Anne's blog travel 06-07

Wednesday, December 13th 2006

Ahmed, my Iraqi friend, stops by at the help desk last Sunday to say hi. I haven't seen him around for a few days and ask him about it. He tells me he had to be taken by ambulance the other day because he had chest pains and now is scheduled to have surgery in the next few days. However yesterday Lorraine sends this information with the briefing notes:

Ahmed from Site Management is expected to undergo open-heart surgery next month. For some reason his operation has been delayed, so if you see him in the venue smoking and eating pizza, please hit him over the head!

This man is so full of life and colorful and now I worry about him and his crazy ways.
I hope to see him again before we finish.

Yesterday, Shibu picks me up at 8:30am from work and to drive me to go and get the immunisation I want to have done for Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Online they recommend Thyphoid, Hep A, Hep B, protection against Malaria, rabies, Japanese encephelitis and all the normal immunisation. I'm not too worried about Malaria as it's not the season. After asking the Venue medical people several times I'm refered to Hamad Hospital Emergency to have this done. So, as it's quiet in the work room yesterday morning and before it picks up Shibu drives me to Hamad Hospital. I'm happy there are no lines on the women's side but I can see there are massive waiting lines on the men's side. When I ask the nurse about it she tells me it's all the workers wanting sick leave. They are the ones I was refering to working in construction coming here to work long hours for almost nothing. The nurse tells me that they are all fine.

My temperature is taken, my blood pressure, my pulse. I wait and talk to a few nurses and told to wait in the room and after about 45 minutes I'm told I cannot get Immunisation at Hamad Hospital because they don't have the facilities. So they send me to Al-Dafna Polyclinic and Shibu takes me there and of course, people there explain where else we must go to have this done. This third place in a health Organisation and while I'm waiting I'm lucky to meet a westerner who tells me it took him 6 hours to find the place to get immunised but he gives me directions and rather than waiting Shibu and I are off to the fourth location. By this time I gather we'll get to that place by 10:30am and I will have saved 4 hours compared to the man who gave me directions. Of course the directions are all wrong but Shibu has contacts and before long he has found the location.

When I get there, I'm told that I'll have to go back to the third location to get malaria tablets and possibly some forms. But, the joke has lasted long enough and I won't worry about malaria. "Just give me what you have" I beg. So, I get a Thyphoid shot and the first shot for Hep B which must be followed up in a month and then six. They have nothing else. I give up on the rest. This will have to do. It's then I realise that my time here has been charmed in a way as I haven't had to deal with this type of innefficiency since I've been here but it seems very real. Little things can take a lot of time. Shibu and I manage to get back to the MPC by 11am but what a morning it has been. I've seen a bit of Doha at least.

Only a couple of competition days to go.
Bye for now