double vision

In Canada, unlike in Israel, we do two nights of seders.It's a bit much as the preparation for each night is intense and involves days of cooking and obsessing over the minute details so that each of our family members will leave our home with content bellies and full hearts. This year my mother and I prepared without an oven as the oven decided to throw a temper tantrum in the midst of a whirlwind cooking session prior to our passover prep. So rallying all our creative energies, my mom and I decended on our kitchen appliances with full force using crockpots, the barbeque, six stovetop burners going full tilt for days and an underoven heating cabinet. Every cooled crevice in our house was packed with delectable dishes, just waiting for the eve of passover.

We made osso bucco and leg of lamb and roast chicken and a giant turkey and sweet and sour meatballs (ground chicken), and fish ( just for me because I'm a pescitarian). There were a million side dishes of salads and vegetables and ratatouille and gefilte fish ( which I made with my grandfather as tradition dictates for us). My desserts were a hit as they were all gobbled up with the fresh fruit. I love cooking for passover from home as my family, immediate and extended, love to eat and it's such a pleasure watching family enjoy what i've made and I loved having everyone together.

Ultimately, in jewish tradition, celebrations with mad hatter style tables piled high bring families together. It's a little quirk of our culture that food draws the uncles and cousins together and there's a tricky little bit of pride in all the excess. We had so much that I felt terribly guilty and very aware of so many who have nothing. Today, my youngest brother and I will be going to deliver a couples bags of fresh food from the seders to one of the downtown shelters for native people in Toronto. It doesn't do much to alleviate the guilt of having but it's something.

argumentative bastards

I never quite understood the passover saga. It's clear to me that my people struggled for freedom and that's a common theme throughout the rise of civilization, but did we really have to go through the forty years of wandering in the desert before mistaking canaan for canada? I guess our idol worshipping, conflict ridden masses really needed to be desperate for water and manna before we could stop fighting amongst ourselves and actually recognize the land of milk and honey when we saw it.

Thinking about the relationship between the pharoah and moses though , I've always been struck by how easy it would have been for moses to bide his time until the pharoah's death, when as the favourite son he would have been appointed pharoah and king of the known world. Once pharoah he could have released the hebrew slaves and us hebrews could have taken over Egypt ourselves. It would have been a lot faster, sparing everyone the series of plagues and Egypt would have flourished. Who knows, maybe our brethren would have come up ancient egyptian hydroponics and made the desert bloom a little earlier.

But no, Moses was hankering for a good fight. He couldn't sit back while his people were whipped making bricks in mudpits mixed with straw. But why not diplomacy? Act as an internal "deliverer" quietly discombobulating the corrupt construction leaders until his time came to be pharoah, which wasn't far off. I don't think us hebrews have historically been very skilled at international diplomacy because it often involves subverting our tongues in favour of patience and progression.

Seriously though. We could have owned Egypt....

sum of course

I don't believe in jealousy as a concept, nor do I support it in practice. Especially, when it's spawned by the natural cycles of life. We live in ebbs and flows. Our experiences carry us just like waves carry frothy foam which rises and retreats from shore. One moment my life may be sweller than fresh guava juice and the next it may taste of briney sea salt. For me, it feels like the kicker is sticking in for the long haul because as long as good ethics are in place and I'm living according to the value set that I believe in, I'll make it through to the next plateau and maybe even scale a peak or two.

Life, to me, doesn't ever seem to be an easy binary division of good vs. bad. My career is on track and many opportunities have arisen to be somewhat of a changemaker in my field. Leading can be an experience filled with fear and anxiety and this I've experienced a hundred fold as I can't stand the thought of making mistakes. But, my approach has been to force myself to bypass hesitation and dive in giving weight to the trust that I should have in myself.

I'm in a tropical plateau with lush greenery around me in my mind, but nothing is perfect and everyone deals with difficulty of some sort.

This upcoming week, in the middle of passover, on a date for spring's fools, my father will be going for another medical procedure to follow up on the state of his severly blocked coronary arteries. I've arranged to be with my family during this time and the anxiety in my family home is palpable, but nothing nearly like what it would be if our family was broken or apart. In this role that I slip into of eldest daughter, I have to seal my lips and bury my personal fear so that I can summon the strength of granite to try and support my parents. We all lean on eachother, so none of us can collapse or we will fall hard and that's just not an option.

I would never wish for someone else's lot in life because there's no such thing as a perfectly smooth and easy life. I would rather take the reigns and create whatever goodness that I can with my own hands in the dark moist soil of life. We all have the ability in us to hold on until we
can regain our footing and propel forward again into the flow of life's nectar.

mefloquine hell

So I could only get mefloquine in tel aviv to use as malarial prophylactic and it has major side effects. The other day I took my second dose, as it's a once a week dosage, and almost immediately I was thrown into 24 hours of violent vomiting, nausea, dizziness, headache, and fatigue. When I finally stopped throwing up, I broke out in a rash all over my face and eyes and lips. It looks like I have chicken pox.

I know I should have taken doxycycline which is a better choice but it's not covered in my health basket back in Israel, so I would have paid much more for it. Still knowing that I have such a strong reaction to most medications, I should have been more careful. Hopefully I'll feel better soon and my face will calm down. I'm glad I don't have a mirror here.

phew

I know I said I'd be posting on another blog and I did set it up but haven't written anything yet. Our experience has been far too overwhelming and I've been far too busy and removed by reliable internet access. Right now I'm working at a field hospital in the emerg tent, but tommorow morning I'm designated to the internal medicine tent which is more my background.

Earlier today we drove up to one of the orphanages around ground zero near port au prince and treated some of the kids who have had zero access to basic health care. The clinic room consisted of a 60 year old cot and a dental chair. There was sewage running freely through the pathways in the orphanage compound. I'll write more about this later but I think these orphanages are the reason why I ended up volunteering here. I'm going to start up a project in tandem with some other NGO's to bring a mobile medical team for one week per month to 40 orphanages in the area who have no medical care for their children. Without it or any health education these orphanages end up with epidemics of typhus and cholera that are easily preventable forms of suffering. I think I'm supposed to do something about it. Actually, I don't think anyone could not do anything about it.

Working in the emerg tent has been stressful for me tonight as we had some major intakes; shootings with intestines leaking from the abdominal cavity, a full cervical fracture, crushed skull, a hefty ton of malaria cases and etc... The stress was just because it's been a while since I've done emergency rotations. Generally most of these cases require some out of the box thinking to make up for lack of resources. The IDF field hospital is gone and with it all the high tech equipment.

Today most of Haiti was fasting because some Israeli woman told the Haitian president before the earthquake that there was going to be a disaster if they didn't fast and cancel the Carnival. So, when the earthquake happened, the president ordered that the whole country fast and pray to make up for not heeding the warning of the Israeli woman.

So much to say but I'm too tired to write this and I have to go back to see if there are new patients in emerg. I'll be back here writing again when I get my next burst of written energy, because at this point inspiration doesn't provide me with enough energy to type. My tent and sleeping bag are looking awfully good right now :-)

still safe and sound

I haven't disappeared but will be posting shortly to a new blog just dedicated to Haiti for a bit. I'll paste the link here so you can visit me there until I get back to the holy land. It'll start up shortly. See you soon on bloggy 2...

Obama girl?

so the famous bikini clad Obama girl, who sung about her crush on Obama and went viral on Youtube as she garnered huge support for him during the presidential campaign, has now stated that she's fallen out of love with him. Obama girl set a press conference to complain about how Obama has focused too much on reforming health care in the U.S. and she doesn't understand why and thinks it's pointless when money could have instead been diverted to strengthening the american economy...shoppers unite! Sorry, but what a dumbass. Anyone who voted for Obama because of Obamagirl deserves to be led by Crusty the clown.