Greenman Back From Fangak

January 25, 2007
By Greta Sproul

When Old Town resident John Greenman flew to Sudan last November, it wasn’t the first time that he had made a voluntary trip to a part of the world known almost exclusively for its lack of what most westerners consider necessary components of life.

Sudan, a Northern African country that lies between Egypt and Eritrea and borders the Red Sea, has a history of civil war, chronic political instability, and economic difficulties. Over 80 percent of its population subsists on wages made from the agricultural industry, either directly or in the factories that process agricultural items, and but recent declining annual rainfall has created a downturn in the country’s economics. Although North and South Sudan have signed a treaty intended to start the easing of civil unrest between the two regions, recent development of oil fields in South Sudan have created new tension based on the northern part of the country’s unwillingness to relinquish a potentially lucrative new industry.

            But for Greenman, who credits at least some of his current global philosophy to having read “The Ugly American” while attending Minnesota’s Carleton College in the 60s, the desire to contribute positively to third world cultures has always been at the top of his personal agenda. A former president of CISV (Children’s International Summer Villages), he has visited China with his family and many other places that have inspired him to continue his efforts to reach out to other cultures.

            “I had always been very interested in working with the Peace Corps, but that didn’t happen,” Greenman said. “So when my career started winding up, I began looking for ways in which I could channel my interest in doing aid work.”

            One of the ways that Greenman discovered was the “Doctors Without Borders”, “an independent international medical/humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from healthcare in more than 70 countries.”

            “I’d always been interested in ‘Doctors Without  Borders’ and so I applied for a position at MSF, and then I interviewed in New York,” he said. “I was told that ‘we don’t take inexperienced people’, which is a real catch-22. I was told that they couldn’t recommend me to a particular place, but that I was free to talk with Dr. Liz Weiss, who put me in touch with another doctor, Jill Seaman, who was just about to leave for her annual trip to Sudan and likes to have someone with her when she’s there.”

            Greenman e-mailed Seaman, a prominent doctor who has chosen for the last several years to spend a portion of her year treating the medical needs of the people of Fangak. After his initial “e-mail” introduction, he spoke with her by phone, working out the details of the trip. Among the things that they discussed were the politics and inter-tribal issues in and around Fangak, the village to whose inhabitants Seaman provided medical assistance.

            “It’s been a very insecure region for decades,” Greenman said. “It really hasn’t been able to progress, but in the last two years the North and South have signed the peace agreement that is supposed to allow the people to decide by popular vote whether the South will become its own nation by 2011.”

            After his indoctrination into Sudanese politics, Greenman had a few more hurdles to overcome before boarding the plane that would take him to Fangak. Along with getting his visa and ticket in order, he had to undergo an inoculation process that was, he says, “a process.” He needed three successive rabies shots that had to be administered on a rigidly scheduled basis and couldn’t leave for the Sudan until he had received the last of the three shots. He finally received the necessary shot on Nov. 10 and left for Sudan the next day.

            “Dr. Jill had given me a list of things she wanted me to buy in Naroibi, Kenya,” he said.  “One of those things was a solar-powered refrigerator. In fact, one of the things that I was going there to do was to help her set up the refrigerator and make sure it was working.”

            Greenman ordered the solar-powered refrigerator and waited for it to catch up with him in Locachogo (or “Loki” in local parlance), which he says is the “jumping off point” for all aid going to Sudan. When it didn’t arrive after four or five nights, he headed for Fangak without it. On his arrival, he met not only Seaman, but members of the Camboni Brothers, a monastic order from Italy whose members engage in humanitarian work around the world.

            In one of the e-mail “updates” that Greenman sent home to his wife during his stay in Fangak, he wrote “ Now, after a night under the stars inside my mosquito tent, under 2 blankets (got down to about 50), I’m starting to find my way around and to learn people’s names. Jill has several people who work with her…male nurses she gives classes to so they’ll be able to take over clinic functions in the area, and women who help with cooking, fetching water from a bore hole well a distance away, and cleaning. So far I’ve cut and placed heavy plastic sheeting on a latrine door and cut a latrine platform so it will fit around the vent pipe near the hole. I’ve set up and run Jill’s new printer and had a tour of most of Fangak, an old British garrison town with vestiges of the colonial times still standing (the old prison building are near our compound). In an hour or two I’ll be helping to pass out plastic buckets and blankets to the TB patients. Jill said that “Tall Peter” will help me to make sure that only those whose charts are up to date (that their treatment is current) get their (medicine).

He added that the African night sky was very dramatic, with no distracting lights to dim the stars. Night sounds made it hard to fall asleep. He recalls hearing drumming and animal noises emanating from the darkness. But the daytime was reserved for work.

“My job was to do things that needed to get done, but that (Jill) couldn’t do,” he said. “I was given a list of chores that included cutting strips of black plastic to create a door for the toilet, making screens out of chicken wire and wood…we had to find the wood first.”

            Greenman says that he and the others didn’t work in the middle of the day because of the heat and dust stirred up by the wind. They ate around 3:00 p.m. every afternoon, fed by a woman who prepared the food after carrying out her own daily duties at the clinic. Food staples were rice, beans, canned peas, sweet corn, carrots, and onions, as well as some cabbages and potatoes that Greenman brought along with him. Meat wasn’t on the menu at all, which suited Greenman, who describes himself as a “partial vegetarian.” Water was a community affair, the locals drinking only filtrated water which they paid a local woman to collect 20-40 gallons every day. Non-filtrated water was used for washing dishes and hands.

            “The third or fourth day that I was in Fangak, I experienced stomach upset from exposure to the river water,” Greenman said. “But that’s very common and happens to everyone. Once your system adjusts, it seems to be fine.”

            Greenman’s system did adjust, but six weeks into his stay in Fangak, he had an Epiphany that “I wasn’t as resilient as I used to be.” He was having a hard time adapting to the dust and the heat, and realized that he might have overestimated his ability to withstand the day to day grind of the situation. After discussing the situation with Seaman and others, he made the decision to return home earlier than he had planned.

            “I was supposed to stay until February,” he said. “But Jill and I decided that I would only stay in Fangak until the next person arrived to take my place.”

            In an interesting twist, it was just as Greenman was departing Fangak that the charter plane carrying the solar-powered refrigerator arrived. He had remained in touch with Seaman, he says, and hopes that she will be able to maintain her role as a medical provider in Fangak.

            “She thinks of her main practice in Bethel, Alaska as her ‘part-time job’,” he said. “She just does it to earn the money she needs to keep going back to Sudan.”

            Greenman says that anyone interested in helping to support Seaman’s work should visit www.sudantbproject.org for information on how to do it. For his part, he adds that he wanted to share the details of his trip to Sudan in the hope of getting across what he considers an important message.

            “I want people to know that they can do things to help others,” he said. “There are ways to be of help in the world. People just need to be aware of what they can do.”

            Greenman quotes a passage from “Tuesdays With Morrie”, the book he is currently reading, to help sum up his thoughts on “commitment.”

            ‘So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.’  

“For now, my community is the world, but I know that as I age, my community will shrink,” he said.