The Butcher And The Woman
An unexpected conversation - oh yeah, I'm back
Where have I been?
Exam’s finished last week - I am going to be resuming my weekly newsletters.
Hope you missed me.
The Butcher And The Woman
It was a regular day after a rotation at the hospital and I decided to go to the supermarket to get some groceries. In Cyprus, wearing scrubs out of the hospital is completely normal and because I think scrubs are up there in comfort with sweats and PJs, I have no reason to take them off. With that being said, I went to the supermarket with my scrubs on.
After getting some essentials, I decided to go to the butcher section to get some meat. I was second in line, in front of me was a woman with her kid next to her and a baby on a stroller. We had our distance between us, you know, the whole 2-meter shabang. Anyways, she and the butcher got into conversation and it was quite obvious that they knew each other and that this wasn’t their first encounter. It seemed like a friendly chat. The nosey person I am, Of course, I was eavesdropping; or I had no choice but to listen because they were in my vicinity.
The butcher asks: Have you had your vaccine?
Woman: Yeah, both.
Butcher: Which?
Woman: Pfizer, my company asked me to get it.
Butcher: Ah okay yeah they’re just trying to get us to pay them and they just want to control us
Woman: I agree with you, If it wasn’t for my job, I wouldn’t have gotten the jab. Anyways, have you gotten yours?
Butcher: Nahhhh, no need. There’s no need for me to
The woman at this point turns to her left and sees me standing there in scrubs. I assume she assumed I was a doctor (ha, jokes on her, I’m just a medical student). Once she made eye contact with me, you could tell her volume went down and the conversation moved on. Was she ashamed? possibly. Was she avoiding any possible conflict? possibly.
The woman left, the butcher came to tend to me and I’ve been served by him a few times before, lovely fella, nice and kind person. I got what I came for and moved on.
I don’t know why this conversation stuck with me, or why I felt the need to make it into a newsletter edition. However, I think there are some things to learn from this interaction.
Some people are against vaccinations but got them because they’d be jobless if they didn’t. It’s a win-win situation.
People who refuse to get vaccinations for whatever reason, be it a conspiracy or just no trust in the health system, are still humans. It’s easy to fall into the trap of they are weird people etc but that’s not the case, they are regular everyday people, with just a different belief from you. Albeit a kinda risky + dangerous belief. (There are some weird ones for sure out there).
Not all anti-vaxxers are the ‘bad’ ones. Not all spend hours on Facebook pushing propaganda that is against what science proves and they don’t try to persuade others. Others have just made a decision (again, albeit not the smartest one) and are just living with it. I want to say not harming anyone, but if we look at how herd immunity works - we can kinda say potentially harming others.
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🚶🏻♂️ About me:
My name is Habib and I am a final year Medical student currently in Cyprus. I grew up in Tanzania (Hakuna Matata is from the local language of my country and the second tallest mountain (Kilimanjaro) is found there).
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