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Martha and I strike a deal soon after first meeting. The Sudanese nurse will teach me to carry something (anything) on my head and I, the American from headquarters, will teach her to ride a bicycle. In the southern Sudan town of Tambura we make this pact during a pre-dusk walk, one of many that will allow me to learn this woman’s amazing story.
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Originally from the town of Akobo, in the eastern Upper Nile region of southern Sudan, Martha’s story is emblematic of millions of her countrymen and women. Violent conflict forced her family to flee Akobo in 1983 at the beginning of Sudan’s second civil war, which killed approximately 1.9 million persons and displaced 4 million others. (To put those numbers in perspective, imagine the entire state of New Mexico dead and all of Ireland emptied, respectively.) Martha was six or seven at the time and spent her formative years in an Itang refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. She had plenty of company; by 1990, an estimated 240,000 Sudanese refugees called Itang home. A lull in fighting encouraged Martha and her family to return home to Akobo for a period in the early 1990’s.
If I arrived in Sudan with an image of its people in mind, Martha fits the bill. She’s tall with a slender frame that, on first appearance, belies her strength. As we walk our borrowed bicycles down Tambura’s dusty street toward the airstrip, I wonder aloud how Martha made the leap from erstwhile refugee to skilled and educated nurse.
Thanks to the bits and pieces of English she had picked up in a refugee school in Itang, Martha quickly secured work with NGOs working in her hometown. “At that time I really decided to become a nurse because I saw many people suffering and not many who could speak English,” she tells me. “I decided to be a nurse when I realized I was helpful to them.”
However, in order to best help her family – which included her father, mother, two other wives and 24 children – Martha left Sudan again in 1997 to seek a higher wage in Kenya. While she was away, fighting near Akobo became too fierce and resources too scarce, prompting her family to flee once more. To this day, Martha has seen neither parent nor most of her siblings. She’s unsure of their fate. “By now if they are alive they are probably in Ethiopia,” she says.
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Though soft-spoken, Martha’s eyes speak volumes, especially on the subject of family. Albeit far from her home in Upper Nile, Martha gladly returned to southern Sudan with IMC in January 2006, after earning a diploma in Uganda and working as a nurse in Kenya. Currently stationed with International Medical Corps in Western Equatoria State, on Sudan’s western borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, Martha is helping to implement IMC’s primary health care programs for people who have gone without access to vital health services for decades.
“I decided to work with IMC because it is a medical organization and I want to continue with my talent of being a nurse. I was also very happy to work in South Sudan to help my people. What knowledge I have, I should share it with them.”
Our conversation shifts as we arrive at Tambura’s red dirt airstrip. It’s the only straight, level, and pothole-free stretch of road in the entire county; the perfect spot to learn to ride. Drawing on childhood memories of my father teaching me, I instruct Martha to keep her eyes fixed on the road ahead and to focus on her balance as I hold the back of her bike and push her along. In no time we become the main attraction. Men, women and children stop to give advice and to encourage Martha. When my arms tire of holding her bike, two young children who have been tailing us quickly jump in to take my place.
It’s really not that different from what Martha and her IMC colleagues do on a daily basis, as they work to advance and improve the skills of counterpart Sudanese health staff. Though the task of rebuilding southern Sudan after decades of civil war is daunting, Martha is optimistic. “I personally think the future of South Sudan will be bright,” she tells me as we take a break from the bicycle lesson. “The future will be very beautiful, Inshallah, God-willing.”
As we stand by the side of the airstrip, two women carrying thatch approach and Martha reminds me of my half of our pact. I beg for a one-day reprieve, which is granted. But those hard-working women have got me thinking, and I pose a question that’s been needling me: what does she think about the role of women in rebuilding southern Sudan? “Women in the New South Sudan will never be the same way they used to be. This is the time to empower the women in decision making and their own right of choices. And this is the time to have gender balance – on both sides – men and women equally in education and business and leadership.”
Martha’s enthusiasm is infectious and, though I’m sure it will be an uphill battle to rebuild the country, provide adequate health services, earn parity for women and so much more, knowing Martha’s own story I can’t help but share her optimism. As if on cue, Martha stands, stretches, and gets back up on her bike. Refreshingly unabashed in the face of trying and failing, stopping and starting, Martha keeps getting back up on her bike again, and again.
