Musings

There's a little terrace hidden within the concrete maze of Amman's streets. Wild Jordan is a branch of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature which works to develop socio-economic programs in all of Jordan's nature reserves, and this afternoon it was Devon and my escape. Its headquarters is a 3-story enclave tucked inside a residential neighborhood and has entire walls of glass so you can look over downtown Amman as you rest. The second floor has a little cafe that makes the most refreshing mint smoothies; we sipped and sat in silence as we wrote postcards to loved ones on the other side of the world. At noon the adhan called all Muslims to prayer, once again transforming the minarets into beacons of somber, beautiful song. It's like listening to gregorian chanting five times a day. I really love the sound.

It was wonderful getting to sit, think, laugh, and write together. Devon's an incredible roommate and the day had been a little intense, so we needed a break. Our first two tests were this morning, so the past week has been a flurry of flashcards, textbooks, and study sessions. Yesterday we studied for too many hours straight and were all a bit jittery this morning when we finally sat down to take it. I think we studied ourselves silly, but it paid off; the test went fairly well! We haven't gotten our results back yet of course, but we diagnosed meningococcal meningitis and kwashiorkor, so we're pretty thrilled. :)

After our tests, we toured the Al-Bashir Government Hospital. I'm struggling to know how to describe it, I'm still mulling it over in my mind. On one hand, the hospital director, emergency room chief, and natal ICU director were incredibly proud of their facilities and were eager to show us around the wards. In the emergency room, we toured the back rooms, operating theaters, bandaging wards, ambulance docks and more. And yet, as we passed through the narrow, concrete halls, I couldn't help but notice the puddles of murky water and urine on the floors. The blood stains on the hospital beds and gurneys. The patients sitting in up and down the stairwells and halls; bloodied bandages covering feet, hands, and heads. I'd peer into a dark room and see a doctor developing x-rays amid a cloud of cigarette smoke. Directions for emergency resuscitation procedures was taped up on the walls. Yet, this is their national public hospital and the directors are proud of it. Walking through the offices and observing the staff, they're working hard. They're doing their best. Their accomplishments are impressive: nearly 34,000 patients filter through those walls every week, 1 million every year. It's the biggest hospital in Jordan, located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Amman. With 22 operating theaters, they manage nearly 3000 surgeries a year. They have a child abuse detection center, a regionally-recognized forensic science team, life-saving treatment for hundreds of thousands across the country, and are trying to implement more programs for the growing diabetic population.  It's still a contrast. A stark, obvious contrast. When I was pre-med, I toured the medical schools and hospitals at UCSF, UC Davis, and Stanford. I gaped at their incredible technology, their surgical robots, their enormous conference rooms, their mechanical cadavers students could practice on, their long white, sterile halls of prestige....and longed to be one of them. Yet, walking through the dark, wet halls of Al-Bashir today, that seemed almost embarrassingly utopic. Embarrassing is perhaps the wrong word. But we can leave, we can go back to our clean, quiet Western hospitals; a fact that made me realize, once again, how fortunate and  privileged we are. So, how to describe Al-Bashir? Intriguing, shocking, impressive, sobering, eye-opening, hopeful....not sure yet. It's still a blend of faces and facts and snap-shots in my mind.