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Offering solace in South Sudan

Former nursing student volunteers with Doctors Without Borders
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Left: Ravi Jaipaul of Ponoka in front of the Medecins sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) office in South Sudan. Right: The ramshackle health facility where Ravi Jaipaul strives daily to contribute to the betterment of life for the unfortunate people of South Sudan.

Ravi Jaipaul of Ponoka is on a nine-month volunteer mission with the international charity Medecins sans Frontieres in the newly independent South Sudan. The below submitted article reflects how he contributes to the betterment of life of the needy in the war-torn country.

When Ravi Jaipaul opens his eyes to greet the day, they land on the straw-thatched roof of his tukul – a cone-shaped mud hut. It’s 7:30 a.m. and he’s already mentally running through the seemingly endless to-do list that comes with managing a 100-bed hospital in a South Sudan refugee camp. He has a lot on his mind – cholera, food insecurity (refugees have only received 10 days’ worth of food this month), and, of course, the country’s civil war.

Working with Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan may seem a world away from MacEwan University, where Ravi began his journey as a nursing student, but the connection isn’t as tenuous as one might think. Advocating for people facing adversity around the world was high on his agenda, even then – one of his many volunteer projects involved walking 300 kilometres from Calgary to Edmonton to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur.

“Providing healthcare for the most vulnerable populations in the world has always been a dream of mine, even when I was at MacEwan,” says Ravi. “In some ways, working in South Sudan is like coming full circle.”

Back at the refugee camp, Ravi gets ready for his day – using the communal latrine, cleaning up and heading off to share breakfast with his Kenyan, Ethiopian and international colleagues in a larger mud hut. Then, he begins the 200-metre walk to the hospital along a road lined with haphazardly constructed houses made out of wood and plastic sheeting.

The spirit and resilience of the dislocated people who live in these barren, but clean makeshift homes is one of the things that surprised Ravi the most. “It’s amazing how kind and respectful the refugees are. They clearly miss home and would like to go back, but they are so grateful and always willing to give you a smile and a wave.”

In over a month since taking on the role of managing the camp’s hospital, he’s seen many of these people in the series of semi-permanent structures with concrete floors and large mesh-net openings that make up the hospital’s emergency room, adult ward, pediatric unit, maternity unit and inpatient therapeutic feeding centre.

It’s here, at the centre that treats severely malnourished children, where a tiny one-year-old patient with sorrowful brown eyes and hair tinged orange from malnutrition stands out in Ravi’s mind.

“When I sat at her bed, she instinctively took my hand in hers, gave it her mightiest squeeze and looked up at me. Her hand was so small it barely took up half my palm. These are moments in life that stop your heart and strum your soul. In that moment, she reminded me that it’s always the people that make everything worthwhile.”

Although Ravi’s day is far from routine, it usually involves some combination of completing rounds with his staff of local nurses, working on schedules, helping out in the busiest wards when he can, preparing for the construction of a cholera treatment centre, transferring critical patients to the referral hospital 20 minutes away or visiting a satellite mobile clinic.

His workday officially ends at 7 p.m. with a daily security meeting, but Ravi and his colleagues remain on call at all times in case of emergency or staff shortages, and his radio is his constant companion.

While the job clearly isn’t for everyone, to Ravi, the nine-month Doctors Without Borders mission is a dream come true. “I’ve been chasing this goal for about half a decade. Working with refugees and with this organization is one of the most difficult, humbling and rewarding things I’ve ever done.”

Ravi says he has lots to do before his mission ends in January 2015, including facing one of his biggest challenges – patience. “I have a long list that I keep in my pocket with all of the things that I want to accomplish – reorganizing the emergency room cabinet, creating a training program for our ward assistants, developing referral guidelines for our satellite clinic – and it keeps growing all the time. I have to realize that it can’t all happen at once, remember that this is only my second month here and make sure to prioritize my work, focusing on the things that will positively affect patient care first.”

After all, Ravi says it’s seeing patients like the little malnourished one-year-old girl leave the hospital healthy that makes everything worthwhile.  “By the time she was discharged, she was plumped up and her hair was no longer than rust-malnutrition colour – she looked fantastic. I almost cried when she left.”