Aysha
Bin Said
UNRWA Field Nursing Officer, Gaza

"I am a Bedouin, and my family originally came to Gaza from Beersheba in 1948. I have four sisters and three brothers, and I was only one year old then. My father was educated, and he was working as a veterinary doctor, so we were not like the nomadic Bedouins who were moving from one place to another. But originally we are Bedouins, and I am proud of that. They are generous people. When you visit them they offer you something. They receive guests in a friendly way. Our culture has partly disappeared now, but I like to have things from our tradition at home, to remind me: this is my culture.

In my childhood we lived very simply in a place with three rooms. My father was still working at that time with the authorities as a vet, so, compared to other refugees, our living conditions were a little better. We were not living in a refugee camp. We had a little piece of land and built our own house in a rural area in the centre of the Gaza Strip. I still live there with my mother. One of my brothers fought in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He went to Jordan and from there to Lebanon and Syria, and may have died there. We do not know what happened to him. The youngest one is living in Vienna with his wife. My sisters are all married, and I am living alone with my mother.

UNRWA paid for my education. I had a scholarship and studied 3 years basic nursing in Jerusalem. Since 1975, I have been employed by UNRWA.

I did not marry. I am always thinking of this as my fate, and as God's will. In my family they don't oblige anybody to marry, they discuss the matter with you. You are free to say yes or no. But again, it is my fate, and I am thinking all the time of studying and working. And then there was the family's circumstances. My father was educated, and he wanted his daughters and his sons to have an education. My brothers and sisters were studying at that time and I thought I had some [financial] responsibility to my father. I am the eldest one.

I am pleased with my life now. I have settled down and I have my mother, who is an old lady, and I have a happy life at home with good relatives. We are living in our own area; we own this land and the house.

In 1984, I was selected as the Field Nursing Officer in Gaza. If I compare how UNRWA's health care differs today from the time I joined the Agency in 1975, there is a big difference. The health situation in Gaza in the 1970s was similar to other developing countries, and the leading causes of illness were diarrhoea, gastric diseases and malnutrition. We had only eight health centres in the eight refugee camps, and one health centre in Gaza city. We had a TB hospital with 210 beds in Bureij camp, which worked in coordination with the government at that time. We also had a pediatric ward with 15 beds, and a small unit for premature babies, and I started working there. We had a nutrition centre in each health centre, and mothers were given health education. This situation continued up until the early 80s.

The TB hospital has since closed. There are only a few TB cases now, and they go to a government hospital. The pediatric ward has been closed because we don't have large numbers of children with problems like malnutrition. We have a small number of cases in summer, and they go to hospital."

Excerpts from an interview by Else Lidegaard (Danish Refugee Council technical expert)