Kosrae

Kosrae is one of the four states, and 607 islands, that make up the country of the Federal States of Micronesia. The four states, from east to west, are: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae. Kosrae is the only state that consists of a single island. Each state is represented as a white star on the country’s flag (see the drawing in my video (top right)) and Pohnpei contains the largest island and the country’s capital Palikir. Incredibly, the country has a very small landmass but covers an area larger than the United States of America (!).

Many people, like myself when I first found out I was going to Kosrae, had some questions about the island. Hopefully I’ve tried to answer them here but if you have any others, feel free to leave a comment or be in touch!

Where is it?

Simple answer: in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In the realm of places like Fiji and Tonga but further north than this.

Fancy answer: within the region of Micronesia in western Oceania, on the archipelago of the Caroline Islands. 3000 miles southwest of Hawaii, 2000 miles northeast of Australia.

Super fancy answer: Latitude 5^oN, Longitude 163^oE.

How big is it?

Area: 43 square miles

How big is that?

To try and help explain this one, here are some comparisons:

• A third of the Isle of White
• Just a bit less than the size of Jersey, UK
• The area within the M25 is 2,600 square miles (43 square miles = 1.7% of this)
• The whole Pacific Ocean is 63 MILLION square miles. 43 is a mere speck!
• Same size as the city of Liverpool (which is a fantastic city I must add. Having lived there for 4 years, I must highly recommend it to anyone who’s never been. And nowhere else in the country will you find people with more passion for football.)

How many people live there?

7600 (approximately)

What language do they speak?

English is the official language but there are lots of native languages such as Kosraean. ‘Good morning’ in Kosraean is ‘Lotu wo’, and ‘thank you’ is ‘Kulo’.

Do they have a special currency?

Nope. Having been previously owned by USA, they continue to use the US Dollar.

In fact, I get the impression that the country is fairly American-ised. For example, the electricity is also US standard.

How warm is it?

Pretty tropical. It’s just north of the Equator and so temperatures are regularly 28-30^oC during the day and don’t drop all that much at night time. It’s also really humid.

Is it at risk of wipeout by hurricanes/tornados like Vanuatu unfortunately suffered from earlier this year?

Fortunately not. Kosrae is a lot further north than Vanuatu and is out of the high risk typhoon belt.

What’s the deal with the hospital?

There is one hospital that serves the population of the island - The Kosrae State Hospital. There is one hospital per state in Micronesia but, unlike all the rest, Kosrae’s hospital just serves their one island. Of course, there will be a lot more I can tell you about the hospital once I arrive but I’m told it serves all the major specialities: medicine, pediatric, surgery, and OBGYN as well as public health. Plus, there is a travelling community service that goes out to do school health programs, community clinics, and surveillance. The hospital has around 35 beds and is located in the region of Tofol near to the administrative hub of the island along with the library, tourist centre, banks, major high school.

You’ll see that Kosrae is split into four regions and is actually 2 islands – there’s the extra Lelu island to the east, but it’s connected to the mainland by a road on the thin strip of land that isn’t shown on this diagram.

So this will be home for 5 weeks of the summer. I couldn’t have wished for somewhere that ticked more boxes for what I wanted out of an elective destination. I feel incredibly lucky…if not a little scared of the enormity of the adventure!

The message in an (electronic) bottle

I got a ‘yes’ email!

After writing to all of the following countries and their hospitals (x)…..

Solomon Island (9)

Tonga (2)

Cook Islands (3)

Vanuatu (6)

Micronesia (4)

….I finally got a) a response and b) something that wasn’t “sorry, we’re fully booked”!

Most places sadly didn’t get back to me when I wrote to ask if I could visit their hospital to do my elective. One wonders how up-to-date the contact email addresses are for these places and also how reliable their internet access is – I’d been told to expect slow responses and the likelihood to have to email several times to get a response. And then the ones that did respond were fully booked for the popular summer elective season (this isn’t surprising if they’re the only few who actually respond to people).

But, after 4 months of writing to hospitals and extending my search to more and more countries in the Pacific, one little hospital wrote to me with the following message within 24 hours (!) of me being in touch:

“Greetings to you from Kosrae, Island of the Sleeping Lady.  Hope you had enjoyed your holiday festivities with families and friends.

I am pleased that you indicated your interest to do your elective in Kosrae, Micronesia on the dates provided.  Hence, I hereby endorse your request if you do decide to come to Kosrae for your elective. ………..please let me know how I can be of further assistance and I will work with my staff to sort other details  that you may need prior to come to Kosrae………..thank you for your consideration to come to Kosrae, Micronesia……..I look forward to see you.”

Woohoo! A yes email! January 11^th 2015. It was suddenly a good day. 

I’d woken up, checked my emails in bed on my phone in desperate hope of some sort of a reply (it was getting a bit tight to uni deadlines for finding a place to do your elective) and seen, bleary eyed, that they’d written back. It certainly needed reading a good few times during the day just to check I’d not misinterpreted the message and I must admit, not much Upper GI surgery (my placement at the time) went into my head that morning. 

My mission for the rest of the week was to find out as much as I could about a tiny island called Kosrae....