A great couple of last days at the WONCA Rural Family Doctors conference. Got to meet some great and inspiring people from around the globe doing all kinds of great things and working in rural areas for their community. Privileged to share my passion for and work around remote communities at two presentations on the last day. Was also exciting to be in a presentation by a Canadian professor presenting on the Rural Road Map for Canada which is a national policy document to have her tell me that my Churchill fellowship was really helpful and a great piece of work that informed the work they did. In my session one of the speakers was a scientist from Ukraine who had fled the war but the hosting University had invited her in to continue her research and invited her to present at the conference even though it didn’t really fit the theme but did it to support her. She talked about the hope she and her colleagues still had and the gratitude she had for her receiving country taking in her in after fleeing war. It was quite emotional and I was struggling to hold back the tears before I had to get up and speak!

I had big plans to hire a car after the conference and get around and do some car camping. But just before I left I lost my drivers licence. I naively believed that having government documents showing I had a licence and a photo of back and front would be enough. After not getting an answer about this from the car hire company ( thanks Enterprise…) I decided to take a small break from the conference and walk into town to the office. Turns out no car hire companies accept anything except the physical licence. Fair enough. I was super bummed but then realised no point being upset about something I can’t change and may be for a reason – so plan B it is. Town was mostly pretty and interesting with old stone churches and castles but there were also the signs of social disadvantage that come with bigger cities. There seemed to be a lot of gambling establishments appropriately named Ladbroke…. I also noticed a lot of young Ukrainians walking through the streets or busking – I assume they are refugees. Ireland seems to have done a really good job of taking in Ukrainian refugees and I came across them working in hostels as well as hearing them in the streets and meeting them at the University.