a toilet seat on a frame, nothing special.  At least it had a grass roof to ward off any rain, not that it would matter in the wet season.
    “How long are you here for?” Maddie asked the doctor as they made their way to the meal tent.
    “Not sure, depends a lot on how much I’m needed,” Deanna answered.
    “I’m sure as a doctor you are needed a lot,” Leida put in.
    “Yeah, unfortunately that is true,” Deanna said in a tone that sounded sad.  “And fortunately, I love what I do.”  Her tone had changed immediately to the chipper one that she had used earlier to annoy Doctor Burton.
    “How long have you been working in Africa?” Maddie asked as they entered the food tent to get in line and get a tray.
    “About a year with Doctors Without Borders.  Before that I was in South America for a while.”
    They picked at their food.  It wasn’t great looking, but it was food.  They had eggs and some sort of meat that looked like bacon but wasn’t, as well as plenty of coffee and tea.
    As they went to sit down at an empty bench, Leida was the one to bring up the elephant in the room.  “You don’t look old enough to have been a doctor that long,” she hid her blush behind a napkin, realizing she had been impertinent.
    But Deanna smiled.  She knew others would be listening because the tent was full.  They were speaking English, but the rumors—despite other languages being spoken here—would abound.  “I was a child prodigy.  I finished college at fourteen.  I was a doctor by the time I was twenty-one, a surgeon actually,” she clarified.  “I’ve been working at this, infectious diseases and tropical diseases, for five years now.”  That put her at twenty-six, old enough to practice, but with a face of a sixteen-year-old.
    “Where did you do your residency?” Magda spoke up from a neighboring table proving that she, and others, had been listening in avidly.
    “I was at Boston and then I went to Switzerland for infectious diseases so I could specialize,” she explained, switching to French for the woman’s benefit, but repeating it in English for the others who were listening.
    “You’ve done a lot in your young life,” Maddie commented, realizing they were letting their breakfasts get cold by all their questions, and finally digging in.
    “Yeah, and I’m going to do a lot more,” she commented wryly, digging in herself.
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Doctor Cooper indeed proved to be valuable.  They found that she spoke German, French, a smattering of Italian and Spanish and Portuguese, as well as English.  Using an interpreter to work with the patients, supervised at first by Doctor Burton and then later by Magda, she was soon learning the use of certain native words.  It created humor between her and the patients they were treating.  Some patients had a local virus that the staff had nicknamed the creeping crud.  It was very similar to a modern day plague.  Transmitted by the rats, it was also found in the local waters…another very important reason to drink only filtered water.  One of the biggest reasons for the clinic was AIDS—Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  It was at epidemic proportions in Africa at this point, attacking indiscriminately, poor and rich alike.  It was rampant in the community and ignorance of the ways to prevent it allowed it to spread easily.  Mothers transmitted it to their children through breastfeeding.  Fathers, who frequently had several wives or even concubines if they could afford it, spread it between them.  Sheer ignorance was what was killing these people.
    Doctor Cooper, working with several of the local people, began a series of classes.  Helped by Lenny, they soon devised a program of educating the young and the women.  Using the balloons from her mysterious boxes that she kept in her tent, she got their attention; however, she knew