Thanks, for a first-hand account of that sad place.
You put light, yet again, on the low status of women in the community. And again, it raises questions in my mind.
What is there in the Sudan that enables their menfolk, taken as a job-lot, to have a multiplicity of wives?
There does not seem to be "something in the water" ensuring an imbalance towards female infants - life expectancy at birth, as at 2003, was estimated to be 56 years for males and 58 for females.
If there is such a high level of male multi-skilling in the marital stakes, then there must be a corresponding level of connubially-deficient chaps. Or an equivalence of women working more than one shift.
But, however it works, fecundity is king. Forty-five percent of the population is below the age of 15. Every woman has an average of 5.5 children. The population, at present rate of increase, will double in 25 years. So what, if physically still-developing child brides suffer the agony of fistula - under the current system the husband can discard the now-unappealing child and take another. And the country will remain on target for its projected 84 million by 2050; no doubt to the joy of the Vatican and George W. Bush's fundamentalist Christian supporters.

So an article that has left most speechless? Entrenched cultural habits, foreign and 'barbaric' to us comfortable Westerners, are only part of the equation that explains the suffering that abounds and that the author has the courage to assist with.

More strength to those who attempt to relieve such misery. I hang my head in shame for the little that I do...

Thanks so much for sharing your personal insight, your knowledge, your experience. Keep safe. Jennifer

Dear Alberta,
I got to read your article when a friend sent it on. I recently spent time in Samoa and thought conditions, medically, were bad there. Hey it really seems like heaven compared to the Sudan. We continue on at Dunheved. I need to catch up with your doings from Stuart. Keep safe,
Janet Beale (nee Summers).

A very informative and moving article from someone in a very dangerous situation.