Rural Magwi County, South Sudan , Africa
The village of Omeo gathered to greet our arrival grudgingly under a large tree next to the well-built and functional road the Turks had built. It now splits this village, an hour's dusty motorbike ride from Magwi town , in half. The crowd was mostly children, many orphans. The adults simply didn't want to come any longer to hear promises that they knew we would break. The water is drying up, people are sick and tired.
There were questions , concerns and outright anger. Understandably so. The NGOs had come and gone and evidence of there presence in the form of US AID cans made into toys and doors and in pretty signs with the names of "project whatever". They had come , and gone with absolutely no results, leaving disillusionment in the villages. The government of South Sudan , freshly minted in July, is ineffective and useless as well. They have abandoned Magwi county and its Acholi population except to built roads which are useless to a people without a motorized vehicle of any kind. AIDS is sitting at a projected 80 percent among the 300, 000 people of this area and testing kits and medicine will be gone by July .Not in this district but in the entire nation. The clinic we run is the only one of its kind in the area but our dedicated staff toils with dirt water , few supplies and little electricity to save babies, accident victims.
The goverment , Nuer led , has no intention of including the opposing tribes in its plans for the new nation. Twenty two years of civil war to free the nation from the Arab north has inflicted suffering and unbelievable hardship on this population. The people are just returned from their forced exile in Uganda only to be left to die from malnutrition , AIDS , drought and disease. They have every right to be angry. I feared I simply couldnt say enough or a thing to ease the pain . I knew I couldn't make any promises I couldn't keep.
I spent three tense days talking to villages to some success and some abject failure. I got questions , stories and pleas. One woman brought grasshoppers in a coke bottle to show us what was happening to the crops.A very a woman finally liked what she heard enough to hug me and invite me to eat greens with her. A huge honor! One woman brought her son to meet me dressed in a plastic bag as he has no clothes at 2 years old.
We had come to witness the lives and deaths of a people. Besides some moments which we will be sharing in pictures and film with you all soon we have been consolidating all we learned into the following needs, wants and dreams .
1. We aim to send 100 village children to the existing school , which is a bare bones basic shelter with logs for desks at present (2011). The cost is 15 dollars a year , including the only meal most children will have that day. The new school will come by 2013.
2. basic medical donations for our existing clinic baby scale , beds , autoclave
3. Clothing , housewares , blankets, shoes, and the SHIPPING COSTS to send the materials to Sudan
4. 150, 000 dollars for the new clinic . We met with the villages and the consensus is the hospital MUST come first as woman are giving birth on the road en route to our clinic , a days walk away. We have land and need a better structure . Services to be included safe birth , AIDS testing education and counceling , PTSD counceling from the war , emergency care, vaccinations , nutrition support
Can you help
We need to keep our word and the Acholi of Magwi county need to know the world hasn't forgotten them . It s a matter of life or death. We choose to believe in life.
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