Comptez vos benedictions

What's with the comptez vos benedictions??? Well, it simply means "count your blessings" in French. As i'm currently undertaking the Travel Medicine selective and supposed to research on Refugee Health, I thought it would have been beneficial to visit an actual refugee settlement. All this was possible thanks to Sheena who offered us a chance to join her in helping out refugees at a refugee settlement. Great stuff.

What is a refugee? AS UNHCR defines it : A refugee is a person who, owning to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Pretty long and complicated innit?

As explained, refugees live rather crazy lives. The conditions at the settlement that we went to were deplorable. People there had to sleep on wooden planks and some only had a plastic sheet over their head as a source of shelter from the heat and rain. They make do with what ever they have and it was pretty cool to see a home-made table-tennis table right smack in the middle of the settlement. Cool stuff. What ever it is, it makes me feel thankful to God that i have a rather blessed life although i may not be some tycoon though my brain gets carried away at times. Well dreams can become reality. Only God knows what will happen. :P

The Ping-Pong Arena


Contrary to what we think about refugees, some of the refugees we met were particularly well educated people with tertiary education as well. According to the lad who showed us around the settlement, he was actually studying in university when he had no choice but to run from his native country due to some political problems in his homeland. Gotta admit that he didn't speak 'England' as we would have thought but rather pretty good English which definitely outdoes any ah beng or ah lien you meet in KL. It's also insane that he travelled by land all the way from his homeland in Myannmar all the way to Malaysia. Crazy nut! I guess when people are desperate, they do physiologically crazy things. Physiological as in with common sense and not like in Jackass where people intentionally do sick stuff.

Dispensing medication to the folks at the settlement was cool as well. Sorta refreshes my memory on the drugs that we've studied. Learning a bit more on short forms for drug names was also great. The only thing that sucked was the doc's hand writting. For crying out loud, i hope she learns to write clearly. No wonder nurses complain about docs. Guess i can't blame them now. :P. At the same time, i think i should also shut my mouth cos my hand writting is getting from bad to worse now. Probably suffering from the first stage of 'Doc's handwritting syndrome - DHS' now. :P Back to reality then...

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