Looking for Trouble

Saturday in Gaza with medical students (Day Seven) by Bob Haynes

(Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility has traveled to Gaza since 1993. Since 2009, following the Cast Lead invasion by Israel, WPSR has sponsored eight medical delegations to serve the besieged, imprisoned and war-torn people of Gaza. Bob Haynes, M.D., cardiologist, is teaching Advanced Cardiac Life Support.)

Medical students at the Islamic University in Gaza are similar to those in the U.S. Their faces reflect their willingness to learn, and their determination to help others.

But they are also different. To get to class, the students hurry past the administration building, with its blown out front half. They crowd into the single elevator still functioning in the classroom tower, but with only men or only women in each packed carload. When the buzzer signals that the elevator is overweight, one or two students get off and wait, as part of an apparently routine protocol practiced several times per day. When a class finishes, many of the students climb to the 6th floor, as the elevator no longer comes to the 5th floor.

As the elevator doors close and the elevator zooms downward, I am startled by the pitch-blackness. The students continue their animated conversations, never pausing, as many simply flip on the flashlights in their smart phones for the rest of the ride. They make a point of not stopping conversation whenever the lights go out in a dark room (OR, restaurant, private home). I don’t know if this is because they have become inured to so many things not functioning as expected (“This is Gaza”, they say with a shrug of their shoulders). Or if, by not recognizing malfunction, there is no malfunction – nothing to become alarmed about.

The classroom windows are covered with cardboard material. Walking sometimes has some crunching feeling, with tiny specks of glass left behind from the shards already cleared away.

The students received our photocopied course materials 2 days prior to the course, and memorized all of the algorithms, protocols, medicines, and other lists – cold. When we pose questions, many eager hands are thrust into the air to be called upon.

On their way home, the students walk past piles of rubble where an apartment building once stood, but say nothing about it. Once home, they recharge their laptop if the electricity is on, so that they can study when the electricity is off (the majority of the time). Study space is scarce for some students at home. One related that 51 people stayed in her two-bedroom home during the war.

One of the nursing students show me a picture that I took last April, and indicated a classmate who, along with her two little children, was killed when a bomb landed on her home last August.

The Gaza medical students have the same keen intelligence and eagerness as their American counterparts. But they also have experienced something that no one should have to experience.