Their First Steam Roller | Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs

We lived in a nice stone house here in Selemiye on the edge of the Syrian Desert. The roads were unpaved and when it rained, the mud was terrible.

Our team was one of the Hadfield-Spears Mobile Clinics of Syria, run by the British Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU). Our team consisted of:

Dr. Saleman, a Jebel Druz Arab Physician trained at the American University of Beirut Medical School;

Bahjat, our Arab Interpreter, Corporal in the British Army, a British Citizen because he had been born in the British Embassy where his parents lived and worked;

One or two health workers, members of the British FAU; and

Three or four AFS Volunteer Drivers in training, like myself, with our ambulances.

Our assignment was to bring mobile medical clinics to the Arabs living in nearby villages and to the Bedouins living in goat hair tents in the Syrian/Iraqi Desert, to treat them (especially for malaria) and to vaccinate them against Smallpox. I learned to speak some Arabic and learned about the culture. We had some extraordinary experiences!

Location: Selemiye, Syria.