we made it to negril!

A lot has happened this week, and I will do my best to detail it well.

The time in the hospital has continued to be fabulous, and I appreciate all that I have. It’s interesting to consider some of the questions that the residents ask amongst themselves and also me by extension. It concerns me a little because some of it is very basic step 2 or even step 1 information, and many of them are professing the want to come to the US and thus have taken USMLE.

That all aside, I love going to work and drawing blood and mixing and administering medications. It makes me feel useful, and I’m helping the residents with their work as well as helping the patients. It’s still amazing to me what’s considering doctor’s work here is basic nursing care in the US, but as long as someone’s doing it, it doesn’t really matter.

On Friday, we actually ended up sewing up an episiotomy on a woman who has just delivered. It was critical we sew her up quickly because she was anemic and had been transfused before the delivery and was bleeding a lot. I held an iPhone for a flashlight (as I had the day before on a speculum exam—no lights around here). The intern did it, the midwife showed him where the tear was and then left. I ended up helping him a little (one sterile glove, the other hand holding the phone). The woman was given no pain medication, just a little numbing.  During this process, I realized how little some of these women are told. I don’t think any of these physicians could pass a physical exam board in the US because of the humanistic domain—they tell the patients to hush and behave themselves when they reach out or cry out in pain.

Me and Josephine--the moment of 'we made it to Negril!'

So it was nice to get out of the hospital on Friday and head to Negril. There were four of us going, and after driving on the absolute worst road I’ve been on in Jamaica (and that’s saying a lot!), we made it. It was so fabulous! One of the volunteers who went with us is a millionaire in his home country, and that made for a lot of perks over the weekend—including flaming shots of rum, because if the power’s out, we should light alcohol on fire. It was a very Jamaican experience though. As was swimming in the Caribbean Sea at night—the water’s definitely still warm enough to do that.

Me, Josephine, Debbie, and Mattias

 Saturday was a light day, just enjoying the gorgeous Seven Mile Beach.

We headed to the world famous Rick's Cafe that evening, a bar famous for its cliff diving. No cliff jumping for us, but it was fun to watch. We made friends with the Jamaican staff at our hotel and played cards with them when we returned from Rick’s, learning games from my fellow volunteers and their native countries as well as a Jamaican game.

 

Sunday was a rather unfortunate morning. I had gone back to the room slightly before the other two girls, and I also ended up waking up before them. Josephine and I were sharing a double bed, and she rolled over at 7:30 and asked me what time it was. Promptly getting out of bed, she went to get her phone from the charger and found it was missing. Looking for her handbag, she saw it was also missing. Debbie and I got out of bed to look for it, and Josephine declared that it had been stolen when it was clearly not in the room. I went out to the patio where we’d been playing cards to see if she’d left it there by chance, and alerted the staff there. They checked with security, and as security walked back to the cottage, they spotted her bag in the dirt between our cottage and the next.

There were no signs of breaking and entering, and the girls couldn’t remember locking the door. It’s such a habit, no one could remember; and I had already been in the room when they came in, so I can’t say one way or another.

The very difficult part about some of this is how hard it can be to make international calls on some cell phones. Luckily, Josephine and Mattias are both from Sweden and Mattias had a good working cell to call Sweden—and deactivate the credit cards as well as the SIM card on the phone.

This was being done and security called the police, but we could see Josephine’s wallet on the ground and carefully flipped it over. Her driver’s license and credit card were still intact, though about US$50 had been taken. So some worries abated.

Interlude to comment on the lovely staff—since we had been socializing with them since we’d gotten to Negril on Friday evening, they were so exceptionally friendly with us. They brought coffee and water and let us order breakfast while we’re all hovering around the little cottage of our room. It was amazing of them, and they were also very concerned about us. As we repeated frequently to them and to others, none of us had been assaulted or raped or anything horrific like that so we could get through a robbery.

Before leaving for court, we got a photo with the staff of Roots Bamboo

The police came (in jeans and t-shirts! Good thing for the constabulary vest, otherwise I wouldn’t have believed they were police!) and Josephine described the morning and her phone to them. Something rather miraculous happened then—they said they thought they had ‘something for her.’ They left for a bit (to go back to the station) and brought in a Samsung Galaxy S4, estimated at US$748 we later calculated, which was hers. We clearly identified it.

So at this point, all worries were relieved. Yes, the cash was gone but we will all take a loss of US$50 for everything else!

Josephine and I are wonderful friends for all that we’ve known each other for two weeks, and she and I share a host family. The police had assured us that they would try for a Tuesday trial date, since we were only in Negril for a short period of time. The others would go back to Mandeville, but she and I would stay in Negril until Tuesday (It was too far to go back on Sunday and come back for court on Tuesday). We alerted Projects Abroad and headed to the police station to make a statement. We also let our host mom know and it was so sweet, her reaction. I called her because Josephine’s English was deteriorating by this point and Ingrid was so outraged for us and so concerned. Neither Josephine nor I could talk to our real mothers, but Ingrid is a lovely substitute.

I’ve commented about the lack of computers in the hospital—the same holds true for the police station! I did at least spot one there. But the statement took about three hours to give because of the details required, the handwritten nature of it, and also the struggles with Josephine’s English. She speaks excellent English with very little accent, but under pressure, she deteriorated slightly. I helped, and we eventually made it out of there. The police were so nice (especially after the taxi that dropped us tried to charge us astronomical prices—too bad we’re savvy Jamaican travelers and didn’t fall for it!), taking us back to our hotel via an ATM so Josephine could replace the missing cash.

We moved cottages but stayed at Roots Bamboo (they did offer us a nice discount). The funny thing is the new cottage had a door that was swollen in the door frame, so it made a lot of noise to open it. No breaking and entering without us waking up anymore!

The very nice thing was that Mattias and Debbie had organized us to go snorkeling while Josephine and I were at the police station. It was a lovely change of pace and took all of our minds off the robbery. In fact, I got quite excited because there was an anchor and cannon from the 18^th century along the coral reef. The fish were gorgeous, but the history major in me came out. I dove to the ocean floor to touch the canon, which was clearly oxidizing on the ocean floor. The anchor had coral and algae growing along it, but when you stood on the end of the shaft, you could keep your head over water. It was so cool! I laughed in a carefree manner I can’t remember having done in a long time, it was so awesome a feeling.

On one of the small islands off Negril, near Bloody Bay

We headed back in to pirate stories, and Debbie and Mattias took off for Mandeville. Josephine and I really just calmed down and slept in a little for our day of relaxation on Monday—it felt like playing hooky from work to be there, but court on Tuesday was not easy. We waited around to be the last thing, since they usually don’t try cases on Tuesdays but were making an exception for us.

It was mostly like it was on TV, which was the extent of our previous knowledge of court between me and Josephine. It was almost heartbreaking to watch her on the stand and the pressure of the defense attorney and her English not always being exactly on. However, we were able to retrieve ‘exhibit A,’ the cell phone, and the judge very kindly apologized for the inconveniences of our trip and hoped we would continue to enjoy Jamaica.

The two hour wait for the bus didn’t help, but we made it home to Mandeville and our fabulous host mom, complete with hugs and homemade food (and showers!).

Okay a lot happened today too but I'm so exhausted I can't write anything else besides here's a comment on other things: I signed my contract today for my residency!