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Since I’ve gotten to Darfur I’ve been working with Sudanese doctors in the a small hospital and in the refugee camps closest to the town. There are still about 90–100,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP's) in 7 camps.
There are about 40–50 Sudanese doctors working with 10–15 Non-government Organizations (NGO’s). Most of the docs are new medical school graduates waiting to get into internships. Even though the facilities are primitive, sometimes just grass mats for walls, a sand floor and a big blue tarp from the United Nations for a roof, they are providing pretty good care. The clinic I spend the most time in has a lab tech with a microscope to do blood slides for malaria and stool investigations for intestinal parasites.
The people are generally friendly and playful. When they see my camera they wave at me to come and take their pictures showing off their big smiles in their colorful if tattered clothes.
I also spend some time at the Therapeutic Feeding Center. The scene is right out of a late night TV “Save the Children” fundraiser. For now at least, they are not overcrowded and have enough of the high calorie formulas they need to save all but the most severe cases who are also suffering from pneumonia, typhoid, malaria and other infectious diseases as a result of their weakened immune systems.
This Feeding Center was actually built by Save the Children, USA many years ago in response to previous food shortages before the conflict in Darfur. It always lifts my spirits to see these beautiful tiny bodies getting stronger with the dedication of local nurses, the hope and love of their mothers who stay with their children to give the 8 feedings per day and a few cents worth of food made possible by the kind donations from people on the other side of the world who are moved by those late night TV fund raisers.
The little hospital here is able to do amazing things with such little resources. No electricity much of the time so no x-ray, oxygen, lights. There are shortages of medicine, bandages, sutures, and iodine to clean wounds. There is only sand between the buildings, so they can’t even roll a wheelchair or gurney. Patients are carried by two to four people in an old fashioned canvas stretcher. Shots are given without alcohol, just rubbing the skin with a dry bit of cotton. I watched a surgery the other night done by the light of one bare light bulb, no EKG or oxygen monitor. The anesthetist didn’t have a stethoscope. I saw a C-section with no electric lights at all one afternoon, just sunlight through the window of the operating room.
The day after I arrived in Darfur, as I was shuffling through the sand streets of the local market looking at the bright red and green watermelons, colorful clothes and beautiful dark almost blue-black faces, I was almost hit by a truck load of young men over-flowing with huge guns and bandoleers of bullets like Islamic Poncho Via extras late to the movie set for Rambo XIII, Desert Bad Guys.
It was explained to me that this truck load were rebels from Chad hiding in Sudan planning attacks against their government, pretty much like the truckloads of Sudanese rebels in Chad planning attacks against the Sudanese government.
“Three hundred US dollars buy you very very nice machines guns which is available everywhere in the markets, and bullets is very cheaper”, said a local.
Except for a woman’s arm being amputated after she was bitten by a camel and got gangrene, the surgical schedule is filled with cleaning damaged flesh away from gun shot wounds. I’m told there is no active organized fighting going on here right now, but there are guns everywhere and they tend to go off.
Last night the machine gun fire was a little closer and clearer. Those wacky rebels. They wait until 2:30 a.m. after the heat of the day is finally cooling down when everyone’s dosing off to fire a few rounds of a good ol’ Russian Kalashnikov. I fell back asleep, but the others said they heard shots again on the half hour at 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. Kind of like a war zone cuckoo clock.
I never thought that getting shot would be all that fun, but after seeing these injuries, I really don’t want to get shot. No evening strolls around the sandy streets of Darfur for me.
I spend most of my days helping out at in the IDP camps. For the people here it is kind of like camping. They brought as many things from home as they could carry on foot or hoof and are trying to live as normally as possible. The Work Food Program provides a minimal weekly ration of local grain, cooking oil and salt. The peoples days are spent cooking, cleaning, lining up for water, caring for their children, looking for places to plant a few seeds or to find any other work they can to survive. Imagine a 3 year camping trip with your whole extended family. The IDP’s of West Darfur have been here in El Geneina since the conflict began in 2004. Conditions aren’t horrible here, but to state the obvious, they are ready return to their homes and move on with their lives.
I have official approval from the Sudanese Medical Society to practice medicine, but not to pull teeth. I’m not a licensed dentist, but I have pulled 100’s of teeth working in Honduras and Nepal. There aren’t any dentists out in the camps so to teach the doctors and nurses there how to pull teeth was one of the main things I was going to do.
The language barrier is also frustrating for me because most people only speak their tribal language or Arabic here in the North of Sudan. It’s taken me 10 years of study to even order a plate of rice and beans in Spanish. To adapt an African expression, when you see a dog and a goat riding a bicycle together is when I’ll be able to learn Arabic.
Now that the projects I’ve started in Honduras and Nepal are becoming self sufficient as I have hoped, I would like to to find another project, possibly in Africa, that I could return to for a month or so at a time. In a couple days I’ll fly back to Khartoum and will either spend the rest of my time there in the city’s charity hospitals and surrounding IDP camps or fly to Southern Sudan where the common language is English. The doctors here tell me that in the South the situation is worse because there is not a war there right now, the international organizations are not going there. Too weird.
<i>Doc PJ can be contacted at P.O. Box 1546, Breckenridge, CO 80424; phone (970) 547-9200; fax (970) 547-4585 or e-mail docpj7@comcast.net.</i>
There are about 40–50 Sudanese doctors working with 10–15 Non-government Organizations (NGO’s). Most of the docs are new medical school graduates waiting to get into internships. Even though the facilities are primitive, sometimes just grass mats for walls, a sand floor and a big blue tarp from the United Nations for a roof, they are providing pretty good care. The clinic I spend the most time in has a lab tech with a microscope to do blood slides for malaria and stool investigations for intestinal parasites.
The people are generally friendly and playful. When they see my camera they wave at me to come and take their pictures showing off their big smiles in their colorful if tattered clothes.
I also spend some time at the Therapeutic Feeding Center. The scene is right out of a late night TV “Save the Children” fundraiser. For now at least, they are not overcrowded and have enough of the high calorie formulas they need to save all but the most severe cases who are also suffering from pneumonia, typhoid, malaria and other infectious diseases as a result of their weakened immune systems.
This Feeding Center was actually built by Save the Children, USA many years ago in response to previous food shortages before the conflict in Darfur. It always lifts my spirits to see these beautiful tiny bodies getting stronger with the dedication of local nurses, the hope and love of their mothers who stay with their children to give the 8 feedings per day and a few cents worth of food made possible by the kind donations from people on the other side of the world who are moved by those late night TV fund raisers.
The little hospital here is able to do amazing things with such little resources. No electricity much of the time so no x-ray, oxygen, lights. There are shortages of medicine, bandages, sutures, and iodine to clean wounds. There is only sand between the buildings, so they can’t even roll a wheelchair or gurney. Patients are carried by two to four people in an old fashioned canvas stretcher. Shots are given without alcohol, just rubbing the skin with a dry bit of cotton. I watched a surgery the other night done by the light of one bare light bulb, no EKG or oxygen monitor. The anesthetist didn’t have a stethoscope. I saw a C-section with no electric lights at all one afternoon, just sunlight through the window of the operating room.
The day after I arrived in Darfur, as I was shuffling through the sand streets of the local market looking at the bright red and green watermelons, colorful clothes and beautiful dark almost blue-black faces, I was almost hit by a truck load of young men over-flowing with huge guns and bandoleers of bullets like Islamic Poncho Via extras late to the movie set for Rambo XIII, Desert Bad Guys.
It was explained to me that this truck load were rebels from Chad hiding in Sudan planning attacks against their government, pretty much like the truckloads of Sudanese rebels in Chad planning attacks against the Sudanese government.
“Three hundred US dollars buy you very very nice machines guns which is available everywhere in the markets, and bullets is very cheaper”, said a local.
Except for a woman’s arm being amputated after she was bitten by a camel and got gangrene, the surgical schedule is filled with cleaning damaged flesh away from gun shot wounds. I’m told there is no active organized fighting going on here right now, but there are guns everywhere and they tend to go off.
Last night the machine gun fire was a little closer and clearer. Those wacky rebels. They wait until 2:30 a.m. after the heat of the day is finally cooling down when everyone’s dosing off to fire a few rounds of a good ol’ Russian Kalashnikov. I fell back asleep, but the others said they heard shots again on the half hour at 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. Kind of like a war zone cuckoo clock.
I never thought that getting shot would be all that fun, but after seeing these injuries, I really don’t want to get shot. No evening strolls around the sandy streets of Darfur for me.
I spend most of my days helping out at in the IDP camps. For the people here it is kind of like camping. They brought as many things from home as they could carry on foot or hoof and are trying to live as normally as possible. The Work Food Program provides a minimal weekly ration of local grain, cooking oil and salt. The peoples days are spent cooking, cleaning, lining up for water, caring for their children, looking for places to plant a few seeds or to find any other work they can to survive. Imagine a 3 year camping trip with your whole extended family. The IDP’s of West Darfur have been here in El Geneina since the conflict began in 2004. Conditions aren’t horrible here, but to state the obvious, they are ready return to their homes and move on with their lives.
I have official approval from the Sudanese Medical Society to practice medicine, but not to pull teeth. I’m not a licensed dentist, but I have pulled 100’s of teeth working in Honduras and Nepal. There aren’t any dentists out in the camps so to teach the doctors and nurses there how to pull teeth was one of the main things I was going to do.
The language barrier is also frustrating for me because most people only speak their tribal language or Arabic here in the North of Sudan. It’s taken me 10 years of study to even order a plate of rice and beans in Spanish. To adapt an African expression, when you see a dog and a goat riding a bicycle together is when I’ll be able to learn Arabic.
Now that the projects I’ve started in Honduras and Nepal are becoming self sufficient as I have hoped, I would like to to find another project, possibly in Africa, that I could return to for a month or so at a time. In a couple days I’ll fly back to Khartoum and will either spend the rest of my time there in the city’s charity hospitals and surrounding IDP camps or fly to Southern Sudan where the common language is English. The doctors here tell me that in the South the situation is worse because there is not a war there right now, the international organizations are not going there. Too weird.
<i>Doc PJ can be contacted at P.O. Box 1546, Breckenridge, CO 80424; phone (970) 547-9200; fax (970) 547-4585 or e-mail docpj7@comcast.net.</i>
Doc PJ
C. Louis “Doc PJ” Perrinjaquet, MD, MPH, is a family physician at the High Country Health Care office in Breckenridge, with special training in tropical medicine.His volunteer work is coordinated through the non-profit organization Doctors to the World.
