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Working in Sudan for Samaritan's Purse
As written by Allen Lewis, EMT-P
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I recently finished a three month contract as a Paramedic in southern Sudan.
Sudan is located below Egypt, above Kenya and is the largest country in Africa.
Sudan has been in a state of civil war since 1981 when the predominately Arab
Moslem northern government in Khartoum began fighting the Christian/Animistic
blacks in the south. Casualties have been estimated at over 2 million, and
the slave trade is still active in parts of Sudan.
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I was hired by Samaritan's Purse, a Christian NGO based in Boone, NC to
work in the De-Mobilized Child Soldier Camp at Maleng Agok, Sudan. Samaritan's
Purse contacted me when I sent them my resume after learning about SP from
their web site.
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We were given 350 boys who were former SPLA (Sudan Peoples Liberation Army)
soldiers and had been de-mobilized and turned over to the UN. There were an
estimated 3,000 child soldiers (ages 5-17) that were de-mobilized by the SPLA
earlier this year. While the child soldiers in our camp ranged in age from
5-17 the average age was 11 years old. In interviewing the boys I found that
almost every one of them had joined the SPLA because their parents were
killed in an attack by the Arab horsemen from the north. Many of the boys saw
parents, family or friends killed before their eyes and a few barely escaped
with their own lives.
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As is common when working in a third world setting, one has to fill many
shoes. While I was able to use my training as a Paramedic, it was almost
always at a basic level such as snake bites, broken arms, wound dressings etc.
There were a few interesting cases such as a posterior displaced femur head,
and an infected boil that we lanced. Most of the time I was in Sudan a medical
doctor from the US was present. We made rounds in our camp and four other
local NGO demobilized child soldier camps. The majority of the cases we saw
were Malaria, Typhoid, Bilharzia, and Guinea Worm. STDs were common in the 16
and 17 year old boys. We saw several cases of Asthma and a couple of boys
with pronounced heart murmurs. Medical facilities are extremely limited.
Surgeries if even available wait for days sometimes.
Our camp was 40 miles from the front lines, and while Russian ANT-125s
flew over us at frequent intervals, none ever released any bombs near our
camp. (The Government of Sudan uses ANT-125s to indiscriminately bomb
civilian targets by drooping the ramp of the Antinov and rolling out impact
detonated bombs from 10,000 feet to avoid being shot down.) Our greatest
threat at the camp was not from above, but from outside the camp. We had two
attempted break ins at the camp and one successful one. Two guards armed with
AK-47s patrolled the camp after this and we had no more problems.
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My other responsibilities at the camp were to coordinate all the
construction and maintenance of tukles, (houses of bamboo and a grass roof)
pit latrines, fences and food storage facilities in the boy's camp and ours.
This involved writing contracts and hiring local Sudanese workers for 1,000
Sudanese Pounds per day. (That is two USD which is the average daily wage.)
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I did a great amount of driving (a lot of the time in 4X4) to haul rock,
sand or concrete for whatever project we were working on at the time. This
picture is an example of just how bad the roads in Sudan are.
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I also functioned as the camp treasurer handled all the conversion of USD
and Kenyan Shillings to Sudanese Pounds. Once a week a flight from Nairobi
would come in to the airstrip at Rumbek and deposit food and supplies for the
6-10 ex-patriot staff we had at the camp. I was responsible for maintaining
radio communication with the pilot to give him weather and airstrip conditions
and also to secure the airstrip prior to his arrival. There is a danger of
being hit by small arms fire. The day after I arrived an International Red
Cross Pilot was killed when his plane was fired upon by Government of Sudan
(GOS) troops in the GOS controlled region of Juba.
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An additional part of my responsibility was AIDS awareness training and
disease prevention classes, which I did during the boy's health period. The
boys attended school every week day from 9:45 to 2:45 and received
instruction in English, math, social studies, science and physics. Most of
the boys had a second grade or below education but were glad to go to school
as many of them had never been to school before. We had teachers for grades
one through eight.
I thoroughly enjoyed this frontier medicine experience and the ability to
meet and affect so many lives in southern Sudan. I am looking forward to
perhaps doing another such project sometime in the near future.
Allen Lewis, EMT-P
Oregon certified since 1996
Halsey, OR
lewisal@earthlink.net
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