Rebirth on the Nile
By Ryan Kuja
Although the civil war has ended, the children of southern Sudan continue to live and die in a heartbreaking continuum of extreme poverty…
August 29, 2010 — She arrived exhausted at the Therapeutic Feeding Center (TFC), as dusk settled on the village. In her arms, she held John, her severely ill and malnourished child. He was not yet one year old and his frail, emaciated body gasped for each breath.
She had already taken her ailing baby to a doctor for treatment, but was unsatisfied with the outcome. In her last attempt to save her child, she trekked for nearly two days to the TFC, traveling on rough footpaths through the hostile bush, followed by taking a boat upstream against the current of the White Nile.
She now sat beside me, expressionless and silent. John lay on her lap as I steered the truck through the dark night toward the Medair team compound where medical care awaited. Could he be saved this time, I am sure she wondered.
The nurses on the team who examined him knew immediately that the outcome was not promising. His skin lay loosely upon his limbs, eyes deep and unfocused. He was too weak to cry in anguish, too weak to flinch in pain when given an injection. Every time his eyes began to close, I feared he would not reopen them.
Medair nurses worked tirelessly through the hot, mosquito-filled night as John and his mother suffered on the floor of our medical storage tent, which became a makeshift Intensive Care Unit. Morning came and the rising sun offered new hope. John had survived the night, but his condition soon deteriorated. Our team exhausted every possible treatment option available in this remote location, trying to save his life. Finally, on our tent floor in southern Sudan, John breathed his last painful breath. He was released from all his torment, and was free from the brutal reality of being a child in post-civil war Sudan. His mother’s inconsolable tears were joined by our own in sadness.
It was less than three days later that a miracle unfolded before my eyes in the exact same place on the tent floor. A pregnant woman was carried to the compound by a group of men from her village, which was over an hour’s walk away. She had been in labor for 48 hours and many had given up hope for her survival and that of her unborn child. The baby had to be delivered immediately.
She lay down on a mat on the tent floor, as Medair’s nurses quickly assessed her condition. A moment later she went into labor once again. The child’s head appeared, followed by her neck, then her chest, her stomach, and finally her legs. The baby girl emerged with the joyful sound of crying, that heavenly noise indicating a healthy child. The mother was quickly stabilized as she held her baby in her arms. She named the child Sophia, after one of the nurses who assisted in the safe delivery.
I witnessed a child enter the world that day, the miracle of birth happened right before my eyes. And so it was that my continuing tears over John’s death were replaced with a smile and rejoicing.
The 21-year civil war in Sudan has officially been over for several years, yet the struggle continues for thousands of children just like John. Almost every child in southern Sudan is born into poverty, disease, and desperation. I cannot help but think about Sophia’s future. Will she suffer the same fate as John? Will she too arrive at the TFC less than a year from now, wasting away due to disease and hunger? The sad reality is that one in four children die before the age of six in southern Sudan.
Peace has come to this region, but conflict still rages throughout much of the land, with cattle raiding and inter-tribal clashes the norm rather than the exception. What does the future hold for Sophia and those born yesterday and today? Will food security improve to a reasonable, sustainable level? Will adequate medical care extend to the most remote, inaccessible areas? Will schools open and teachers bestow the gift of knowledge upon eager students? These things are hoped for, yet remain a long way off. Transition and development take time and patience. And so we must continue our urgent efforts, for Sophia, for the memory of John, and for the countless innocent children of southern Sudan.
Ryan Kuja is a freelance writer residing in Denver, CO He worked as an aid worker with Medair in South Sudan . He can be reached at [email protected]