Ron has brought back lots photos and video from his trip to Sudan, and we're editing as fast as we can. Here is a video that you'll find on our YouTube channel featuring the brickmakers of Wunlang Clinic.

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Shot by Angelo Ngong Kiir, it's terrific -- workers singing a love song as they haul mud, manure being chopped, bricks being mixed and dried. The rows and rows of bricks you see will soon stand as a clinic. Be sure to follow our progress.

Dr. Luka is from the village of Gordhiim, not far from Wunlang. He runs a medical clinic for the poor in Mabil – a distance of about 3 hours by foot. Angelo and I met with him in January, and we are delighted to report that Dr. Luka will supervise the Wunlang Clinic, now under construction.

Dr. Luka was educated and received his medical degree in Egypt. He lived as a refugee in London for a while at the start of the last civil war, but he was called back during the war because of the great need for medical doctors. He has lived and practiced medicine in Aweil East County in southern Sudan for many years, in wartime and in peace, caring for the wounded and sick, both soldiers and civilians. Before the war, he worked at Wau hospital.

With his many years of experience in local medicine and treating diseases in remote villages in southern Sudan, we are extremely grateful to have Dr. Luka supervising the Wunlang clinic. His conscientious practice and care has helped curtail the spread of disease and provided treatments for the ill in the communities served by his clinic. No medical practitioner knows rural medicine in southern Sudan better than Dr. Luka.

Dr. Luka’s clinic in Mabil is supported by Christian Solidarity International based in Zurich, Switzerland. CSI has provided humanitarian support and rescue missions in southern Sudan for a number of years.

Dr. Luka has provided us with a plan for staffing and supplying the Wunlang Clinic. The plan includes an inventory of medical supplies needed for a year of operations - appropriate for the types of services Wunlang Clinic will offer. It also includes nurse and support staff requirements for the clinic, and a strategy for appealing to both government and private funders for operational support. He has recommended Arkangelo Biet to us as the head nurse. I met him while I was in Aweil, and Arkangelo has agreed to work in the clinic as well as to train others on our clinic’s staff. (I will write a separate blog post about Arkangelo.)

On Dr. Luka’s recommendation, we have registered the Wunlang Clinic with the Ministry of Health to ensure the clinic is on their list for distribution of medicines they provide. We will keep them updated as construction progresses and we transition into operations. Dr. Luka also feels we should try to get a vehicle to transport the seriously sick and emergency cases that cannot be treated in Wunlang. This is essential because today many people die trying to walk to his clinic or the nearest hospital in Aweil.

Dr. Luka has an international reputation as an excellent doctor for rural populations, and we are grateful that the Wunlang clinic will be under his supervision.

Ron's most recent e-mail is titled, "Traditional Birth Attendants of Wunlang." He writes:
"This is one of my favorite moments from my visit to Wunlang. These women sat with us and were as articulate as the men in our meeting with the elders, committee leaders, and village administrators. They spoke of how eager they are to get further training and to continue their services in the Wunlang clinic when it is built. There is no question, the women of Wunlang are engaged and are advocating for their own needs."

A load of dung is usually the cause for juvenile jokes, but here in Wunlang, it is a vital part of our effort to build a clinic.

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This truckload of cattle manure from the Wunlang cattle camp, mixed with the clay from the soil and fired, became part of the 70,000 bricks our teams have made for Wunlang Clinic.



Village Help for South Sudan hired the driver, who complained about the condition of, or lack of, roads, but made the delivery anyway.

When we say we use local labor and local materials, we mean it!

Those were the highlights for this blogger upon reviewing the current expense sheet for the construction of Wunlang Clinic. Three teams of workers have made more than 70,000 bricks, and we've paid their wages and transportation costs for water and cow dung (an important component in locally-fired bricks). The expenses have also included one goat "offered to laborers" as part of the ceremony opening the beginning of construction. This isn't just a job, it's cause for celebration.

The work continues, and we'll post photos as soon as they become available.

Angelo just e-mailed us that the brickmaking has started. We'll post photos and/or video of the brickmaking for the Wunlang Health Clinic as soon as we have it. But we can imagine the same activity as for Wunlang School: women pumping water, men mixing and molding bricks, the wet bricks stacked to form their own kiln, the firebox stoked with wood, the fired bricks laid out. Making bricks and jobs and hope and health in Wunlang.

The negotiations for brickmaking for Wunlang Clinic are concluded. Yel and Angelo have been e-mailing estimates for the cost of firewood, jerrycans, and water fetchers. Ron has transferred money for brickmaking from our American account to our account in Juba, and Jackson will make sure it reaches t the contractors safely.

"Water fetchers" caught my eye in the list of budget items. We hired villagers to make the bricks for Wunlang School, and it was the first paid employment there ever. Providing jobs for the people of Wunlang meant that families could buy food to tide them over during the gap between one harvest and the next. We're committed to that approach. We're so happy that the very act of building Wunlang Clinic will raise the income, and from there the nutrition, and from there the health, of the families of Wunlang, even before the clinic opens.