Samuel reports from Yirol

Monique Doyle Spencer files this report from Samuel on his first trip under the auspices of the Bucket Brigade, a small charity helping the village of Yirol in the Sudan. (Please donate here.)

Our first bulletin!

Samuel’s first Bucket Brigade trip ran into every possible travel obstacle, but he has hit the ground running in South Sudan. Part of his assignment is to build community for what we are doing, and he has already met with the governor, the bishop of the missions, the commissioner and the elders. He has recruited his old friend in Yirol, Abraham, to help him and they are working hard to meet with the villagers and see what the highest priorities are. As you’ll see, because we are small we can be flexible enough to respond to urgency, too.

Samuel: News from Yirol # 1

Everywhere I go, I hear the same response: “This is a beautiful idea.” The people here are suffering badly and they are so happy to find out that someone cares about them. They know the donors and founders are halfway around the world but if any of you wants to visit here, you will be treated like royalty. The people are just so happy. It’s a profound happiness, to feel that someone is holding out a hand when you are truly suffering. It has never happened before.

My first job here is to build community leadership that will unite men and women to work with us to assess and meet the most important needs. But I called Monique, who is part of our leadership in Boston, this morning because the medical situation is really urgent and I think we need to attend to that crisis immediately. There is a clinic we could get people to but not now, in the rainy season. It’s impossible, the lake is too high and rough for the dugout. The cause of the illness is probably the water, but we know that’s going to have to wait until the dry season to be worked on.

We are going to try to get the clinic to visit our village with medicine. Thanks to you, our donors, we can actually pay for medicine, which the clinic can’t. When sick people go there, they don’t have medicine to give them except once. They give them a prescription but nobody has the money or access to fill it. And if our solution of having the doctor come to us won’t work we’re just going to find a motor boat!

We are going to save lives right away on this trip. A very joyful thing.
Samuel Kuacliet
Volunteer Project Manager