She was just lying there, limp and lifeless on the side of the road – we all thought she was dead.

            It had been a long day. We’d been playing a cricket match – volunteers vs. company staff – India vs. England. We were all chatting and laughing away on the bus until this sight caught our eye as we pulled up at head office. A woman was lying awkwardly inert on the side of the road with people walking past here as if she wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe it, I wanted to do something but was quickly told it was illegal to touch a dead body, and what could I do anyway?

            I was about to walk away when Ana, one of the volunteers came running over saying the woman was still breathing! We pleaded with the people from the company to call an ambulance but they said it simply wasn’t possible. Stifled with fear and confusion I followed Ana cautiously to the woman. She was barely conscious, lying on the dusty roadside, covered in flies, her eyes only half open and her forehead burning up. Not knowing anything about first aid I knelt down by the woman and let Ana instruct me. We put her in the recovery position then held her in a sitting position so she could be sick.

            The whole time we were there I was in a trance. I remember thinking: this woman is probably going to die in my arms, and I feel nothing. Yet at the same time I was struggling to choke back the tears. It’s a strange thing, shock.

            In this time a huge crowd had formed around us, to the point where we couldn’t see out of it. Sure, now the two little white girls had got involved it was interesting! Voices from the crowd kept telling us to just leave her, that she was a drunk or on drugs.

Ana kept trying to make the woman drink some water and I just held her up, looking around for a miracle. After what seemed like ages an ‘ambulance’ turned up. This equated to a small white van. Two men came and hoisted her onto a large sheet of metal and propped it on some legs in the back of the van, then they both went and got in the front.

            The idea of this woman being left on a sheet of metal, not strapped in and with no padding, in the back of this van being taken along the dirt tracks through town is  insane – she’ll  knock herself completely unconscious by the time they reach anywhere!

            They said they were taking her to hospital, which was something at least, I thought. They asked if we wanted to come. I froze, headlines of ‘the two white girls who jumped in an unmarked white van and were never seen again’ flashed through my mind. ‘I’m not sure we should,’ I whispered sheepishly to Ana.

She turned to me and said, with such honesty and care, ‘If you don’t want to I don’t blame you, but I’m going to go.’

            I felt uneasy, but there was certainly no way I was going to leave Ana, so I jumped in. Just before we were about to head off another guy jumped in and had a quick look at her, claiming he was a doctor.

‘There’s nothing you can do, she’s dying of malnutrition.’ He said with such certainty. At that point it was as if everything we’d been fighting back suddenly broke through and Ana and I both burst into tears.

We stayed with her anyway, and made it to the hospital, all the while in the ambulance just trying to cushion her head from the hard table. When we arrived they took her out of the ‘ambulance’ and left her in the hallway for quite some time. No one seemed in a rush to do anything which was extremely frustrating. Eventually a doctor came and looked at her. He told us that she was epileptic and that she’d had a fit, and that after being on the drip he’d put her on she would be fine! Relief engulfed us both and we couldn’t thank him enough.

The doctor explained to us that her daughter, who normally looked after her was actually in that very hospital having problems giving birth, which was why the woman had been on her own. He then glanced down at a small boy of about 3 and said: ‘This is her grandson!’