MDA training

After Mada’s 10 day intensive training program, I passed my written and practical exams! I am now a qualified first responder. I will be joining a driver, who is a licensed medic, and one other first responder on an ambulance.

There are two shifts: 7am-3pm and 11pm-7am. Hopefully they wont make me work night shifts because I hear they really mess up sleeping habits. During the hours I am at work, I wait at the station until we get a call. Certain drivers are assigned to certain calls and certain first responders assigned to certain drivers. If I get on good term with the drivers, then they will trust me more and let me do cool things like administer IVs. I need to learn all the medical terms in Hebrew so the medics will know I am serious. I better go study!

My first shift is tomorrow and I am excited and nervous. I kind of hope I don’t get any calls just so I can ease into my new work. But how cool would it be if on my first day I got a really serious call?

The Gorgeous People of a Gorgeous Land

“Akuna matada. It means no worries for the rest of your days.” – Timone and Pumba from The Lion King

I have decided that in Africa the people live by the saying “Akuna Matada.”
Life is so chill over there. They don’t try to make loads and loads of money; they just want to support themselves. Because they aren’t work-aholics, they have a lot of free time that they spend socializing on the side of the dirt roads.

Time is never an issue for them and they disregard it completely. This is a nice thought except if you make a time to meet with someone, the person could show up an hour early or two hours late.

The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane that Monday morning was the vast amount of green lushness. After our bus left the smoggy, traffic filled city of Kampala, we drove for hours on end through green meadows and agriculture. There was a house every so often made out of mud bricks next to a clothes line with the most colorful clothes.
We could pull over at any point for a bathroom stop – that’s how much nature there was!

The people of Uganda were super friendly. Whenever they spotted our bus, full of white people, they would wave and yell, “Mzungu, mzungu!” or “white person, white person!” It is amazing how far a smile and a wave can go in any country.

When we got off the bus at a rural market outside of Kampala we were the main attraction. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the so-rarely-seen white people. It was weird, in the country, some of the little kids were scared of us because they had never seen skin like ours.

We toured and we hiked and we experienced the market. The waterfalls in Africa are one hundred times prettier than American waterfalls only because, in Africa, the hike there is over rivers and through rainforests. We met locals on the side of the road who were fascinated by our digital cameras. We always had to ask before snapping a photo, but often times people would agree only because they wanted to see themselves on that little screen.


On Thursday we drove to a town called Puti and visited an orthodox Jewish community. This group of Jews has no running water or electricity and uses a designated large hole in the ground for a bathroom. Only the adults spoke English, and only a small amount. However, my connection to these people had nothing to do with words. After being welcomed by their leader, we split into small groups and were supposed to be discussing the story of Hannukah with the older students. A few girls and I decided to play with the younger kids instead.

Getting started was hard because they did not understand anything we said. We had to motion and show examples. We somehow taught them Duck Duck Goose, and they loved it. Every time one of them said, “Yuse” instead of goose I laughed, while their peers burst into screams because someone was getting chased. The children then proceeded to teach us a game similar to Duck Duck Goose, called “gam yeladim” (they sang in Hebrew). We went back and forth teaching each other hand games and songs until we ended up doing some Israeli dance. It was so much fun!
What a feeling I had – I felt a deep connection to these girls because we shared the same way of life (Judaism), even though our life styles were very different. It was cool to look around and see diversity, while only looking at Jews. That doesn’t happen anywhere else.

Our sad depart included me stripping my wrist of friendship bracelets and tying them on my new friends. When we left, the children ran after our bus; I felt like I was in a movie!

We spent Shabbat with another Jewish community – conservative and much larger a community than the one in Puti. This community had toilets, water, and the works. It was a completely different experience from the day before. I instantly bonded with a nine year old girl named Bina, after all our names rhyme and her brother told us we looked alike, aside from the skin color. Bina spoke English and lived in a paved house with a bath tub. She showed me her Jewish Day School and gave me a tour of the area. We had Friday night services and then sat down to a nice African meal. I ate matoke (boiled and mashed bananas), rice, g-nut sauce (tastes like thick peanut sauce), lentils, and potatoes. After Shabbat we retired to our tents.

I woke up very sick on Saturday, which ended up putting a damper on the rest of my time in Uganda. I spent Shabbat lying in the shade, resting and watching. I noticed that the kids of the community basically raise themselves. I only knew who two of the girls’ parents were by the end of the weekend because all the children do is play with each other. They don’t get hurt and if they do, it’s a young kid and a ten year old gril will pick up the child and make him better. It was crazy for me to see seven year old boys carrying babies on their backs and two year old girls walking around aimlessly. No one watches over the kids except for themselves.

We said our goodbyes after Shabbat ended and after our dance party ended. We headed to a hotel and fell fast asleep.

This trip has crossed a lot of things off of my To Do List of life, but more importantly I left Africa with a new sense of worldlyness. I can now say that I have stood half on each side of the equator. Life can be so different somewhere else, but everyone still lives.There are two different lifestyles – mine, which is full of electronics and competition or the Ugandan lifestyle, which is laidback and behind the times. I would love to have grown up not wearing shoes and just playing with other kids ALL the time. But I also cant wait to attend an American university.

Africa is still stirring in my mind. I haven’t quite figured out what life lesson I learned there, but I just like Uganda. I like what I saw and I would love to go back.