Palms up

Many people desire to work in lavish environments with a high pay and great benefits, but this is not my dream work job. There are thousands of UCSD students who consider themselves "Pre-med" and throw around statements such as "I want to help others" but in reality their lives point towards other goals, aims that are pointed toward helping themselves rather than others. It is against such vain goals that i am opposed to. In all truth, i could care less what my job environment looks like as long as i am fulfilling what i believe i am called to do.

The life of a trauma surgeon is a life that is drenched with anxiety and has an aftertaste of death, it is not a fluffy pink lifestyle. I do not have any intentions to practice medicine in the United States but rather feel that i will be more readily utilized in places that lack well equipped specialists. It is in such environments that i dream to work in; places such as Baardheere.

Baardheere is a city near the border of Kenya. As I entered the war-torn region the first thing that I noticed was the red dust that stains one's feet. Before entering the city, I passed through an area that was comprised of a sea of stones laid upon the dirt. These stones were smooth and as I ran my hand over them a fine powder was left on my palm. Each stone had different Arabic symbols painted on them with a flaky white paint. The stones were placed equidistant to each other; four feet across and eight feet in length. As I closed my eyes to listen to the surroundings all that I heard was the whisper of the dust as it was gently carried along the ground. A high pitched tone seemed to linger in the area, the type of tone that seems to appear when all other forms of sound vanish. But then suddenly in the corner of my eye, I seem to notice something out of the ordinary. With a quick stride I arrived at the foreign object that consisted of a half rotted stick bound to a piece of rusted sheet metal with a lead wire. As I leaned in for a closer look I took a step on the dirt in front of the object and the ground seemed to be softer than the the surrounding earth. It is then that i realized the identity of the object; a shovel.

As i entered the city i exchanged glances with a small elderly woman. Her head was facing the ground but her eyes were fixated on me. Placed across the length of her forehead was thick leather strap that connected to a large bundle of sticks that rested on her back. I noticed that her hands were full of scars and her knuckles were calloused over with a thick layer of skin. I continued down the dirt road and beneath my feet i felt small pebbles. But these pebbles were peculiar, as if they had a symmetrical cylindrical shape to them. I leaned down and dug my fingers into the red stained dust only to pull up a small cylinder, a copper cylinder, that was closed off on one side. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of such cylinders scattered throughout the neighborhood. To complement the cylinders, there was an equal amount of small holes riddled through the buildings of the neighborhood that i was passing through.

As i reached my destination, a tall Somali met me at the door and stretched out is hands, palms up. "Welcome doctor" he said, grinning.