The Sandbox is the Same

Today we visited a horse therapy cerebral palsy rehabilitation centre for children and a leprosy treatment centre. A Dutch woman named Elsie, who works for the Leprosy Mission in Sudan, took us for a visit. A British woman, Jane-Ann, runs the cerebral palsy centre. She rescues and rehabilitates abused horses and uses them to help the rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy. She married a Sudanese man and settled in Khartoum with him and now spends her days running the centre with the help of her children. Women bring their children to the centre and they are put on the horses with someone to hold them and are walked around a corral. The movement of the horse is supposed to help them develop balance, posture, mobility, coordination, and strength.

Jane-Ann works hard to keep the place going and has plans for expanding the area to include better facilities for both the rehabilitation of the children and for the animals as well. She is 46 years old though and just found out that she is pregnant. Perfect timing just as her husband was planning on taking on a second wife, bad timing because the expansion of her centre might have to take a back seat. It is called a rehabilitation centre, but it is hardly what you would expect. No real building, just an open area with makeshift huts and corrals for the storage of horses and other animals. It was definitely not a rehabilitation centre by our standards. The sandbox is the same. I tried to teach the some of the kids to build a sand castle. Thank god no one took a close up of my sandcastle. I was invited back though so I’ll be given a chance to redeem myself.

We then went to a leprosy treatment centre. Again, by our standards it was not what you would expect. She gave us a tour of the place and told us a little bit about what goes on there. Apparently there is a huge stigma attached to leprosy. People do not seek treatment and ignore the symptoms sometimes before it is too late. Thus you see a lot of people missing hands and feet around the town. My initial thought was that this was due to landmine explosions in the areas where there has been war, or due to Sharia law which is Muslim law where punishment can be brutal, but I was told that this is likely due to leprosy. The treatment centre had an area for treatment, vaccination, and for the feeding of babies. Some of the women were breast feeding babies, others had a baby bottle hanging from the ceiling by a rope with a tube from the bottle into the child’s nose and throat.

It seems like there are babies everywhere. They are adorable. Sorry mom, I know you want me to bring one back, but that’s going to be a tough one. If I can figure it out, maybe I’ll bring back two, one for me and one for you.

Cheers,

Gonzo


A quick shot of where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet.