Rain

The raining season finally started in Nasir. Normally it's from May to September each year. But here when it rains, it rains really hard and usually comes with very strong wind to a degree like typhoon no. 8 or above in Hong Kong. So it's quite destructive to the town even though it's good for the agriculture. The first day when it rained hard, I was on call at the late evening and seeing patients in the child's ward; then the rain started suddenly with very strong and nonstop thunder and lightning for almost two hours. As our buildings have "windows" high up in the ward to facilitate ventilation so all the rain and wind were coming in from that "windows" and every one need to cover themselves and their child with blankets or plastic sheets whichever they have. Then 2 tents for temporary wards were blown down in that period with those patients going into the permanent one for shelter. After that the rain lessen a bit but it comes and goes for almost five days and now everywhere is muddy. The moment I step out of my tukul it's already mud so even though our living compound is right next to the hospital, we need to have rain boots to walk through the mud and change to slippers or clean shoes when we go into the wards or operating theatre. Just imagine the same situation all over the town and the area, which would make road access difficult not to mention the people here are mostly walking on their foot and quite often bare footed. As for outside connection, the so call airstrip here is really just a straight mud path inside the town that's long enough for taking off and landing, so after rain, the muddy condition is completely unsuitable for landing and our referral from neighboring areas can not reach us, and it would be a pity and disaster to them. As for us, our supply may not reach us on time and anyone going in and out need to wait for the weather to turn good before they can take flight so that's the situation right now as one of our teammate is trapped here for five days after his end of mission with three attempts on the flight schedule. Without the rain or less rain like last year, there are only minimal crops grew successfully and the people is suffering from food shortage this year but after the heavy rain, all sorts of diseases soar up, like gastroenteritis, malaria and skin Infection and abscess due to the poor hygiene and more mosquito populations; besides we start to have more snake bites as the snake escape from their underground hidings during the flood after the rain and some of our patients are in real bad condition with bleeding tendency and swelling of almost the whole body. Here anti venom serum is usually not available as it's expensive and difficult to store and of course it may cause allergic reaction that might be fatal. So we can just give supportive treatment for these victims. What a hard life for the people here in South Sudan!