I'm a bit of a klutz. It's a fact. It doesn't matter where in the world I am or the length of the trip--you can always count on me to need some sort of medical attention: in Kenya it was a sprained wrist; in Costa Rica it was intestinal parasites. And while those specific instances have rather dramatic stories to go along with serious diagnoses, it appears my laughable Palestinian incident--tripping over a street curb--will also have an incredible story.
On our way to the bank on Thursday, I stepped off the curb and rolled my ankle and fell hard onto the pavement, ripping a hole in my knee about the size of an egg. Luckily, this all happened in front of the juice shop so I was able to sit down. Our friend Iman was working and he was so sweet--he brought me ice for my knee and gave us strawberry banana smoothies (I think it's safe to say that if this same event had occurred in front of a Starbucks in the US, I would have been lucky to even get a band aid). Normally, it's haram (culturally unacceptable) for a woman to show anything above mid-calf in public, but it seemed more important at the time to get my knee cleaned and banadaged there on the street corner in the open than respect cultural norms. We fixed it up and I hobbled back to the Center.
We left that night to go to Ramallah and Jerusalem for the weekend and travel didn't go so well for my knee--it was oozing and swelling a lot and band aids either stuck too well as to be painful or fell off quickly. I had trouble sleeping the first night because of the stinging. But when we go to Jerusalem, we stopped to have tea in a market stall with a six-fingered Beduoin farmer named Zayid. While telling us about his father who had owned the stall before him and his vegetable farm, Zayid noticed my poorly-treated knee.
"What is your problem?" he asked me.
I told him I had fallen the day before and he ushered me over to his desk, where he procured a tupperware of homemade antibiotic cream and a white bandage. He carefully peeled the band aids off my knee and spread the new ointment on there* and then wrapped my knee in the bandage. For the first time since the day before, it wasn't throbbing or stinging.
I thanked him extensively and promised to return the next day (I hoped to find something to buy from his shop). Myself and the team walked up, down, and around the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem that night and I slept like a baby on the roof of the hostel, all without being bothered by my knee. The next day though, Zayid did not return to his stall in time for us to visit him again so I hope I get another chance to visit Jerusalem before we leave to attempt to repay yet another generosity bestowed on me in this amazing place.
-Jackie
66% of photos by Andrea Patiño
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*Students of the World in no way encourages students to seek unlicensed medical attention. Accepting this guy's help was my own decision.
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