Post-apartheid dentistry

I mentioned in a previous post that Dr P my dentist is a Muslim woman. This is part of why I like going to her practice where she is one of a number of dentists, oral hygienists and I think there is a specialist maxillo-facial surgeon who practices there too.

And what I like is that every single one of the practitioners, reception staff, cleaning staff, the whole shooting match has a brown skin. The clientele who wait in the waiting room is a mixed bag that more or less represents the racial demographics of the city but there is not a white face to be seen amongst the professionals serving us.

I get a kick out of knowing that in the era in which many of the fillings that are now crumbling in my mouth were initially done, it would have been impossible and indeed a criminal offence for the woman who today so expertly replaced these fillings to have anything to do with me at all.

Our association would have been construed as sedition.

Her very friendly assistant tells me her two-year-old daughter gets anxious whenever her mom puts her mask on because it means that she’s about to go out. I guess this young mother is about 24 which means that it is conceivable that at the time that I was entering high school her parents were participating in, or being profoundly affected by, the school boycotts that protested the regime.

I find her presence as a junior dental nurse in this practice deeply reassuring.

These are some of the thoughts I had today as I lay with my head lower than my hips, a pair of plastic sunglasses shielding my eyes from the lights, my mouth achingly wide open, listening to Dr P tell me about the difficulties of putting a filling into a cavity on the supporting tooth of a bridge.

Funny things bridges.

I just lay back and counted her eyelashes to take my mind off the discomfort. Coming soon – a raffle, “How many eyelashes are on Dr P’s right eye?”