Mama Obama!

This past week, our team ended up in Western Kenya for a final stint to round up our time in East Africa. Our work followed a similar pattern to that in Sudan, but we had one additional bonus!

Our dear President Obama, who has brought us fame and love from this end of the world, hails from a village not far from where we were working. Thus we had the opportunity to meet and visit Grandma Obama.

In reflection of the complaints I've been receiving...

...that I did not include enough detail about our actual work in Sudan. I am out of the country now, so this is a retrospective glance at our work there.

(in spite of my extensive descriptions on our living and fun times, we actually did work also...)

We have spent time at the three teaching hospitals in Southern Sudan. This usually included getting acquainted with the staff, hospital layout, services rendered, and problem areas. Our doctors' expertise is in pediatric health, so the morning involved rounding with the staff, and the afternoon included some type of teaching- most importantly a two day seminar in neonatal health and resuscitation. For my non-medical people (or those who can't use google), this translates roughly into "saving babies directly after they are born if they can't breath or have a low heart rate") Close to a fourth of all deaths in children under the age of five are caused by neonatal asphyxia (inability to breath), so our training modulus helps train staff on how to help prevent those deaths. It's a fairly straightforward workshop (I've even taught it a few times), and it's really cool to see the impact that it can have.

The picture shows a medical officer (the equivalent to a Resident in the US), and a nurse-midwife practicing neonatal resuscitation.

Additionally we had lectures in a wide range of topics (including HIV/AIDS, acute respiratory illnesses, diahhreal illness, etc etc) and staff at each hospital chose which they wanted to hear.

Feel free to post a comment below or email me with any specific questions about our work, but that's the cliffs notes version!

Yet another reason to hate Pinocchio.

Outside of the really fulfilling work in the hospital, life in Malakal is a bit difficult. I’ve lived in some tough circumstances before, so I am not a stranger to roughing it, but this is at a whole new level. We are only at the very start of the rainy season, but every morning we wake up to a city melted into a soupy mess. You literally cannot move anywhere without wading in mud up to your shins. The streets, sidewalks, lawns, everything, turns into a thick quagmire that takes hours to wade through and even longer to extricate from your footwear and clothes.

So it’s muddy, no big deal, right? The mud is annoying but tolerable. It’s the crickets I can’t handle. One day we came back from work and saw some crickets hanging outside our door. There was one in my shower. I didn’t want to kill him so I helped him out and got him to higher ground. Cute little fellow.

The next day, I went into my room and found it covered with crickets. Big crickets. The size of my pointer finger. They are thick and gnarly and their legs fly everywhere when you squash them. After a short killing spree, my room looked like a bomb went off. I crawled under my mosquito net, slightly satisfied with my work, and fell asleep.

2am. Something landed on my head. It actually made it through my net (false sense of safety). I freaked out, and threw on the lights, only to find the place (once again) covered in crickets. You have to be kidding me. Went through another killing spree.

The next day I asked my colleagues about their cricket relations, and while they had sighted a few in their room, they certainly weren’t dealing with the full frontal attack, and definitely not the air raids. Highly suspicious. They came to check out my living arrangements and we determined that the crickets were coming from the gaping hole in my ceiling, which unfortunately is aligned directly above my bed. Awesome. My colleague thought it would be a good idea to poke his head up there. He screamed and bounced off the bed. I have never seen a grown man freak out like that before! There was a whole nest of crickets, living right there in my roof. How tender.

He threw the mosquito net over his head and, like any stubborn man, tried to close off my ceiling for the better part of the hour. I did what most women would, and went to ask for a new room.

Malakal Midwives.

Malakal is a city in the north of Southern Sudan, and lies on a point of intersection between the country’s three main ethnic group territories. It is also located right on the Nile, making it an easy destination for the transport of goods. Oh also, it has oil. Quite a dangerous combination of factors.

We arrived here last Sunday, and have been working hard on trainings in the hospital. The hospital administration and local NGOs have been so helpful in finding us trainees. We had over thirty-five midwives attend our afternoon sessions, every day of the week. Some came in from other regions and far off rural areas just to attend. I was able to teach two lessons this week- a review of neonatal resuscitation, and a lesson on pediatric diarrheal illness (appropriate, given my current gastrointestinal distress resulting from my overambitious decision to eat the local salad).

Our morning sessions were for medical officers (equivalent to Residents) and head nurses. Most of the medical officers are from the North, and have contractual agreements with the Government of Southern Sudan. This is great because there is a serious lack of physicians in the country, but bad, because the government has neglected to pay them for the past nine months or so. Most are planning to leave.

Farewell Wau

We finished up our trainings at Wau teaching hospital and are back in Juba. We leave for Malakal tomorrow. I was so sad to leave Wau, and absolutely loved the hospital staff there! Pictured here are (1) the hospital director, pediatric chief, and medical students we worked with, (2) hospital incubator, now up and running!, (3) me driving the ambulance :) and (4) the fake baby's fan club strikes again!

Just a little surprise :)

Coming back to our tent after breakfast this morning, we saw that there were people inside of it! We quickly zipped open the door all the way, and once inside, found two of the hotel staff had pulled out our fake training baby, laid it on the bed, and were giving it kisses!

Pictures from Wau

I think this is a Sudanese water purifying system- but that could be wrong. (left)

Hospital building in Wau (right)




Two of our team members in a Southern Sudanese rickshaw!


























Group of midwives training in neonatal resuscitation. Note the fake training baby: whenever we carry it around it's in a plastic bag, and everyone on the street freaks out because they think its real; they run over to pick it up and see why the heck we are suffocating the baby. When they realize it's fake, it's hilarious (right).

Two of the doctors from our team helped resuscitate a baby after an emergency c-section following our training (hands on learning!) The baby wasn't breathing and had no heart beat for ten minutes after she was born, but with a lot of work, she is now alive! Her mother had given birth to three children before her, all of whom died almost immediately (Left).