Since 2015, ASASE no longer supports any program in Sudan.
Supplying Drinking Water
The heart of this program was a well located in Gabarona, one of the four IDP camps or informal settlements in the middle of nowhere, around Khartoum, which were officially recognized by the government.
In local Arabic, "Gabarona" means "they forced us".
More than 30 years ago, its first displaced inhabitants called it that way. The place is located 40 km from Khartoum. The well was drilled in 1993.
No need to say that in this region where temperatures can climb up to 45 ° C in the shade, the water of this well was valuable and even more so that it was very pure, drawn from more than 200 meters deep in the desert. In any case, it was the basis of the survival of more than 100 000 people.
A powerful engine running 24/24hrs allowed the free distribution of more than 120,000 litres per day.
There were other tanks in Gabarona, owned by the state, but the water was sold at the equivalent of 0,28 CHF (0,23 €) per litre, which was expensive for most residents of the place.
This is why donkey-drawn carts were constantly in line to fill the drum they carried. Their owners could then sell the water at low prices, and earn small but salutary money.
To avoid long lines, four underground pipes (each one 1 km long) had been installed to feed remote distribution points.
In addition, every day, three tanker trucks came here to supply before their tour in other displaced camps, where they stopped especially at the schools of the Archdiocese of Khartoum.
At the request of the government, the water was also distributed in state schools: 14 schools were thus supplied.
Every year, nearly 50 tricycles, artificial limbs, and other resources were distributed to disabled persons, victims of the civil war.
Even after the peace agreement signed in 2005, millions of land mines still buried in the South continued to make 500 victims a year, many of which are eventually amputated.
Those benefiting from this program were mostly from very poor families.
In these forgotten areas, the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Society had a unit responsible for the identification and registration of handicapped persons. If necessary, SVDP also provided moral and psychological support.
It also ensured a regular maintenance of the equipment distributed.
Women in jail
Since 2000, SVDP operated in the Omdurman prison for women.
Omdurman is a large city, next to Khartoum, with more than 2 millions inhabitants.
The majority of women were in jail for either producing or selling local alcohol, illegal under the Muslim law as enforced by the Islamic government. Court verdicts varied from one month to 2 years imprisonment.
Established during post-colonial era, this prison, the oldest in Sudan, had very poor sanitation conditions. It had a capacity of 1200 inmates and it was always overpopulated… even without counting the 250 to 300 children that lived there. As a matter of fact, in Sudan, if a woman was given a jail sentence and had a child below the age of two, then it was common practice for the child to stay with her; if she has older children, but no one to look after them, they also go to prison with her.
As food portions are calculated by convicted person, most of the women and children stayed hungry all the time.
In addition to the medical assistance that SVDP give in this prison (see "Medical Program"), fighting against the spread of tuberculosis and other diseases epidemics, this program provided support at two levels:
- practical support, to improve living conditions: supplying a morning meal to the children, tin milk for babies who cannot be breast fed, providing beds and sheets, mosquito nets for newly born, creating several drinking water taps for the inmates.
- moral and legal support: visiting the prisoners, befriending them, counseling, imparting legal awareness, promoting rehabilitation processes, and sometimes paying court fines or the bailing of convicted prisoners (for example a lady who had twin children with her).
Every year, 400 persons were benefiting from SVDP aid.