Chapter Seven – Mkoba
Written by Kirsty Harkness
He was four years old.
As pale as paper, with breath so shallow I had to lean in to see his chest move.
His mother held him in both arms, frantic, whispering words in a language I was only just learning, but I didn’t need a translation. His face said it all.
We sent a runner.
In our hospital, there were no pagers. No intercom systems. Just legs.
The fastest ones we knew were the kids from the market: wiry, alert, bare feet calloused like leather. One of them took off, sand kicking behind him, to fetch Seamus from a home visit across the village.
He arrived ten minutes later, breathless and sweaty but already pulling on gloves.
The boy wasn’t moving.
Seamus opened his mouth, frowned, and ran a finger along his gums.
It came back stained with thick, black tar.
“Mitchi,” he muttered under his breath. “Damn it.”
“What is that?” I asked.
He glanced up at me, the line between his brows deepening. “A potion,” he said. “Mkoba has rubbed it into his gums.”
The Mkoba. I had heard whispers. A local spiritual figure, healer, mystic. Powerful, feared, and often paid more than the chief. He claimed to cure illness by drawing out the evil. Bark, ash, roots, bone… ground into a paste and rubbed into gums or spooned into mouths.
Mitchi was one of the most feared. A dark black tar made from tree bark and mixed with who knows what. It didn’t heal. It poisoned.
“It destroys the red blood cells,” Seamus said grimly. “He’s so anaemic there’s nothing left to carry oxygen to his brain. His only chance is a transfusion.”
But we had no blood bank. No fridges. No testing equipment. No universal donors on standby. Just us.
But wait. It just so happened we did have a universal donor standing right here.
Jess was already beside me, reading my mind.
“I’m O positive,” I said. “Let’s test it.”
We did a plate test. Very crude, but it’s all we had. Jess grabbed the plate. I pricked my finger and the boy’s, and we mixed the blood droplets together. We watched, waited. If the blood clots, it shows it is incompatible, and we would kill him if given.
No clotting.
It was our green light.
Seamus worked fast, finding a vein, a miracle in itself. The boy’s body was failing, but his veins were still holding. I lay down on the side bed as Lily slid a cannula into my arm and began drawing blood, 50ml at a time. Jess handed over the syringes, keeping the flow moving. We worked like a human pump. Lily drawing, Seamus injecting, Jess the step between.
With each syringe-full, the boy’s colour began to change.
At first, a whimper. Then a weak cry. Then, after the eighth or tenth round, a full-throated, angry, glorious scream.
We all laughed. Lily cried. Seamus patted my shoulder with a bloody glove.
We had pulled him back from the edge.
The relief, so many tears of relief.
That evening after dinner, we gathered for a debrief. A healing discussion, just to process the enormity of what had happened.
Just as the sun was slipping below the horizon, and the tension in my shoulders was finally easing, we had a runner arrive at the door to call me back to the ward. I didn’t think twice as I put on my shoes. I assumed it was follow-up, maybe the boy had spiked a fever or needed fluid.
But when I got there, his mother was standing outside the surgery, her face crumpled and wet.
He was in her arms. Limp. Breathless.
Dead.
I rushed forward, checked for signs of life.
Opened his mouth.
Black paste.
Fresh mitchi.
She’d taken him straight back to the Mkoba. Maybe from fear, or family pressure to trust what they knew, instead of the medicine they didn’t.
I stepped back, stunned. My hands were shaking. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was whisper, “No… no, no, no…” as the tears came.
The child was still warm. Still soft. Still looked like he should wake up any moment. But there was nothing left for me to do. Nothing anyone could do now.
I turned away as I gasped for air, my face screwed up in raw emotion.
I cried. With fury, with helplessness, with grief.
The Mkoba didn’t just poison children. He poisoned trust.
He promised cures and sold death. And still, they followed. Not because they were foolish, but because belief runs deeper than medicine. Because fear is louder than logic. Because when you’ve lost too much, sometimes you cling to whatever tells you it’s not your fault.
The Mkoba would charge for treatment.
Then charge again when it failed, to name the family who had cursed you.
Then again, to curse them back.
A business built on blame.
I wanted to be angry at the mother. I really did.
But when I looked at her, holding her child like the answer might still come from me, I couldn’t.
Because what she did, she did out of love. Out of fear. Out of the only truth she’d ever known.
That didn’t make it any easier.
I walked home with the weight of sorrow pushing down on my heart.
I lay under my mosquito net, the air so thick I could hardly draw breath, and stared at the ceiling for hours. My skin was sticky with sweat. My eyes burned from crying. I could still feel the weight of the child in my arms. The warmth that shouldn’t have been gone yet. The black paste that took him anyway.
Somewhere in the village, drums were playing. Not joyful ones.
The slow, steady rhythm of mourning. Of loss.
I thought of the boy’s face when he first cried after the transfusion.
Of the way his young hands had clenched, his angry determined voice rising like it belonged in the world again.
We shared with him the liquid of life, and it was taken from him within hours.
I knew I would never forget him.
Not just because he was the first patient I lost - and a child, to make it worse.
But because he taught me something I hadn’t expected to learn so early:
It’s not always enough to save someone once.
Sometimes, survival isn’t just about medicine or skill. Or having the answers.
It’s about timing, belief, culture, choice… and heartbreakingly, sometimes, those things collide in ways you can’t control.
I wished I could have screamed louder.
Stayed by his side. Blocked the door. Anything.
But I wasn’t his mother. And I wasn’t from this culture.
I was just a nineteen-year-old girl who tried. And lost.
Chapter Eight coming...
Start from the beginning: Chapter One
To protect privacy, names have been changed but these are all true stories.
With thanks to my editor and sounding boards. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to help find the right words. I’ve always been better at feeling a story than finessing every sentence.
Glossary Note: Zaire
At the time of this story, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was officially called Zaire. From 1971 to 1997, the nation bore that name under the rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Today, the same region is referred to as the DRC, but for historical accuracy and personal authenticity, I’ve used “Zaire” throughout this book to reflect the time and place as I experienced it.
About the Author
Kirsty Harkness is the founder of Hark & Zander, a premium natural skincare brand inspired by care, courage, and connection. Before launching her business, Kirsty worked as a nurse, photographer, and vineyard owner - a path that’s taken her from remote African hospitals to the heart of New Zealand’s wine country. Founder’s Footsteps shares true stories from a very different life, written for her daughter and anyone who’s ever felt the pull of purpose, people, and place.
