Reflections on Sudan

In January 2005, World Harvest Mission leaders meeting in Kenya set a goal of placing at least one team in a different African country by 2008. Sudan topped the list of potential new sites.

Robert Carr, Michael Masso, Kim Stampalia and I (Scott) recently completed a 1000 mile sojourn through southern Sudan visiting four other Christian ministries spanning four distinct southern Sudanese States.

Southern Sudan, the largest country in Africa, sprawls on a seemingly endless scale. The landscape, a homogenous flat scrubby terrain, thinly populated, is sprinkled with circular mud and thatch huts and studded with the occasional herd of cattle.

We arrived in dry season heat. With temperatures nearing 100 degrees F (and mercifully low humidity) we sweat continuously, drank and bathed frequently. The tall, rail thin Sudanese seem not to sweat or notice the heat. They walk briskly, efficiently, covering dozens of kilometers per day. We’ve heard the average walking time to a water point –a drilled borehole with a hand pump—is about 1.5 hours. These wells are usually the only water source in dry season. When the rains arrive dry stream beds fill, but that surface water may kill since almost no one digs or uses pit latrines.

The rainy season arrived with force six days into our trip. Drenching, driving nearly horizontal thunderstorms pour water into every conceivable dry spot leaving slippery mud and broad shallow pools everywhere. The sandy soil slowly soaks it up, but the humidity and moisture wakes the dormant larva of every imaginable insect. “Sudan is an incredibly harsh environment.” -- Dave Mueller, one of our missionary hosts (Werkok, Sudan) who knows the definition of “harsh” from his 17 years of missionary service in Papua New Guinea.

Wherever we went, people wanted to hear first not from me (the doctor) or from our Regional Director, but from our water engineer. It costs ~$10,000 to drill an equip a deep water borehole – 70 meters down – through mud which often collapses. Many aging hand pumps desperately need repair by skilled hands with the right parts.

On the side of health, most people receive meager medical care by minimally trained Community Health Workers. In two states we visited only three doctors served in each state, making the doctor-to-patient ratio about 300,00: 1. Many women must be dying in the village from childbirth related causes in light of the almost complete lack of transportation, communication, and extremely limited surgical obstetric services.

The needs of the Sudanese who have been at war for most of the last 50 years boggle the mind:

Roads impassable in much of the country for 6 months of the year due to rain.

The enormity of the country with the population thinly distributed and towns widely scattered.
Nearly complete lack of electricity, radio and phone service.

Continuing efforts of the northern gov’t to destabilize the southern rebuilding process by promoting tribalism through the supply of arms to rebel factions.


Heat, insects, lack of supplies and an inflationary economy.

The challenges tempt one to despair. Where, with whom, how will WHM begin a work in Sudan? Even after a 10 day exploratory trip, the answers to those questions remain unclear.


“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
--Matthew 9: 37-38


“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
--Mark 8:35

So, please pray with us for faith, courage, wisdom and God’s leading.