Seeds for Sudan’s survival, recovery

By Bill Deans

Amid the news stories of Sudan’s political unrest, instability and ongoing economic hardships, we rarely get a glimpse of this nation’s people and how they have been impacted. Devastated by decades of violence, famine, genocide, persecution and disease, so many Sudanese people are without basic human needs of food, water, shelter, clothing and medicine.

While pundits theorize and criticize Sudan’s government and politics, or lack thereof, the Sudanese people continue to suffer the consequences. Above all else, the critical needs of the men, women and children in this desperate place should be foremost in our minds.

I have come to understand the deep-rooted political, cultural and religious divides in Sudan and the complexities of the nation’s government and politics which have left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more displaced, hungry, sick and poor. But I believe that if we focus on caring for people and helping to meet their basic needs, we can plant seeds of change and transformation in their hearts.

Already, I have seen this approach begin to take root. As a volunteer with Mustard Seed International, a relief ministry that operates the Akot Medical Mission in South Sudan, deemed by the native people as one of the best medical facilities in all of Sudan, I have seen and heard first-hand the unbelievable suffering and witnessed miraculous resilience in their lives.

Recently, 101 cataract surgery procedures were performed at the Akot Medical Mission, restoring sight to people who, just days before, had no possibility of ever seeing again. Can you imagine what this act of compassion meant to those receiving the surgery, how it will change their lives and the lives of those who love them?

In early January, I traveled with a small team of Akot Medical Mission staff to a remote area of the bush. At that time, most of the local Sudanese had fled their mud huts and villages due to an outbreak of factional fighting. In the midst of such circumstance, people still get sick and babies continue to be born. In a part of the world where the infant mortality rate is staggeringly high and numerous people don’t have access to an actual doctor, our staff was compelled to do something rather than just leave these desperate people to suffer even more. On that day, our team set up under a tree and began treating more than a hundred people, several needing to be transported back to the mission for in-patient care. One of those was a critically ill, one-month-old baby who would not have survived without the immediate treatment provided in the hospital setting.

I have learned that when you can meet someone’s most basic physical need, like medical care for a mother’s dying baby, mosquito netting to prevent malaria, and food or clean drinking water, you empower them with perhaps the most essential need of all -
hope. Just as much as food and water, hope may very well be that which the Sudanese hunger and thirst for the most.

At Akot, when we treat people and give them medicine, they walk away healthier but also more whole, with some understanding that God loves and cares for them amid the pain, hunger, drought and violence to which they are so accustomed. We are privileged to be one of many organizations in Sudan working to help the afflicted people there. We may never be able to fix the political and economic infrastructure of Sudan, but its people are in need of hope – something we can provide.

Bill Deans serves as the president of Mustard Seed International (MSI), a relief ministry that cares for suffering people in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Eastern Europe.