In October 2018, I got the amazing opportunity to represent not only the British Virgin Islands but the Caribbean region at the World Family Medicine Conference in South Korea. The few days I spent in Korea were definitely a game changer but how I ended up there is just as much of a testimony.
In December 2017 I saw the advertisement for the upcoming World Family Medicine Conference. At this point October 2018 seemed like a world away and I wasn’t even sure when I would be or what I would be doing at that time. The opportunity was too good to pass up however, and I moved forward in faith. I brainstormed a small project that I could submit to the World Family Medicine conference that could easily be done online and represent the Caribbean at the conference. By January 2018 I had come up with a survey and with the help of some very good friends in the Caribbean, made useful contacts with several medical schools and started distributing the survey for the project. The project focused on the attitudes of medical students in the Caribbean on family medicine as a career. Similar projects had been done in various countries but there was no literature on the subject from the Caribbean. As the project progressed there were certain nuances in the students’ responses that were easily understood by someone familiar with Caribbean culture, but strange to anyone outside. I decided the best way to bring this data to life was to have a student from the Caribbean help me present the project. In February 2018 I asked all the students who had participated in the project to help me present the findings at the world family medicine conference in South Korea. The students all asked very sensible questions like how were we going to get there, who was going to pay for it and where were we going to stay. The truth is, I couldn’t even answer those questions for myself much less tagging a student along with me! Several firm “No”s later, one student had the audacity to believe in my crazy vision. Of course this student would also be from the BVI and happened to be my cousin, Joshua Wheatley.
Fast forward to that summer, I was working extra shifts and saving up money for our big adventure in Korea. Thankfully I was awarded the Montegut Scholarship which paid my way to South Korea and I used the extra money to bring Joshua. We set off from London already exhausted and we hadn’t practiced our presentation. The theme of our trip became “pressure makes diamonds” and we convinced ourselves it would work. Or at least we would make it work! We spent most of our 12 hr flight rehearsing our presentation and the remaining time in shock that we were actually going to be presenting in Korea. Our flight landed at around 8 am in Seoul and our presentation was at 1pm. To say we hit the ground running was an understatement. We went straight from the airport into a meeting for WONCA Polaris, the North American Young Doctors Movement. One of the concerns of Polaris is that the Caribbean region is getting left out/left behind and Polaris was struggling to help.
After the meeting, my purpose for this trip was reiterated, the Caribbean needs to have their voice heard. Josh and I rehearsed our presentation one last time and then allowed ourselves 10 minutes rest on the conference room floor. We were so tired that I was even falling asleep as our presentation was being announced but we had a mission! We presented our data, Joshua spoke on his experience as a medical student at St George’s University, Grenada and we succeeded and representing the voice of Caribbean medical students.
While at the conference we got to learn as much as share information. We attended a session on the experiences of being a black medical professional in Brazil and got to hear how different medical centres dealt with discrimination in the workplace. Joshua attended a session on disaster relief hosted by doctors who work in Puerto Rico after hurricane Irma. We learned about effective leadership and what plans need to be in place to bring about real change.
In addition to that, we were balling on a budget in Seoul! We tried a traditional Korean meal comprised of several foods that I could not readily identify, we visited a temple and brought ourselves good luck for the future. Joshua managed to make it to the top of Seoul Tower, we joined a sunrise run to the Olympic Stadium and managed to make a few friends along the way.
In the midst of the madness I was reminded of a conversation I had with my grandmother. She always ended every statement about plans for the next day with “tomorrow please God”. One day I asked her why she would keep saying that as if tomorrow wasn’t going to happen. I was promptly educated that tomorrow was not guaranteed and all you could do was move forward in faith and be thankful that God has given you another day. So here we were, two kids from Virgin Gorda pretending to be grown ups, sitting on the third floor of the World Trade Centre in Seoul, South Korea. It was a true testament that anything is possible if you set your mind on it or are at least willing to believe you would stand a chance. The honest truth is that up until September I hadn’t bought our flights to Korea, I didn’t have a hotel booked, all I had was our presentation on a USB stick and this belief that it was going to happen. And it all happened. Pressure definitely makes diamonds ^.^
