The Incident That I Remember The Most

In the first semester of my university life, I was given the task of being one of the volunteers in the medical team and helped people in the other side of the world . The world that we could not even imagine how their lives were. I knew that this was the biggest challenge ever since I chose this career. I was wavering between choosing to become a nurse or a teacher. At last, I chose to wear the white cap and white uniform. Reason ? Nurse was the easier job compared to a doctor while you are still helping people.

It was 42 celcius in the North Africa. The glazing hot sun was like a boiling kettle that continually boiling our skin. You could even cook an egg under the sun if you had a pan. The weather was windy but the wind was rough and warm. It was sheer silence place that you could only hear howling of wind and sometimes the crying sound of the baby. I would say it was a deserted, abandoned, hopeless place that made you low in spirit if you were not the optimistic person.

You could not see a sign of hope. Like the hope when your bean sprouts that you planted grew into a shoot. When you looked into the people’s eyes and gave them encouraging smile, they didn’t smile back. They just laid their back and looked at nowhere at the very last moment of their lives. They had no even the strength to commit suicide that they could just end their lives earlier. End this hell suffering. It was sad and cruel reality that they could not do anything but counting the days they left. Famine issue had never been solved. Ironically, the food that rich people’s dogs ate was even luxurious than theirs. They were skinny and left only bones that were covered by skin. Some of them were dragging their bodies weakly on ground to move since they had no energy left to stand upright. If you happened to munch a piece of biscuit in front of them, they would be like the zombies in the game ”Plants versus Zombies” surrounding you and held your legs and pleading you to give them some. The uncontrolled pregnancy was another problem that would have not a full stop on it. The babies who didn’t know anything were born and got into the endless suffering. Most of them were having kwashiorkor diseases whereby their stomachs were big and rounded. You would be taken aback to see the scene of a child lying on the ground and thousands of flies are covering his face, hands, arms and legs. He did nothing, probably he had already became used to it. A senior told me that if there were a

group of eagles surrounding a man, that man would die in the next few days. The eagles were there to wait for the God brought that man back and ate him up.

I thought of what my mother used to say,’’ If you complain on the food you have, think of the person who even don’t have food to eat.’’ I was utterly understand this after I came here. I felt that I was considered lucky to be borned in a country that at least did not have poverty and famine problems. I was trying to give medical treatments to as many people as I could in there. At least someone was lending hand to them. There would be mothers who weeping at my shoulder and begging me to adopt their children. I was a mother too. I really felt useless even though I did some help but the situation was not even slightly changed. They were walking dead people.

I met a five-year-old girl, Sara. She was tailing me whenever I went in the temporary medical centre. I thought she wanted some food, so I headed to the campsite and gave her something to eat. She shook her head. She mouthed words but I could not hear quite precisely since her voice was soft. I squatted down and listen carefully. She said,’’ TEACH ME.’’ Teach what? A sense of realisation of what she was meant made my tears dropped. Could you imagine a girl that was small and knew nothing would demand for education? I was astound by the eagerness of this girl to change her life. She was the first person in there that I saw hope within. Her determination made me feeling that there would be a huge change if everyone was just like this girl. Sara was my first student in Africa even though I was a nurse. I thought her alphabets, numbers, simple verbs and mostly moral values. When I was about to leave, I received a letter from Sara. It was a letter with some illegible words and drawings. She said I made her life different. For the first time, I felt the sense of honor and like I won a lottery.

This was the incident that i would remember in the rest of my life for Sarah and the people there had totally changed my point of view towards everything in my life.