Yambio is dead.
The news came this morning from the Washington D.C. senior desk officer for the country programs of Chad, Central Africa Republic, Darfur and South Sudan. He arrived yesterday, his mere presence in our office a sign that the troubles are anything but slight. All but the essential staff will be out of work by the end of the month. And by November 1 or so all 108 people who rely on IMC Yambio will be jobless. All the community health workers, maternal child health workers, clinical officers, cooks, cleaners, watchmen, gender based violence team members and drivers. The human resource manager, the logistician, the finance manager. The construction managers. The support supervisors.
At this moment in time, it appears that my job is safe, as are the jobs of the other two expatriates here: Moses, our Kenyan vaccination nurse and Elizabeth, also a Kenyan nurse, who is our training and capacity building officer. Clearly, if this holds true then we will be moved to other sites. I am relieved that I still have a job, and full of remorse at the thought of letting people go. We are the major health provider in Yambio County. While there are other primary health care facilities here, they are not being supplied regularly with drugs and the employees are not being paid.
Of the four IMC sites in South Sudan, Yambio is the least financially solvent. The donor we are most dependent on at this location wants to move to the eastern side of South Sudan, following the repatriation process for returning refugees. Western Equatoria State’s repatriation process is nearly complete, and though that is not the sole reason why we are here, it is the reason this donor is interested in funding here. We applied for other funds from other entities, but today our last hope also rejected us. And with the financial crisis we are in, there is no more time to try.
The timing of the death knell is less than opportune. Ryan, our field coordinator, left on Friday, joining the half dozen expatriates to be sacrificed. Moses will become the new field coordinator, but now he is home on R&R. For many reasons, major decisions cannot be postponed until Moses’ return. So the task of deciding who lives and who dies by the end of August is left to me and Elizabeth.
Yambio is dead and we are numb.
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