Tuesday, December 6
We're on Africa time. Like other hot places I've visited where clocks don't govern the day, I went to find Manyok at the site at 10 am, expecting to meet with him before our feast with the girls scheduled for one o'clock. Manyok was overseeing the workers and Dau was catching up on his end-of-term duties as head teacher. I worked on photos and the blog at IRD, the adjacent NGO site, taking advantage of their electric power and Internet access.
At 12:30, Daniel and I went to the site, but still no Dau or Manyok. The girls started arriving, and I gave them a tour. Much has changed since they visited last July. We interacted as best we could with our limited shared language. By 2, I saw that Tabitha and Rhoda hadn't started cooking the goat and knew this would be a full day affair. I figured I would miss lunch altogether, which isn't an actual hardship in a place where entire families consider themselves lucky to share one small meal in a day, and often have nothing to eat but leaves they've gathered. But it wasn't to be. The cooks had prepared a lunch of goat liver in a stew with carrots and onions for Moses and me. Not used to the heat, Moses had returned to the clinic for a nap, so I was expected to eat alone inside the tukul. Though some of you may not be fond of liver, this meat was quite tasty, and it was a treat to eat meat that wasn't tough, stringy, and accompanied by bone slivers and gristle. I could eat only a small portion, and I asked Daniel to finish it up.
Dau and Manyok arrived with the fruit I brought from Nairobi. We retrieved a knife from Tabitha—a piece of metal with a long pointed triangular blade, fairly blunt edges and a makeshift shaft. Slicing the mangos attracted hundreds of small blue flies. The mangos had been bruised in transit and storage and weren't in perfect shape, but the girls devoured them with gusto. Tabitha is saving the seeds to dry and plant on our site. Likewise, we saved the pineapple tops. The abundance of ripening fruit allowed for an orgy of eating, juice dripping from our fingers and faces. Thank goodness we now have easy access to running water at our site.
We filled the time until dinner playing games and singing songs. Dau asked me to tell them a story. Goldilocks and the Three Bears came to mind, and I drew on storytelling skills acquired in high-school speech tournaments, and honed telling stories to my children. I remembered that I have this book on my IPad and treated them to that version when I finished. The IPad entertained them for a good hour as they explored the interactive children's books and other kid stuff I've downloaded on that wonderful machine.
Finally dinner was ready, and what a feast it was. Tabitha, Rhoda, and another cook carried the dishes to our table. The girls dished up mounds of rice, goat stew, stewed chicken (also donated by Moses' uncle), and a delicious dish of pasta with goat meat and carrots. I've never seen an American child devour such a large quantity of food at a sitting, but these girls are accustomed to a single meal in a day, which often consists only of sorghum.
Since most of our supplies are in storage, awaiting completion of our compound, we had 11 girls but only six spoons. The adults, including me, used our fingers. Five groups of two girls sat knee to knee and shared spoons—a bite for one, pass the spoon, a bite for the other and so on.
Our meal finished, we brought out the sweaters I brought from Nairobi for chilly evenings, and they went home: their bellies full, their bodies warm. It was dark when we returned to the clinic, but Moses and I took a nighttime walk to the central village to meet with his sister's guardian. I have never ventured off the clinic compound after dark. Though I brought a small torch (flashlight), the bright moonlight was sufficient to light our way.
Showing posts with label goat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goat. Show all posts
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Let There Be Light
Monday, December 5
Juma greeted me with enthusiasm and thanks for the food supplies at breakfast. He wants a photograph of me with the TB patients. What can a bag of beans and rice, a little salt and sugar do? It will keep people alive so they can benefit from the medications for their TB and Leprosy.
Breakfast at the clinic is even more sparse than it's been on previous visits due to the exhaustion of food supplies. There used to be two or three thermoses on the counter—one with milk, one with hot water, but they have only a single thermos now. There are no morning biscuits.
Occasionally someone remarks to me that our country has hardships and our efforts should be concentrated at home. But if you could see what I have seen, you would understand that the situations are not comparable. We have poor and sick people in the US, but it's uncommon for us to see people stricken with TB, leprosy, malaria, and other treatable or eradicated diseases, and one in five small children aren't dying of malnutrition and other illnesses prior to age five. The JDF Lost Boys Clinic here in Duk performs minor miracles daily, caring for up to 100 patients a day, some of whom walk up to 100 miles for care. Medication alone isn't enough to help them, so the clinic provides basic food to many patients.
Today Reuben, a 19-year-old young man from Patuenoi, walked to Duk Payuel for medication with a fever. He has been looking over my shoulder as I type this in the clinic office. I asked him how large Patuenoi is compared to Duk. He told me that Patuenoi is a village and that Duk Payuel is a town. Moses had also told me that he was surprised by how large Duk was—that it was not a village, but a town. It still looks like a village to me. Duk has a population of about 3000 people spread out a great distance across pockets of high ground, as the lowlands flood during the rainy season. There about 500 of these households, though the population is fluid, people coming and going between villages seasonally and with their cattle. Manyok and Dau tell me that Duk is only a village, but because of the clinic and IRD compound, (and our developing program and site) it looks like a town to many from smaller communities.
My trip to the site today was rewarded by the discovery of light in the tukuls. Long single-tube fluorescent lights are installed in the large tukuls, and smaller energy-saving bulbs in the small ones. Though so far the power is only turned on to the tukul where the crew is sleeping, it was wonderful to see the light.
The she-goat was slaughtered at the clinic this morning—fortunately out of my eyesight--and roasted for lunch. Any kind of meat is a real treat at the clinic, and goat meat is prized by Sudanese. The staff is always pressing me to eat more, but I tried to satisfy them by gnawing the fibrous meat off one bone while chewing with care to avoid bone slivers—a given when the meat is butchered with a hatchet.
Some of our ASAH girls came by in the afternoon as we were preparing the pineapple I brought from Nairobi, so we shared it with them and the clinic staff. None had tasted pineapple before, but more shocking to them was that it was straight from the refrigerator. They could hardly manage to chew as they had never had cold food in their lives.
After dinner one of the cooks lit the enormous trash pile. The resulting bonfire was a treat for us all, the night cool without wind. From my bed in the tent—I'm close enough that it could have presented a problem if it were windy—I enjoyed the crackling of the fire, the flames still burning bright as I went to sleep.
Juma greeted me with enthusiasm and thanks for the food supplies at breakfast. He wants a photograph of me with the TB patients. What can a bag of beans and rice, a little salt and sugar do? It will keep people alive so they can benefit from the medications for their TB and Leprosy.
Breakfast at the clinic is even more sparse than it's been on previous visits due to the exhaustion of food supplies. There used to be two or three thermoses on the counter—one with milk, one with hot water, but they have only a single thermos now. There are no morning biscuits.
Occasionally someone remarks to me that our country has hardships and our efforts should be concentrated at home. But if you could see what I have seen, you would understand that the situations are not comparable. We have poor and sick people in the US, but it's uncommon for us to see people stricken with TB, leprosy, malaria, and other treatable or eradicated diseases, and one in five small children aren't dying of malnutrition and other illnesses prior to age five. The JDF Lost Boys Clinic here in Duk performs minor miracles daily, caring for up to 100 patients a day, some of whom walk up to 100 miles for care. Medication alone isn't enough to help them, so the clinic provides basic food to many patients.
Today Reuben, a 19-year-old young man from Patuenoi, walked to Duk Payuel for medication with a fever. He has been looking over my shoulder as I type this in the clinic office. I asked him how large Patuenoi is compared to Duk. He told me that Patuenoi is a village and that Duk Payuel is a town. Moses had also told me that he was surprised by how large Duk was—that it was not a village, but a town. It still looks like a village to me. Duk has a population of about 3000 people spread out a great distance across pockets of high ground, as the lowlands flood during the rainy season. There about 500 of these households, though the population is fluid, people coming and going between villages seasonally and with their cattle. Manyok and Dau tell me that Duk is only a village, but because of the clinic and IRD compound, (and our developing program and site) it looks like a town to many from smaller communities.
My trip to the site today was rewarded by the discovery of light in the tukuls. Long single-tube fluorescent lights are installed in the large tukuls, and smaller energy-saving bulbs in the small ones. Though so far the power is only turned on to the tukul where the crew is sleeping, it was wonderful to see the light.
The she-goat was slaughtered at the clinic this morning—fortunately out of my eyesight--and roasted for lunch. Any kind of meat is a real treat at the clinic, and goat meat is prized by Sudanese. The staff is always pressing me to eat more, but I tried to satisfy them by gnawing the fibrous meat off one bone while chewing with care to avoid bone slivers—a given when the meat is butchered with a hatchet.
Some of our ASAH girls came by in the afternoon as we were preparing the pineapple I brought from Nairobi, so we shared it with them and the clinic staff. None had tasted pineapple before, but more shocking to them was that it was straight from the refrigerator. They could hardly manage to chew as they had never had cold food in their lives.
After dinner one of the cooks lit the enormous trash pile. The resulting bonfire was a treat for us all, the night cool without wind. From my bed in the tent—I'm close enough that it could have presented a problem if it were windy—I enjoyed the crackling of the fire, the flames still burning bright as I went to sleep.
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