Last week, I was able to participate in a rare moment of awesomeness--volunteering for an evening at a health clinic set up for those who do not have the state's insurance. Of the patients we saw, all but one were Eritrean (the odd one out was Sudanese), and the cases were almost all skin conditions (fungi, etc.). I was able to link up a lot of what I had learned in microbiology and see what I had left to know! I was also able to see how understaffed the hospital was, and how many more doctors it could use to treat more effectively.
I already knew much on the migrant situation and the blessing I was given by being born into a humble but providing American family. And yet, it was humbling to see all of these people line up to be cared for such foreign diseases that needed curing, people I did not know personally but whose stories were so familiar. These were refugees fleeing oppressive regimes. These were people trying to build for themselves a better life. But they came into Israel destitute, filled with maladies not endemic to this country, expecting a social grace too big and too difficult for the country to provide. So instead, a wall was built on Israel's southern border (sound familiar, America?), effectively ending a majority of those who traveled on foot, risking and suffering the perils of the Sinai, only to come to a halt with nowhere to go. It seems cruel, but who's fault is it? Surely not these people, since it is their government whose leader in Eritrea, I found out, seems to have gone insane. Surely not Israel's, since it has already taken in and helped many refugees who have crossed the border (some more than others, since a detention camp was built in the south with not so great conditions to temporarily fix the influx of migrants to Tel Aviv). Surely not Egypt's, since they barely have enough resources to provide for their own people, let alone thousands of foreign migrants with no education and no money. So how do you fix the problem?
This, my dear readers, I cannot answer. Words like "education," "infrastructure," "foreign aid," "revolutions," and "better leadership" are often thrown around, but they are each much easier said than done, and much easier done than done right. I hope that, in the midst of my exams, I take a moment to note that at least in this profession, while I can certainly do damage if I do not follow a just path (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/world/africa/sierra-leone-graft-charges-imperil-care-and-aid.html?hp&_r=0), I can also do so much good in the world, person by person, just like these doctors do everyday in their clinic.
As we approach Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's 65 birthday, I can only think back to the poverty and pain that this country was founded with, and how it catapulted itself out of destitution to wealth, now filled with so many humanitarian workers providing care for the needy and the suffering. The State of Israel still has much to do, much to rectify, and much to overcome, but I can at least be proud that I study in a state that has done so much and shoots for so much more. And with that, wish me luck as I head into finals season.
חג העצמאות שמח לכולם--ישראל ב-65!!!
(courtesy of http://www.izionist.org/wp-content/uploads/en_archive/2012/06/fly-our-flag-megila.jpg)
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