our new sudanese friends

we had our friends ajack and jacob over for supper last night. i have gotten to know these guys fairly well over the past month and a bit as we spend a lot of time together in the hospital. unfortunately their time at kapsowar is at a close and we are getting 2 new arrivals in 2 weeks.

ajack and jacob were both born in the sudan, educated in cuba and eventually given canadian citizenship, only to give up this winning lottery ticket in order to return to the sudan and help their countrymen. they both have amazing life stories; ajack was one of the young boys you may have heard about who walked clear across the sudan to attain the comparitive safety of an ethiopian refugee camp. last week i was lending jacob some movies to watch... knowing his history i cautioned him that "blood diamond" was fairly violent and featured scenes involving child soldiers. jacob looked at me incredulously and laughed, "man, i WAS a child soldier!" i tried to explain that this is precisely why i was concerned, but jacob shrugged me off, stating that nothing scares him anymore (and he loved the movie - thumbs up from an informed critic).

perhaps some background is in order at this point. as you probably know, sudan has been torn apart by civil war between the muslim north and christian south for many years. as is the case in many african conflicts, this one took the form of mass genocide and looting of the weaker ethnic group by the more powerful one (in this case the north). this genocide created a generation of orphans who began to fend for themselves as early as age 6 - 9 (the younger kids died and the older ones were conscripted to fight) in a country with no infrastructure to speak of, much less a social safety net.

the kids (and some families) who survived were mostly contained in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, unable to return to their old home and prohibited from integrating into their new one. fidel castro personally invited 600 sudanese refugee kids to come to cuba to be educated there, with the intent of returning to their home country to put the education to good use. cuba is actually somewhat of an educationally ambassadorial country; in addition to having free public education and the highest literacy rate in the world, cuba accepts orphans and refugees from many developing countries in africa, asia and south america and provides them with a free education and institutional upbringing. the idea is that these children are to take the knowledge given to them and bring it back to help their home country.

in the sudanese' case however, the first cohort of children finished their education and were sent back to sudan, only to be conscripted into the army and killed, or avoid the army and be killed anyways. bearing this in mind, the govt of cuba decided that it would stop sending its sudanese kids back to the sudan, but this left them in a quandary. no one had passed through official channels to get to cuba, they had just been loaded on a plane and flown over. they had no immigration papers and no passports. sudan was not an option, no other african nation would accept them, and they could not leave cuba by any legal means.

an appeal was made to the UN and eventually all the remaining cuban educated sudanese were accepted into canada and given canadian passports. however their education was not recognized and they were forced to take menial jobs in canada in order to survive and to send money to their siblings in the sudan.

30 of the original group of 600 had been educated as doctors, but had not been able to practice in cuba or in canada. they were working in auto parts factories, as meat packers (many of them in brooks!) and as care aids. however they still felt strongly the ethos that had been drilled into them as they were growing up in cuba... this gift of education was meant to benefit their brothers and sisters back home. one enterprising young man got in touch with samaritan's purse in canada and explained their situation. after some thought, prayer, fundraising and planning, 16 of the 30 medical doctors were gathered together in calgary to undergo retraining under the "sudanese medical reintegration program" spearheaded by samaritan's purse.

see how being a preceptor has changed me?
just kidding! this is paul, an american doc and the father of the 2 beautiful girls in our easter post.

after 1 year of academic work at the U of C, it was time for these partially retrained docs to gain some field experience. they were sent to kenya to begin 1 year rotating internships in hospitals that practiced similar medicine to that which they would be doing in the sudan. this brings us back to ajack and jacob: they were sent out here to kapsowar for their first 6 months and at the end of april they are heading to kijabe hospital near nairobi for the final 6 months of their training. it has been a pleasure to get to know these 2 men, and a fantastic learning experience for me. in the first 2 weeks i think that they taught me more than i taught them, as i was constantly peppering them with questions about their time in sudan and in cuba, and about the political situation and medical situation in both those countries.

i have tried to step up my own teaching in the past 3 weeks as i realized that my remaining time with them is short and they have a lot to learn. we are soon getting 2 new sudanese interns who have been in kijabe for the past 6 months but they will have their work cut out for them trying to replace ajack and jacob in this hospital.

as mentioned in a previous post, we attended ajack's birthday party a few weeks ago. he was asked to give a speech, but deferred until after dinner citing time constraints. he claimed his speech would be about 45 minutes. we thought this was a pretty funny joke until he actually started his talk after dinner. he opened with a synopsis of the exploits of marco polo and segued into a brief history lesson involving christopher colombus' journeys and initial exploration of cuba before really reaching the body of his story. one part of his journey that may resonate with all you canadians was his description of stepping off the plane from cuba onto the tarmac at edmonton international airport in windy cold november and knowing that THIS was his new home. he claimed with all his life experiences, this was one of the hardest to bear!

the interesting thing about this speech (aside from its content of course) was the rapt attention it was given by all attending. not just polite attention either; when ajack speaks, people listen. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that at the same age that i was first enrolling in city soccer leagues ajack was walking across a desert, and by the time i was writing reports on the peigan natives in grade 5 he was boarding a plane to cross an ocean to an unknown country.

as mentioned earlier, jacob spent much of his early life as a child soldier. while over for dinner he was telling us how he got onto the plane to cuba. as a soldier, he was not an official resident of the refugee camp, but he was friends with many who were. for some months before, cuban teachers had been working in the camps teaching spanish. they picked out those who showed the most promise and placed them on a list to go to cuba. jacob was friends with one boy who thought he may be on the list but did not want to leave the camp. on the day the officials were handing out the plane tickets jacob happened to be around. when they called his friend's name and his friend did not come forward, jacob (on the spur of the moment) handed his AK47 to a neighbour, put up his hand and walked forward to collect the ticket. despite the fact that he could have been jailed for this deception, and even though the officer handing him the ticket knew perfectly well that jacob was not the one being called forward, he was allowed onto the plane and had only to endure being called bole until he had arrived and registered in cuba.

wow, i will really miss both of these guys. i feel privileged to have been a brief part of their education and i hope that our relationship will continue. i also look forward to meeting the new interns who are arriving soon, as we will be here for their entire rotation. working in a hospital you get to know people pretty quickly, especially when their role is to shadow you. there are many hallway strolls and tea breaks in which to discuss various issues, and the walls tend to come down when you are working together in the middle of the night. ajack and jacob, may God bless you in the last phase of your formal education, and be with you as you venture back to your homeland to finally complete the circle you initially envisioned.