Warm greetings from Old Fangak! Last month’s floodwaters were said to be the highest in 125 years. Daily temperatures are consistently 5 to 8 degrees above normal. It’s hot and muggy, with swarms of mosquitos to spread malaria and make us all scratch. Land in our area has remained lower than the water level continuously since 2019. But our dikes have held. The high waters are beginning to recede. We breathe a sigh of relief: no need to evacuate the village’s 50,000 inhabitants—and our whole medical center— after all.
That’s climate change, up close and personal. In Old Fangak, there’s no escaping it.
Three days each week, men and boys—all volunteers—jog down through dry parts of town to reinforce the dikes, singing as they go. Using long sticks with flattened ends, they scoop mud from the river bottom to pile on top of the dike. When men run through the village singing, so often it has meant they were running off to fight. We love seeing them run to protect the village from flooding instead. Security is strengthened, along with a sense of dignity and common purpose.
This week everyone is sure that floodwaters have crested, and are going down faster than before. At last! Perhaps some people will be able to move back to farms this spring, teaching their children how to care for cows and crops.
The Nuers’ pastoral cow culture has been severely altered by years of flooding. They can’t grow food. The cows are dead. While the river’s waters remain much higher than the land, people cluster in the few villages where there are functioning dikes. The Nuer maintain wide networks of clan and family. As bits of land become dry enough to cultivate, family connections draw them to areas where farming might become possible. Maybe the children will have a chance to live their culture.
Our focus on health care, as always, aims to keep hope alive, to be able to seize whatever opportunity the future might bring. To farm, tend cattle, move about, go to school, care for yourself and your family in this harsh yet beautiful land. Life with dignity, security, and things to look forward to.
In these crazy times, we’d like to share a photo of one who lives free from existential angst. Little Bol, who has completed treatment for tuberculosis and is infected with HIV, still makes us laugh. And a special shout-out to Marina and Bill Shaw, of Crosscurrents International
Institute. They manage finances and our status as a non-profit, which makes our work possible.
In this season of celebration and giving, we thank you, and wish you joy.
Jill, Sjoukje, Gretchen
SCENES OF JOY IN OLD
FANGAK:
Nyachak stopped developing well in the first months of life. We think she has hydrocephalus, extra fluid in her brain. In the US, she would have scans, and a shunt to divert the fluid. In Old Fangak, a new walker restores her mobility. That’s joy!
This lovely 10 month old slowly lost motor control. She couldn’t swallow, properly, so got aspiration pneumonia. She could not grab anything, or even hold up her head. We feared some fatal demyelinating disease. With no imaging or fancy tests for diagnosis, all we could do was offer her fortified high energy milk. That worked wonders.
Mom and Grandma are so happy because this is the first day she could hold up her head by herself. Before long, she was sitting up on her own and grabbing everything in reach.
Baby hugs bring joy and hope to a grandma in hospice care
… and to pediatrician Lye-Ching
After treatment for hepatitis, this grandma’s fluid-filled belly is back to normal. She shares her joy at discharge with Nurse Practitioner Elyse.
This little guy was severely malnourished as a result of TB, and too weak to eat. Once his TB was treated, his appetite returned with a vengeance!