(Stephanie Williams) For the last two weeks I’ve been doing a health teaching before prentals on sexually transmitted diseases. On the first day, I discussed it beforehand with my translator to see if I had to be culturally sensitive about any of the issues.

When I told him I was going to teach on STDs he cocked his head to one side and said, “But… there are no STDs in Sudan.” Dead silence.

Then it was my turn to be confused. I too cocked my head to one side and said, “Huh? Of course there are STDs. People have sex here don’t they?”

He shrugged as if to say I was wasting my time but agreed to translate for me all the same. So I forged ahead and taught them the signs and symptoms of the most common STDs, as well as the consequences of them.

Funny thing but over the last two weeks I’ve had a half dozen women tell me they have those symptoms… some have had them for years. They’ve been treated and have even brought their husbands in as well!

My translator no longer thinks Sudan is STD free zone.

(Tyler Paulson) I love Dut. He’s the main security guard here on the compound. He carries a rifle pretty much everywhere. I’ve decided he’s a good guy to be friends with.

Dut doesn’t speak a word of English, I speak about two dozen words of Dinka, so we can’t talk too much; but every time we see each other we shout each other’s name and share a high five, handshake, or shoulder pat and repeat every Dinka greeting I know multiple times.

Dut is originally from Malony, the village where we’ve been doing weekly mobile medical clinics. The first time we went out there, I told him I wanted to take his picture in the beautiful grass fields there. He told me to wait one moment and then he ran over to get his daughter so that I could take their picture together. He had that proud father look on his face as I snapped their photo and his daughter was absolutely beaming.

A father giving his daughter that much love and joy is rare in Dinka culture, so I instantly liked Dut. One day in heaven, when language barriers are no more, we’ll be able to talk about our summer here together and laugh about all the great times we had. I think there will be some good ones.

(Missy Nickerson) Me oh my!

So much has been going on here. We’ve seen over a hundred patients a day, averaging 140. That’s 140 patients split between two doctors…well sort of…the twins are 1 year med students but they have Caleb who’s a physician assistant who can answer any questions if they have any.

So I’m doing registration and as I like to know it Crowd Control. Which can most definitely get stressful at times but not as stressful as
HELPING DELIVER A BABY.

Haha. I helped another birth on Thursday. So the tally is 3. And by help I mean hand things to Stephanie and document the times and stuff so I can’t really claim helping deliver a baby but I kinda can = ]

The funny story of the delivery was, well, sometimes we have a hard time getting linen. People like to steal it because its nice for them to have and then sometimes people don’t want to wash them, so linen has been somewhat of a difficulty for us to find.  So Natali (the translator) and I are in the room with the mother in labor and Stephanie, the midwife.  The baby comes and we only have one towel for the baby which is just not enough for all of the fluid. So the mom doesn’t want to hold the child so the newborn is handed off to me. The baby is wrapped in this small towel and I’m holding it away from my body so as not to get blood on me.  So I call for linen and Daniel tries to find some and Natali, bless his heart is standing there, so I send him off to get linen. He comes back 3 minutes later and says no linen. So I, with a smile on my face, said Natali, I don’t want you to come back into this room unless you have linen. So he runs off.  So I’m waiting and waiting and eventually linen comes and I hold the baby closer and then I realize something, Natali isn’t back. So I say Natali? And he answers yes and sticks his head in the room.  Even though he saw linen enter the room, he still didn’t have any so he wasn’t going to come back into the room! Stephanie and I just laughed and laughed. It was classic. = ]

This Thursday was wild because I’m doing registration and then the baby comes so I help with that. After I take a quick shower to get the amniotic fluid off of me (might I say ew) and then have lunch and then back to registration, everything is going well! Everyone is being patient and registration is done at oh say 3 which is early for us. So I hop on over to my favorite place, the pharmacy, where Deng and Pretty are, and I start to help them deal out medicine when Marcos, one of the translators, comes and finds me and tells me a patient is shivering, which I knew meant convulsing because people with really bad malaria can have really bad convulsions. So I run out of the pharmacy and sure enough this young woman who had a 41.4 C fever is convulsing, so I yell for Caleb, the physians assistant, who starts an IV really quickly and gets Quinine. So as this is starting buckets of water starts pouring from the sky. So everything gets chaotic. We situate the young woman in one of the consultation rooms to get her out of the rain and then I hear commotion from the “waiting area” and I run out and everyone is pointing to a young child who is seriously convulsing. I rush him in to the first consultation room and the same thing, I.V. and quinine. Then I have to manage to get people out of the rain and its so loud because our roofs are metal and hectic. And as we like to say, welcome to Sudan

They both ended up being fine, just bad bouts of malaria but you can imagine it was a odd day of seeing such life and such hurt. Praying through it all.

A piece of Sudan life = ]

Greetings!  Last night I experienced the most brilliant thunder storm that I’ve ever seen in my life.  And I’m a guy who totally loves watching lightning crash in a storm, so this was right down my alley!  Even more down my alley was the fact that the thunderstorm was some miles away, so we could watch it, while sitting outside without even being rained on.  It was a really marvelous natural occurrence, with bolts in lightning tearing the sky apart every 5-10 seconds.  And the land here is so flat that you can see for miles and miles and miles. I just sat outside in the bed of a pickup truck watching for about an hour in the company of my twin brother John, the clinical director Caleb, and the pharmacist Pritty (who are the handsome gents featured in the attached photo).  It was a real great time, filled with God’s natural beauty and some fun company.  Toward the end of the storm, the light-hearted police man, Dut, who keeps us safe around here came over and gave us an informal Dinka lesson (which was sort of hard because we speak just about no Dinka and he speaks just about no English).  Despite the language barrier, we learned some new words, we taught him some English ones, and we were able to enjoy each other’s company even if we didn’t speak the same language.

This afternoon, John and I went for a jog around the village, which we try to do 3 or 4 times a week.  As the two of the only white people around, our presence usually generates quite a bit of attention.  We’re used to being greeted (and greeting) probably more than half the people that we come across.  Small children commonly run out of their huts along the roadside and wave to us as we go by.  And I’ll tell you what, this sure is an endearing sight to behold.  We’ll be leaving in a week, but the image of a half-naked 3-year-old waving curiously at us from his house is a sight that won’t soon (if ever) leave my mind.  The simplicity and the poverty and the austerity and the humanity of this whole experience are all somehow captured succinctly in this image.  During our jog today, we chanced upon another really cool experience.  We usually run from the compound here to the Catholic Mission school and back again.  Today, we were on our return leg of the journey just after school had let out, so children were walking along the road in the direction that we were running.  At some point, a few of the children began running alongside of us.  When we came to the next group of children walking along, they tagged along.  Same with the next group.  And as a few of the children became tired and dropped off, we approached and collected another few to compensate.  So for a kilometer or so, we had an escort of little school children running along with us.  And that sure was a great feeling!  There was laughter and smiling and good feelings abounding.

(Stephanie Williams) On the north side of the compound tower two large mango trees, lush and regal. They are bigger than any mango trees I’ve ever seen before, easily standing four stories tall. Their branches are loaded– but not with mangos.

Instead these trees house dozens of bats.

You wouldn’t guess it during the day, but come dusk they start to dip and dive. They dart spastically in a drunken feast on the mosquito and flying termites population. (Thank God!) But sometimes they get a little side-tracked.

The other day, one found its’ way into my room. This didn’t bother me much, as I have a tender spot for flying rats. But my bunkmate, Jessica, had a different view. She is not much for anything crawly or bug shaped. And I have recently assumed the role of ‘Bug-squasher’.

So when Dracula came calling, I had to reassure her somewhat. I refused to chase this ‘slightly larger’ bug away as he was ridding me of pests. So we tried to sit still and wait for him to find the door on his own.

He circled a few times and landed a few times. I think it was a lot harder for Jessica than for me to wait him out. But eventually we ignored him and went on with our reading. I was surprised to look up from my book a few minutes later to find the room ‘bat-less’. They sure are quiet.

I wonder if I’ll have to fight them for a proper mango when mango season starts. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.