exchanges
TO LEBANON WITH SCOPE Text: Haykel Karoui | University of Lausanne
My name is Haykel Karoui and during my 6th year of study in medical school, I went to Bei rut, thanks to swimsa and the IFMSA, to do a one-month internship in August 2021. There were 2 main reasons why I chose Beirut. The first is that I wanted to visit and discover an Arabic country which wasn’t part of the Ma ghreb. Indeed, having Tunisian origins, I wanted to explore the differences between cultures. The second reason is that I am fluent in Arabic, Engli sh and French, which are the 3 main languages spoken in the country, so I assumed that I would have no trouble being integrated there.
During this period, the situation of the coun try was and is still unstable and going through a major financial and political crisis. It is for this reason that most of the information I looked for before I left was about security issues and finan cial details, as for example, if it would be better to have dollars or euros, a card or cash. Even with all this preparation, I was taken by surprise when I got there. Queues of 8 to 9 hours to get gasoline at gas stations, days with access to electricity for only 5 to 6 hours making the daily lives of people living in this country difficult. Despite this, the local committee was really welcoming and did their best not to let the situation in the country affect our internship.
So, my advice to someone who would like to go to Beirut or any other country facing a huge eco nomic crisis is to be able to adapt to any situa tion. You must be prepared to always be flexi ble by accepting any transport you can get, have vegetarian meals every day because the meat is too expensive for the hospital, know when and where to charge your phone because you won’t be able to do it at home and live in a really hot I chose to go to the orthopedics and trauma de country without air conditioning. partment at the Hôtel Dieu de France hospital in Beirut, because they are recognized as one of the best in the Middle East for orthopedics and in order to see different cases of traumatology that I will probably not have the chance to observe in Switzerland.
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