Thursday, July 30, 2009

No Supermarket on the Corner

It isn't easy to describe how remote and isolated
the villages in Southern Sudan are. Even those places that are nearest the Sudanese border with Kenya require long trekking on bone-jarring roads to reach the nearest town for supplies. One section of the road, along which bandits are particularly active, requires military escort for all vehicles.
When staff at St Bakhita School need to purchase fresh produce, for example, they drive more than 2 hours each way, often with maddening waits at the immigration and customs offices along the way, to do their shopping in the town of Lokichokkio, an outpost in northern Kenya that served for several decades during the civil war as the logistical staging area for the U.N. emergency food airlifts into Sudan. In "Loki" (as it is affectionately known), you can buy fresh eggs and bananas and canned goods and staples like cornmeal and rice and sugar and cooking oil. And you can visit the local butcher shop, pictured here. Without refrigeration, of course, it's difficult to stock up on perishables that might spoil before you get them back across the border, past the inspectors, and into Sudan. But I am living witness that it is indeed possible to juggle a flat cardboard tray of eggs while riding in a bouncing vehicle through clouds of dust en route to Narus!
Think of the staff and girls of St Bakhita School the next time you stop by your local supermarket or convenience store.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Where Bullets Are Welcome

Ask any medical worker in Sudan, and s/he will tell you that the most common cause of injuries they deal with are gunshot wounds. Sadly, firearms have replaced fists as the way that men settle arguments; as a result, violence still plagues postwar Southern Sudan.

In Kuron Peace Village, where Catholic Sister Angela Limiyo runs the only health clinic in the region, it is not unusual for several gunshot victims to arrive each day. Angela herself was shot several months ago when the large truck she was riding in was randomly ambushed by bandits on the road near Narus. She had to be transported to Nairobi, Kenya, for treatment and skin grafts, and subsequently spent 3 months recuperating there before returning to her post in Sudan.

Every male in Sudan, it seems, carries a Kalashnikov (AK-47) rifle. Relics from the long civil war, these weapons are likely to be held together with twine or missing a handle, but still lethal. Guns are so commonplace that bullets have become a kind of local currency in the area: patients at the clinic pay Sister Angela with live bullets for their treatment. She gladly accepts ammunition in lieu of cash, figuring that it takes a few bullets out of circulation. Strange as it may sound, her clinic is a place where bullets are welcome!