Ambulance...

This morning as I was trying to get the cobwebs out of my head while lounging in bed at 7:30 am (I really do like the looser schedule of the summer...) when there was a timid knock on my bedroom door. Since none of my kids ever knocks, they just barrel in, I knew it was Ice. I told her to come on in. She was a little embarrassed but I assured her it was no big deal. She proceeded to ask me if I could take her dad to the hospital as he was having trouble breathing. I said sure, but I need to have a quick shower first. In retrospect I probably should have gotten a little more information from her regarding his condition... Anyways, I showered as quickly as I could and called a friend to come and have breakfast with the kids and made my way to Ice's house. Unfortunately I couldn't drive very close to their house. They live in a kind of a valley and you have to walk down a path which goes over a creek to get to their house. I looked in the front door and saw what appeared to be a body covered with a blanket. I watched it closely to see if there was any movement and when I saw none I had a moment of panic that I was too late and that I shouldn't have been so vain regarding my personal grooming... But then I saw Ice and she laughed at me and said that her brother in law was just cold so he wrapped himself up like that... Whew... As it turned out, Ice's sister Elina and Ice's husband came along with me. Ice's husband is afraid of me. Ice says he grew up in a village and isn't used to white people. He refused to sit in the front with me. "He's scared," Elina informed me. So she sat in the front and off we went sent off by a small crowd. Evidently Ice's dad, Mitre, is an important man in this area. I feel so bad for these folks. The government built a new hospital intended for the Papuans, particularly those coming from interior for medical care. Previously everyone went to the government hospital in Jayapura or sometimes the hospital in Abe. There is a better hospital in Waena, closer by, but it is a private Catholic hospital and therefore more expensive and they don't accept the government insurance cards. Anyways, back to this new hospital; it's way out of town so anyone who wants to go there has to take transportation quite far. And the taxis stop all the time to let people off and take new people on so a 15 minute trip can turn into a 45 minute trip and when you are sick.... So they asked me for help. It took us only 15 minutes to get there and I told them to call me when they were done. Four hours later they were done. Pak Mitre had been checked and told to spit into two different sample bottles and then bring them back the next day to be checked by the lab. (It sounds to my untrained ear that he has something like emphysema.)
Here's the other thing, there isn't ambulance service here like back in Canada. People don't just call up an ambulance to take them to the hospital. I think it is very expensive. From what I've seen, ambulances are used to bring people from one hospital to another if they cannot receive adequate treatment in the first hospital. They are also used to carry dead bodies. According to Ice the ambulance drivers are often drunk... hmmm.... Never, ever take our Canadian medical system for granted people!!!