Awards

• Short-listed for John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize 2009
• Shortlisted for John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize 2009.
• Shortlisted for John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize 2009.

Overview

A young doctor in a war-torn Village in Sudan and the difficulties he and his fellow doctors had to face. A young doctor in a war-torn Village in Sudan and the difficulties he and his fellow doctors had to face. 'People are hungry to be brought closer to the world, even its hard parts. I went to Sudan, and am writing about it again, because I believe that which separates action from inaction is the same thing that separates me from my friends. It is not indifference. It is distance. May it fall away....' James Maskalyk set out for the contested border town of Abyei, Sudan, in 2007 as a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders/MSF) newest medical doctor in the field. Equipped with his experience as an emergency physician in a downtown hospital and his desire to understand the hardest parts of the world, Maskalyk's days were spent treating malnourished children, fending off a measles epidemic, and staying out of the soldiers' way. Worn raw in the struggle to meet overwhelming needs with inadequate resources, he returned home six months later more affected by the experience, the people, and the place, than he had anticipated. Six Months in Sudan began as a blog that he wrote from his hut in Sudan in an attempt to bring his family and friends closer to his hot, hot days. It is a story about humans- the people of Abyei who suffer its hardship because it is their home, and the doctors, nurses, and countless volunteers who leave their homes with the tools to make another's easier to endure. With great hope and insight, Maskalyk illuminates a distant place - its heat, its people, its poverty, its war - to inspire possibilities for action.

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9781863256889

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Reviews

A doctor's memoir expands on his blogs, written while he worked at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Sudan.In 2007, Maskalyk (Emergency Medicine/Univ. of Toronto) - young, single and willing to go to an isolated, dangerous place - arrived in Abyei, a small village where conflict between militias of North and South Sudan compounded the stresses of extreme poverty. Here, the author avoids the political story, concentrating instead on the human one. Just getting from Canada to Sudan was a test of patience and endurance, valuable traits for anyone charged with providing medical care under the conditions in Abyei. The hospital's job was to treat acute illness, but it was besieged with emergency cases as well - victims of gunshot wounds and car accidents, women in protracted labor, children with rabies. A measles epidemic began shortly after Maskalyk's arrival, adding to the usual cases of tuberculosis, pneumonia, infections and fevers. Not everyone could be treated - those with chronic or minor problems had to be turned away, and hunger and death were common. The author's own trials included brutal heat, sleeplessness and a pervading feeling of helplessness. Maskalyk alternates entries from his blog with more reflective chapters written after he returned to Canada. The blogs have been slightly edited but retain the syntax and general format of the original, which slows reading but lends his work a you-are-there immediacy. A few photographs bear out his descriptions of the conditions. More about the culture of the Dinka, the tribe that made up most of his patients, would have enhanced Maskalyk's account, but he could not speak their language - a translator accompanied him in the hospital - and he spent most of his nonworking hours inside the compound that he shared with his co-workers.A grim glimpse of stopgap measures in a world where humanity is desperately needed. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

James Maskalyk is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto, and editor of the medical journal Open Medicine. He lives in Toronto.

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