Michelle Bowman, ARC/GNY Assistant Director of Training and Logistics, writes about her historic trip to Israel to work as an MDA Ambulance Responder.

Everyone told me to expect ups and downs in my volunteer ambulance experience. Unfortunately, the second day brought my first "down” and a wealth of frustration.

I arrived at the MDA station as normal around 6:30am and I was quickly placed on an ambulance. Because MDA does not know which volunteers will show up on any given day, the scheduling is somewhat haphazard. A scheduler places volunteers with a driver in the morning before the 7am shift starts. However, because drivers start getting calls at 7am (or a little bit earlier if the night shift is tired), the transition can sometimes be slightly hectic. Therefore, around 6:55am I was told that my ambulance was leaving immediately; I ran outside and hopped on as the driver left the gates.

In the morning we had two calls that seemed fairly unremarkable. First, we took an elderly woman who wasn't feeling well to the hospital. Then, we stopped at a car accident. When I heard that Israel has a lot of car accidents, I initially expected blood and guts. However, I quickly discovered that thanks to the wonder of seatbelts very few people are severely hurt in car accidents. The couple we stopped by to help had run off the road, and they were both fine. In fact, nobody wanted to go to the hospital so we had the couple sign a release and we headed back to the station around 10:30am.

At the station I went upstairs to grab a quick snack, and then sat back to wait. I listened intently for my driver"s name and read a book at the picnic table near the exit. I heard numerous announcements, and I was almost certain that my driver’s name had not been called, but suddenly I saw the other people in my ambulance heading for the door. Slightly confused, I followed and asked what was happening. “We’re leaving,” I was told as they hopped in. “Should I come?” I asked, not knowing at this point if I was supposed to join them. The answer never came and before I knew what had happened, they were gone.

Slightly bewildered, I wandered back into the MDA station. Worst case scenario, I had missed a call. (Sarah, our teacher, warned us that everyone would miss a call at some point and said that we shouldn’t be too discouraged when this happened.) However, I quickly noticed that something odd was occurring in the station. Suddenly, it appeared that all the ambulances were gone. Then I noticed that the few remaining medics were crowded around the TV, which showed odd scenes of a battle between civilians and soldiers in a desert. I had no idea what was going on.

Finally, one of the English-speaking volunteers I had worked with the day before came to me and asked, “Why didn’t you go out with an ambulance; they were calling all the volunteers”. I was flabbergasted. I had no way of knowing they were calling all volunteers; I did not understand the muffled announcement in Hebrew and nobody asked me to go.

I quickly learned that the Israeli government was evacuating Armona, one of its settlements in the West Bank, and the evacuation had unexpectedly turned violent. As a result, all of the available ambulances had been called to evacuate injured soldiers and settlers from the Green Line (the line between the West Bank and the rest of Israel) to Jerusalem hospitals. For the rest of the day, I sat in the empty station, knowing that I was missing an incredible opportunity to gain some priceless experiences.

Alas, I was right. Francis and Kathryn came back with incredible stories of transporting multiple injured soldiers in one ambulance, or evacuating people from still running helicopters. I unfortunately spent the rest of the afternoon watching the scene on TV, hoping that my ambulance would come back. By 3pm, when my ambulance still had not returned and I had officially missed all the excitement, I walked home. That night, I watched somewhat bitterly as CNN recounted the event over and over again. I had developed a renewed desire to learn Hebrew as quickly as possible in order to avoid future mishaps. Moreover, I decided that in order to make the most of this experience, I was going to have to be much more aggressive.

Thursday was a much less eventful day; I had a few calls, but there was no repeat of Armona. I also felt encouraged that I was capable of doing my job, in spite of my limited Hebrew skills. Although the fact that the week had only been three days long, I was exhausted. I was also cold. Jerusalem is significantly warmer than a New York winter, but it was still cold enough that we were freezing in our jeans and our thin MDA sweatshirts. Therefore, around 2pm on Thursday we decided that this weekend would be the perfect time to take a trip down south—we were going to the resort town of Eilat. Miraculously, Francis, Kathryn and I all finished work around 3pm (generally you have to work until your last call ends, whenever that may be) and walked over to the bus station. The next bus left at 5pm. After a few ups and quite a few downs, I was ready to start my first weekend. There is no better place to learn Hebrew than lying on the beach.

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