so little water. it hasn’t rained here for two years. we get ours from boreholes dug deep in the dirt, metres down where hidden lakes hover between layers of clay. we bring them to the top, hold them in tanks, high in the air and let them fall, chlorinated, into our cups, onto our hot backs. one of the tanks is down so that its platform might be rustproofed, and last evening, at dusk, i climbed it and watched wind whip dust into tight swirling dervishes until there were ten at one time, scattered and spinning across the horizon.
i sat there, smoking, and thinking about smoking, watching my breath trail away with the wind. i had started by having a cigarette only on saturdays. wednesdays and saturdays. and since fridays were pretty much little saturday, those too. now, at the end of each day, i buy one “sportsman” cigarette from the canteen, climb the steel ladder, dangle my legs through the aluminum bars, and gape at the wide outside beyond our barbed walls.
children play football, their kicking scrum disappears in a cloud of sand until the ball emerges with a pock, and the players race after it, their footstrikes smoking on the flat ground. in the trees, their bright clothes hang on branches, swatches of color caught in a sharp needled net.
beyond, camels amble through the barren trees, bend their long knees to take a single leaf that the other may have missed. goats move past, sweeping the ground for the same mistake, moving in mass past our gate, a bleating army, the cloud of dust settling with their trailing yells.
a car in the distance bumps between trees and past donkey carts, filled to bursting with lucky passengers, destination unknown. above, a sliver of a moon, and near it, a glinting planet, hundreds of thousand kilometers distant. the wind reaches me, finally, and the red of my cigarette glares harshly.
pling…..pling…..pling. someone on the steel ladder.
a hand, then a head, then a hope-you-weren’t-looking-for-some-quiet-time, look. of course not, come on up. the more the merrier.
the thing about the deep desert heat is the true pleasure you take from the laziest breeze, a tingle of delight spreading from the hairs on your arm to the nape of your neck. such full experience of things that might otherwise be ignored when your familiar register is taken away. the slightest wind, a piece of orange, or 30 seconds of quiet, watching the world.
soon, there are seven of us, starfished on our backs, watching the stars blink into black patches of sky. someone brings up a tray of cheese left behind by some journalists, another some chocolate. we talk, and smoke, and wonder what to say next that is not about work when here, that is all there is.
I wrote this for my parents who said that I should spend some time describing for young doctors what life is like here. it is like that. you find ways to get through, and even though they might not seem particularly special at the time, they are, and they keep you coming back.
the rest are details (room four metres by four metres on whose walls I’ve drawn pictures of birds, more than a hundred people in similar rooms, some sharing, it’s never quiet, food’s made for you, camel every dinner, breakfast always thin pancakes and fried dough, your clothes are washed and dry in the sun, squat latrines, shared showers, radios crackle all over the compound, and you live for your work, and outside of your room, you never get a moment of privacy except, sometimes for those 30 seconds, watching the wind whip the earth into spiral shapes all along the water tower).
Beautiful. Beautiful, and inspiring, and I want to go, I want to go, I want to go.
Hi Dr. Maskalyk,
You probably remember this about being in school, but I’m finding that it’s difficult to keep up on current events and not entirely lose perspective when there are so many books to read and projects to be done! I happened to find your blog earlier tonight while I was trying to catch up on some current events/world news and very much enjoyed reading your entries. So, I wanted to say thanks for posting these for all of us to enjoy and learn from.
My Dad is a Family Practice Doc, now working ER’s, but right after he graduated Med School he did something very similar for a while in Swaziland. He doesn’t really talk about it much so reading about your experiences helps me understand a bit more about what his may have been like; it has been fascinating and thought provoking.
I don’t know if you respond to these comments at all but I did have a question… At some points in your entries it seems like the situation might be overwhelmingly hopeless and frustrating, what is it that keeps you going? How do you keep from getting discouraged?
I hope to follow along and learn through some of your experiences in the future as well. And thanks again, for helping some of us learn from things we may never have the privilege (or challenge) of facing ourselves.
Sara
hi dr. james!
I just finished reading six months in sudan for a school assignment and I absolutely loved reading about a Canadian, who lives so close to me who does such great things. I’ve always thought about being a doctor and doing these types of things, and your courage has given me the will to do it and not be scared. Part of our assignment was to meet the person who wrote the book and ask them 10 questions. I guess this is impossible since your on a mission but I hope to meet you sometime in my lifetime.
Thank you for inspiring me.
nicole :)
I am so glad you are witing again-Your words form such a vivid picture that I, frozen praire dweller that I am, can almost feel the hot wind. But- Hey- whats with the smoking so much ? You know that your Grade 3 fear that I would die, (generated in Science class when your teacher blew cigarette smoke though a Kleenex and said that the tar you saw ruined the lungs of every smoker ) is what gave me the drive to finally quit. So-o, when you get to Ethiopia, please ? We are all well here-dad and I are taking Vic & Shirley out to see the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Roualt Brothers – a concert with cabaret seating- for their 44th anniversayr on Saturday. Adrienne is count ing each day left in her maternity leave as precious and Dan is working way too hard.
Love you,
Mom
It is nice to get a little glimpse of what it’s like to live there and help people.
I’m so glad to see you’re blogging again. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
This is amazing work you are doing. This entry is so real and raw, I will personally be following this blog and will tell others from the company I work at (HealthAngle) and friends to check this out. Its truly inspiring.
Hi James
I love your blogs, I followed you to Sudan, Aweil 2009, and you followed me to Dagahaley 2010. You remind me of my passion and my privilege.
Please keep writing!
Cheers, Janine