Aira Hospital

Aira town grew up around the hospital as the medical activities gradually increased. As you can see from the drawing from 1954 by Dieter Wassmann - one of the German missionary pioneers - Aira town did still not exist at that time. Only a very few scattered buildings were found around the hospital.

Today it is a little more than what the British pronounce as a “two goat town”. No one knows the exact number of inhabitants. The most common guess is somewhere around 5 000.

The market in Aira is on Wednesdays and Saturdays. People are coming from far away to buy and sell or for social activities. You hear news and can make a telephone call. Some take the opportunity to take some strong drinks and can be seen winging back home in the afternoon.

It is a colorful and exotic event, but oh so ineffective. All these people are wasting a full day twice a week not doing anything productive. The government tried by law to reduce the market days to one per week, but since people have no way of storing food items at home it was not successful and the legislation had to be cancelled.