My wonderful MDA experience - Helen Abrams, Liverpool, England
I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I applied to spend
my summer volunteering for Magen David Adom (MDA), I think I just thought
whatever happened it would be and amazing experience that I wouldn't forget,
and I was right. It was an amazing experience on many different levels.
Training was very intense, before I arrived I
was very worried about being in Jerusalem for the training, I wasn't sure I’d
be or feel safe, but once I arrived that all flew out of my head and I was glad
to be in Jerusalem.
Training was intense but there was a nice
atmosphere, to all be sitting up late at night together trying to learn the
notes for the exam the next morning, obviously we were not in the pub or the
nargilla bar at all!!!!
We all bonded very much over the training,
specially the girls as we were all placed in the one bedroom together, so were
together 24hours a day and got very close, which was very difficult when the
time came to split up to go to the MDA stations. The main reason was that the
girls were all split up. Thank goodness for cellephones!!!
As part of the large group who went to Haifa, I
can say its good to be in a group as you have the people to share the
experiences with, but also if you want to be on your own occasionally and get a
break from the group its not a problem. I often needed to be away from being in
the group for a while, and this was never a problem which brings me on to the
absorption center which we lived in, because it was just so friendly. Its name
is “Abba Hushi” and it was for students only or
volunteers and we all made so many friends from so many places. plus the free Internet for two hours every night increased
our ability to act like Israelis! it opened at 8pm and from 7.30pm there was normally a group of
people waiting, so you had to be able to push your way through when the door
opened and get to the front of the group!
MDA Haifa was very friendly,
there was always many people around, loads of mad Israeli school kids
volunteering, who often kept us entertained! And bat sherut girls. Plus in
Haifa the drivers are very friendly and it seems the majority of which seemed
to be young, around our ages as we were quite an old group, so we found it very
easy to get on with them also, the older driver also were just as friendly.
I was very nervous about my first day on the
ambulance, but as it happened my first day on the ambulance was at the Maccabi games football, England Vs south Africa (turned out
I knew somebody in the English team!). So we didn't really have much to do,
although it got me used to being on the ambulance and familiar with where to
find things on the ambulance.
When
I did go out on a real call my first was not such a great one to start with. It
was a road accident, where the victim died, and it was not nice. The son of the
victim was the most moving part as he was around our age, and was only visiting
his father from Russia and spoke
no Hebrew (or English). He had been crossing the road to put rubbish in the bin
from the picnic they had been having, when the father saw the car about to hit
the boy and ran out to push him out of the way, and got hit himself. The boy as
you can imagine was in a terrible state, we had to carry him down, and eventually
took the two men from in the car, on backboards to the hospital. There were
certain things that amazed me about this scene, that I
learnt to be quite normal within Israel. For example- by the time we arrived at the
scene there were already passerby’s doing CPR on the victim, directing the
traffic away and comforting the boy, which would never
have been done in England, and in the
USA they would
have been too scared to have been sued! Plus once on the way to the hospital
both patients on backboards spent the whole journey on their mobile phones and
also once in the hospital!!!! Never would happen anywhere but Israel...
After this call I went on to have many different
calls ranging from a murder scene, a fight, a funeral, an overdose, and
woman stuck in a public toilet!!! There were many CVA'S and heart attacks that
we were called to and many old people needing a
taxi to or from the hospital!!! We also unfortunately had hoax calls.
Along with all this we went
with ambulances to some fun places, like many concerts that were happening in
our area. I went to one open air
festival in a park up on the Carmel, where
there were all families sat out listening to the music, it was really
nice. Also some people went to the Shlomo Arsti concert and Sarit Haddad, plus we went to the tennis, swimming and
football of the maccabi games. I even got to go to the final of the football
and the closing ceremonies.
Two of the boys in our group also got to go to a
very emotional birth, in which they said they were crying also, and they were
so glad not to be female!!!
I think I had the most amazing time being able
to help people, although I wasn't able to help as much as I would like, which
is why, I would not hesitate to have my name on the list of the 88 hours cours that they plan on doing in the summer. I think its the best thing to be able to feel like your helping and
to actually help
Helen Abrams
Liverpool, England
Haifa MDA
