Mogga -- Clinical Officer

Meet Mogga. He's a Sudanese Clinical Officer in Kajo-Keji. He trained for 3 years in Kampala, Uganda to bring medical attention to the villagers back home. Mogga and Emmanuel, a Physician Assistant from Sudan, have been working alongside gillitot/mzungu Norma Caddell, NP with MHI.

However, the consultations and medicines do not come without a price. The villagers bring their money that is then used within each respective community for watchmen for the medical teams as well as other costs of overhead. If someone is unable to pay, it is up to the community to decide to pay for whatever medicine that person needs. Usually they are given the gift. One such fellow today came in with his left leg covered in ulcers with which he has been afflicted since he was 5 years old. This guy looked like he was between 30-40. It is incredibly difficult to gauge anyone's age here. Their skin is gorgeous and ageless, until it is apparent that they are beyond 50 or 60. The sun, among other factors, eventually takes its toll.

Medical Health International (MHI) works alongside the leaders of each village to plan where they would prefer their medical site be located instead of coming in and just making those decisions for the locals. (When the latter happens, the community will just abandon the site because they do not have a vested ownership in its existence.) For this particular village however, the landlord recently decided that he didn't want the medical tukal (hut) to be situated on his property anymore. Temporarily, he is allowing MHI to continue to see patients on his land, but the tukal has already been relocated.
MHI and the communities start off every morning with a devotion and prayer. After that, the women begin cooking lunch and the men in line will just wait for women to fetch them water when they're thirsty. Yeah, I'm not really into that aspect of their culture so much for the moment. I do think Barbara was spreading propaganda in the back with the women though.

My job today was greeting the patients sitting in line with a friendly, "Do parana'?" (How's your afternoon? .. or something along those lines. Note: I have no idea how to spell the Kuku language of South Sudan, but from what I've seen, it seems fairly phonetic.) And subsequently, I jotted down their weights in kilograms on the scale and their temperatures on a slip of paper that they would give to Emmanuel, Norma, or Mogga when it was their turn to see the medical personnel. It was very interesting to note that each male/female had roughly the same weight respectively, a phenomenon I am positive does NOT occur in the USA. (Obesity kills, kids. Also, obesity kills kids. Fare attenzione.) We weighed the babies using a produce scale. Not fun with feverish babies who don't particularly care for the bright red hair and porcelain skin combination I've got going on.
Lots of malaria testing today. And lots of positive rapid tests. See flickr. Later maybe. Or how about now?

It's crazy to me that a child presents with a fever and chills and the first thing you do here is prick his/her finger with a lancet to test the blood for plasmodium. Makes me think of biostatistics and specificity and sensitivity issues. Africa is just a different continental beast altogether. (Note to self: Norma recommended a Tropical Diseases book that I need to grab when I get back stateside.)
A woman presented with typhoid fever today too. It was mostly malaria though. Poor lethargic kids.

So more on what I've learned of the Kuku language thus far. When you greet someone with "Do parana'?" Their response is "Nan parana'" and then they ask you, "Do parana'?" To which you also reply "Nan parana'." And then I like to follow that up with "Tenate." (Thank you.) But apparently "Allobut" (I'm fine) is also appropriate.

Nyaju (nyarjo) = love (m)
Nyaret = love (f)
Katodinonit = my teacher (also the name given to Barbara by the pastor Stephen?s wife Betty)
A'nabut = good
Kwelken = beautiful (I think that spelling is correct. BJ has the paper where Stephen was translating for us)
Nan yella = I'm here.. I caught this one because everytime I showed a group of people the photo I had just taken, they'd point to the LCD screen and promptly cry out, "Nan yella!" with a smile and a laugh. Of course you aim your lens at them and immediately, the smiles disappear. It's as if they know what I've been teaching Evie and Caroline for the past few years. Except I want the Africans to smile. I love their smiles and greetings and waves and Kuku handshake dances.

I need to figure out "What is your name?" "My name is.." because that is inevitably what their next questions are after I greet them. I didn't write it down though. And that's a must for me if I'm going to attempt to learn their language.

And on the drive home from Sunyu, we passed a motorcycle with two guys and a hog tied down in one of their laps. Excellently awesome. Don't believe me? You're a jerk.

We spent the later part of the evening hanging out with Stephanie, an American missionary who lives with the Darfurian refugees. Her ministry is with the women from Darfur and her impact is simply incredible. You can literally see the hand of God on these women and their husbands. As we sat in the pitch black darkness of the African night in a circle among the Darfurians in their village, several of the men shared their testimonies. Yes, they used to kill people almost haphazardly. It was something they just did. Tribe against tribe, they've been pitted against one another. Adam (Kosar's husband) went to school for ten years to study the Koran before he began his studies in school. Nothing existed except for Islam. Not even a whisper or glimmer of hope of another way. It blows my mind. I think it was Stephanie who he met in Eritrea who first spoke of the Gospel with him. He thought of what he had been taught his entire life. He knew that what Stephanie was speaking must be Truth. Back in Darfur, everyone had already been sent to live in IDP camps (Internally Displaced People) in squalor. His brother, Allamadin, was the first to greet his brother Adam right before the call to prayer. Adam simply said to him not to go to prayer.. they had been wrong. His brother did not even question him knowing his understanding of the Koran surpassed everyone in his family. If his brother told him something was amiss, Allamadin believed him. They are living in Kajo-Keji to go to Bible school and prepare to bring the gospel back to Darfur, knowing full well they will be killed outright if/when they are caught. How's that for faith? Is my faith that resilient? Is yours?
They asked us what it was like to share the Gospel with our friends in America. When they asked what other religion existed aside from Christianity and Islam, they were incredulous by how much religious freedom exists in our country. We couldn't name them all. Islam is the ONLY thing they know in Darfur. All of Darfur. An area larger than France. Where the ruling people are supplied automatic weapons by the Arabs and government of Northern Sudan. It was a humbling history lesson tonight.