First week, first mission: Lankien, South Sudan
As I stepped off the
plane in South Sudan, in the middle of nowhere, on a continent I
had only seen as a tourist, I realised no amount of briefing,
videos, books, nor courses could prepare me for the tour I was
about to take. Seeing people live in absolute poverty, deprived of
human dignity, was something that slaps you in the face and makes
you wonder why you have ever complained. It is one thing to travel
and work and prepare yourself, but another to add the depressing
heat, the dust, the smell, the stress and simply the reality to
it.
Literally nothing
These people have literally
nothing, maybe a blanket stained with urine and diarrhoea from lost
children, a bucket and a spoon for the entire family, the kids play
with dirt and old batteries. During decades of war, nothing has
been considered ‘a right’, as we say in developed countries, not
food, water, education, nor healthcare. The project coordinator
took me on a tour and while my Médecins Sans Frontières colleagues
were greeting and smiling and coping, I was fighting back a big
lump in my throat, struggling to comprehend the tragedy of it,
clenching my teeth to get over it and toughen up.
Extremely susceptible
After the tour, I went
down to the clinic to see if I could orientate myself, instead I
ended up resuscitating a dehydrated, unconscious 3 year old,
fumbling through protocols on a case we would be talking about for
weeks, back home on the ED. At first, it was hard to go to the
clinic everyday in a new t-shirt and skirt, when many siblings have
a pair of undies between them. The water pumps MSF built here are
busy day and night and most diseases are the result of a lack of
hygiene. These communities have not been vaccinated at all and
that, together with their malnourished status, makes them extremely
susceptible to epidemics.
Vital to survival
Initially, the clinic
seemed like total chaos, which was ‘band-aiding up’ a problem in
desperate need of an international outcry and a thousand times more
people and resources. But after a while, it appeared to be a huge
achievement considering ‘what was’ and for the people here,
absolutely vital to their survival. Once you’ve thrown
out a placenta in a dirty bin, assessed kids dying of measles, put
in an IV in a hot, dark, sweaty mud hut crowded by coughing TB
patients and asked a gun shot wound victim to wait ‘a few’ more
weeks for a plane, it’s pretty hard to complain about the hot
nights, the fly hole toilet and the lack of fresh food.
Still happy
Having said that, the people are
still laughing and the kids still enjoy playing with their rubbish.
I picked up a disabled, blind, 4 year old boy today by the arms and
swung him gently around, he seemed to be having the time of his
life. The kid we thought would never make it, did this time and the
woman who we couldn’t help, is still happy we were there.
Important work
It’s been a week now and I’ve
delivered and lost babies, learnt more than in 3 months back home
and I’ve even started running a cholera treatment unit. Although I
am tired, stressed and hot, it isn’t really possible to be
‘homesick’ because home seems like another planet and century. You
just realise this is the most important work you will ever do and
you should be thankful everyday that you have a safe home to go to
where your relatives and friends will grow old with you, where you
can learn and work without being hungry and where you can have
children who will grow up.
April 2007