one of the many nice things that st jude's hospital offers is laundry service for its volunteers. one of the things that the hospital and voluntter organization does not offer is privacy in asking questions. the other morning at breakfast my blogmate asked one of the more seasoned volunteers if she thought there was a way in which she could drop off clothes to be washed but not dried. after being given a quizzical look, my good blogmate explained that she was worried about her clothes shrinking and fitting funny. the volunteer shrugged, and we assumed the conversation was over. leaving the breakfast table not ten minutes later, we ran into the manager of housekeeping for the entire hospital who asked in her beautiful soft accent, "which of you is the girl who wants her clothes washed but not dried? of course! you just have to ask, we would be more than happy to accomodate you." on returning to the dorm-type area to change into work clothes for the morning, some of the other volunteers shouted in their canadian accent, "hey! the housekeeping manager was just here. did one of you want your clothes washed but not dried?" and on getting to the laundry room a chorus of men broke from their conversation in patois with a loud "which of you is the girl who wants her clothes washed but not dried?"
so my blogmate is famous for her slight high-maintenance-ness. not that we're so vain about protecting our fabulous appearances. yesterday we each stumbled out of our rooms greeting each other with "hi. why does my forehead have pitting edema?" and "hi. how many red welts can i accumulate on my face and legs?"
so a fabulous glamorous start to our caribbean adventure may not be in the cards. but we console ourselves with another nice thing about st. jude's: you can buy beer directly from the hospital. when i first saw the back storage room where it is ordered, i thought for sure it was one of those side-job occupations that most people seem to have, like the surgical-tech-turned-mountain-guide, or the nurse-taxi-driver. but no, this is catholic-hospital-sanctioned beer. you proceed to the main business office and inform the admissions coordinator that you would like a case of piton (the local beer, brewed here in vieux fort). she opens the official business log and writes your name right along with people coming for lab work and outpatient appointments and surgeries, then hands you a slip which you take to the back storage shed in exchange for discount piton.
we're learning cultural and medical things here too, but first things first...
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2 comments:
Culture, Carribean, ... beer? Where are the fufu mixed drinks?
an excellent question! i should clarify.
first and most cheaply, piton and other local, umm, alcohol-eries manufacture shandies, which are part-beer part-lemonade or ginger beer. kind of like hard lemonade. considered acceptable work-beer by consensus here. i think they have 1% alcohol, which seems less than cough syrup.
second, the fufu mixed drinks are available most closely at the reef, which is a dutch-run bar and grill near the local beach. banana milkshakes are excellent. other fun fruity drinks are there too, but that's the only one i've tried so far.
we haven't hit the resort-ey parts of the island yet; we've been mostly working. not that i'm complaining, since we can take call from the beach sometimes. i am sure more fufu drinks are to come this weekend when we're off. but we have learned one important point: there are two airports here, both so close to water that we are fairly sure that when mb and ck come to visit in april, we can have them from airplane landing to fufu drink in hand in 30 minutes or less.
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