I have been inspired to write this post by a group of AIDS patient with whom I have been working recently. They were telling me about the harsh consequences they have to go through on daily basis because they are not anonymous.
But why are you not anonymous, I asked naively?
And they took me on a journey of betrayal, lack of professionalism and a culture that simply does not know or understand the concept of confidentiality.
Their problem starts at the center where they need to go every month for treatment…… one of them and lets call him Mahmoud says that “we all learnt about each other there’s existence at the center, you go into the center and everyone sits together, doctors, visitors, patients, reporters… there are signs all over the place that show us where we should go…There is no anonymity, there is no confidentiality, there is no privacy…throughout the years we identified each other and became a group… what gathers us is our tragedy.”
They told me a story after a story of how hospital staffs, who are supposed to package professionalism and sell it in the market… are not professional ….oh boy, these guys have never even heard of the word! They would call them from the waiting room “AIDS come here!” or would write on their files AIDS all across in red, bold and underlined so that every single person who works with that file would know who they are! We should not forget that medical staff should take an oath of secrecy as a condition to get awarded their degrees!
They then explained how Jordan is a small place and everyone knows about everyone… they explained that … somehow the news reached their families, their landlords and their managers… all by accident! subhan Allah! these people whose skills vary often find themselves homeless and jobless…and struggling to work for living.
I started looking around me when I heard their stories… and it suddenly dawned on me that the concept of confidentiality simply does not exist in this culture… you go to any bank and the booths are so close to each other. They are only divided by a short what is referred to as (securite) wall. You would be explaining your problem and it won’t be surprising if the client sitting in the next booth will start giving their opinion.
You go to an administration office… This happens to me with the office I work with these days… the manager says every time we are there to his secretary please close the door and do not allow anyone to come in… and to her, it sounds like, please let anyone who asks come in! actually invite them…get them from the street and have them come in while we are in meeting!!!
At some point there was a money transaction that was supposed to take place… I had to write the manager a note asking him if he preferred to do this transaction confidentially… and he simply smiled… he was embarrassed… he wanted the transaction to be confidential, but could not ask the coffee drinkers to leave, because it is 3eib!
No resolution here… the different standards by which we live our lives still shock me… we are so much in love with our privacy… our homes are designed around privacy, yetwhen we are in a public domain, we don’t even know what that means… We are so clean in our homes, and the moment we step outside, our eyes don’t flinch when we throw garbage on the floor. We pretend to be religious in front of people and then when we are alone, we sneak out for a drink… we kill our womenfolk during the day for honor and then we go spend our nights with whores…
fascinating! truly is!
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