Whenever I’m in a new place, I consider it a sign of a certain level of belonging when I am able to give someone directions. It means both that I know where something is as well as that my face no longer looks timidly confused as I make my way to a destination. Well three people have asked me for directions in the last week and I was able to successfully help them all- winning!

But as much as I feel like after 7 weeks I can get myself from point A to point B, eat nsima without making a total mess, and know a decent price for chitenjis at the market, I know there will always be an element of not belonging completely— even if I were to stay for decades. I have been reflecting on those things that would still hold me outside of complete assimilation.

I’ve thought a lot about this idea of never fully being a part of a place in regards to culture- perhaps an idea for another blog post. In this one I want to discuss what happens at the end of the day. Every night I come home from the hospital, drink my boiled/bottled water, take my malaria prophylaxis, and tuck myself into a cocoon of a mosquito net— I have become increasingly aware of the safety net I live in.

Granted, the car I am riding in could crash or someone could decide my purse was in need of a violent change of ownership. This is not to say that life is perfectly safe here (or anywhere). However, there are many small precautions that my education, and frankly my money allow me to take. Beyond these precautions, there is a safety net that would appear should I, or one of the other interns, get seriously ill.

The 2015 Ebola outbreak illustrates my point well. According to a New York Times article, across six West African countries it was estimated that the mortality rate of those diagnosed with Ebola was 40%. In Guinea specifically as many as 66% of those diagnosed died. However, when looking only at the foreigners who contracted Ebola, the mortality rate more than halved, dropping down to only 20%. These foreigners were stabilized and transported back to their own countries- to hospitals where patients don’t die waiting for an ICU bed, medications are consistently in stock, and the standard is to give blood transfusions when hemoglobin is below 10g/dL rather than when it gets down to 4g/dL.

Growing up in the US has given me a mosquito net where I can be in “dangerous” places but be shielded to a large degree. This safety net is no secret, in fact those of us who are lucky enough to have it are probably less aware of it than anyone. The question is what message does this send? Will there always be some sort of unspoken barrier between us knowing that when put in the same circumstances the outcomes can be so dramatically different?

This is complicated, because we can’t say no one should be med-evacuated, or that the people who are evacuated think that they are better than the people they are leaving behind. The safety net isn’t inherently “bad” but it does make a distinction, and, perhaps one could go as far as to say it implies, whether one believes it or not, that some lives are more important than others. This idea of the value of an individual life has been in the news a lot recently, and perhaps there are many overlaps with the issues we are wrestling with in our own country. I want to narrow this idea to specifically working abroad- are we both aware of and ok with the implicit messages we are sending as we live and work from underneath a mosquito net?