Leprosy Treating Charity Worker

ACT 1 SCENE 1

A man is in a bar waiting for his friend to show up. There are two glasses of beer on the table and they both remain untouched. He takes his phone out to check the time and then he puts it back in his pocket. His friend named Kieran then walks into the bar and the two are happy to see each other.

 

DONOVAN Your beer's getting cold.

KIERAN (walking towards his seat) It already was cold.

DONOVAN No it's getting warmer.

KIERAN (takes a sip of his beer) No it's getting warmer. (takes his seat) How did you afford those new trainers?

DONOVAN My charity job.

KIERAN Abroad?

DONOVAN Yes.

ZACK I never thought that you could afford those on your wage as they only came out last week. I always thought that charity workers that worked got a low wage.

DONOVAN You'd be surprised.

KiERAN So you're still doing that leprosy thing.

DONOVAN I work for a charity in Africa that works with people who have leprosy.

KIERAN I thought so. It must be a good job if you have to leave the country to enjoy it.

DONOVAN I do enjoy it.

KIERAN So what do you do there? Give them medicine?

DONOVAN (laughing) I do alot more than give medicine.

KIERAN Do you?

DONOVAN Yes?

KIERAN I never knew that. I just thought that you was a doctor in Africa.

DONOVAN I haven't got a degree in medicine or doctoring.

KIERAN But you don't need a degree to work as a doctor in Africa.

DONOVAN What are you talking about?

KIERAN That's just what I thought.

(They both drink some beer, Kieran first, then Donovan after.)

DONOVAN Let me tell you about some of the work that I do. I work for a charity called Feel Again and they treat people with leprosy. Before Feel Again came out, leprosy was rife and people would injure themselves without knowing it. People would do all sorts of things. We've had stories about people hurting their toes many times because they don't think to watch where they're going. People who don't get checked out for head injuries or when they get in a fight. The worst story was from a chef who would always put his hands in the food he was cooking. He would put his hands in hot water he thought hadn't got hot yet and put his hand in gravies he thought had cooled down.

KIERAN Oh my God!

DONOVAN You don't want to know what happened to him.

KIERAN I don't.

DONOVAN So that's why Feel Again came out, to give people with leprosy the chance to feel again.

KIERAN So what do you do?

DONOVAN When I was gone to Africa for two weeks, I dealt with a man who had leprosy. But this man knew he had it. His father died and now he has to look after his kids and his mother's kids so he couldn't afford it. He would work long hours and have little money to himself when he came home at the end of the day.

KIERAN That's terrible.

DONOVAN I know. There's people in Africa who know they have leprosy but can't afford it. That's why I do some of the things that I do, to help them. When we found him, his leprosy was going to a terrible state so we treated him.

KIERAN What did you do?

DONOVAN I was getting into that.

KIERAN So we were treating him in the hospital. We blindfolded him and gave him excercises by making sure he could feel things at various parts of his body. We also gave him medication. We did all sorts of things. We asked him how he got it and where he thinks it's spreading to in the area. He said he would refer his family to use and i gave me such a good feeling to know that I'd helped him and now I can help others as well.

We did lots of things, we gave him antibiotics, creams, we made sure he was in a clean environment, because our hospital is very clean. We gave him drugs like dapsone, rifampicin and clofazimine but he came to us not early in his condition so it took long to treat him. We had to make sure that he didn't get infected by anyone in the hospital with leprosy as someone can easily cough or come into contact with him. I hate it when that happens.

After a week in hospital, his mother came up to me and asked can I have my son back and I asked why and she said that she needed money and she had none because the son earns the money. And I asked her how much do you want and she said 50p a day so I gave her 50p a day.

DONOVAN You could have given her more than that.

KIERAN After a couple of weeks, she got her son back and she was so happy that he was cured of leprosy and she thanked Feel Again and gave her best wishes.

DONOVAN Why did you give her 50p?

KIERAN Because she asked me to.

DONOVAN Why did you only give her 50p?

KIERAN (confused) I don't understand.

DONOVAN You gave her 50p a day.

KIERAN Yes.

DONOVAN You could have given her more than that. One pound.

KIERAN Yes.

DONOVAN Why didn't you?

KIERAN Because I wasn't asked to.

DONOVAN As long as you know.

KIERAN Next time a person asks me for money I'll do it.

DONOVAN Why did you have to wait for her to ask you for money? You knew he was the breadwinner. You left the kids to starve.

DONOVAN (clueless) What? I never starved the kids. Africa's exploiting employers and corrupt government did. People in Africa always find a way to survive no matter how poor they get. They invent new ways to live under the minimum all the time and I will not be to blame if there's a house where there's many kids and only one person works. It's not hard to make 50p a day in Africa. You don't have to do much work. It's because of it's because it's like that. I can't change the world.

KIERAN If you're a charitable person, a good person, you would have made sure those kids had a way to eat.

DONOVAN (glances left and right slightly by a quarter of an inch both then looks in the air above for a split second before resuming eye contact)

(curtain falls)

ACT 1 SCENE 2

Author's Note

I based this on an assembly I had about a leprosy worker who went abroad to do charity work. I again do not like this idea as conceptual stories are not my thing. Would I enjoy reading it if you wrote this? No I would not. Maybe you would.

Reviews

[Desert Dreamer]

I must say that I learned a little from reading your story about leprosy, but I do find reading stage directions with the speakers name on each line a little distracting, but that is not a criticism, juat makes it hard for me to enjoy reading a story. There are a few minor grammatical errors but overall this is very well written.