One of South Sudan’s Only Female Veterinarians Is Defying Odds, Saving Lives
Balash Bol Deng believes she’s the only female vet in Upper Nile, a northeastern state in South Sudan, where she lives. Given that South Sudan’s literacy rate among women is 16 percent—the lowest in the world—she’s probably right.
“My father helped me pay to study veterinary science in Khartoum,” the capital of Sudan (which at the time, included what is now South Sudan), she said via translator. “I specialized in livestock animals and came back to Upper Nile after to work. I have been working for the last five years.”
Deng, 28, is based in Melut, a small dust-bowl town on the banks of the White Nile River. She is one of the lucky few women in the region who were able to complete school. The gender gap in education is wide in many sub-Saharan African countries—a little over 20 percent of poor rural girls in Africa complete primary education and less than 10 percent finish lower secondary school.
Melut and the surrounding area shelter tens of thousands of families displaced by South Sudan’s civil war. Deng has been drafted into a massive campaign to vaccinate their livestock. According to World Vision, the aid organization behind the campaign, their countrywide target is to immunize over 300,000 cattle, goats, and sheep.
In South Sudan, cattle are everything. A single cow is worth nearly half the country’s average annual income, and cattle function as currency themselves. They also signify status, wealth, and power. Communities raise vast herds, but disease can be catastrophic for a herd and wreck the community’s livelihood. The migration of cattle can rapidly spread disease to other areas.
“People in this region have welcomed the vaccination drives,” she said. “Before we started vaccinating, we were losing 100 to 200 cattle across small communities.”
Deng was motivated to become a vet when she saw the devastation wrought by livestock diseases such as anthrax, hemorrhagic septicemia, foot and mouth disease, and bovine pneumonia. “One of the worst things is that people eat the animals [who had died of disease], and they were getting sick,” she said. “They did not know the reason or understand the consequences. I wanted to study as a vet in order to teach them.”
Deng works with a team of health assistants and one other vet, all of whom are men. The group is usually made up of 10 to 15 people, clad in grubby overalls and beat-up sneakers or rubber boots. They come mainly from the Dinka and Shilluk tribes.
On a typical day, the team piles into a couple of old Land Cruisers with Deng in the front seat, their cars careening off into the bush. Armed with silver needle guns, the health assistants spend all day wrestling cows and dodging horns, jabbing vaccine doses into leathery haunches. It’s risky work, but they can vaccinate up to 800 cows in one day.
Deng oversees the operation, instructing the assistants and managing stock. A day’s operation can take her to small, semipermanent Dinka settlements but also to see the reclusive nomadic Falata peoples, who move vast herds between Sudan and South Sudan. The Falata cattle are shyer and fiercer than Dinka cows, and Deng says she often has to instruct Falata men how to inject their own animals because their cattle could react dangerously to strangers.
When asked about her male colleagues’ attitude toward their female superior, she admits it’s not easy.
“There is jealousy from some of the staff,” she said, specifically from her male counterparts. “Often, they will not tell me when there are big operations going on, I think because they don’t want me to take over.”
But Deng seems totally at ease and confident with her own ability and skills. That said, reducing differences in the employment rate between men and women by 2017 could generate an additional $1.6 trillion in global output. Deng’s opportunity to go to school and find a job is just one of many examples of how investing in women and girls in developing countries allows them to reach their potential. Because Deng had the chance to receive an education, she was able to gain employment, establish a future for herself, and help thousands of others.
She chuckled and shook her head when asked if she is married. Someday, perhaps, but right now she has other priorities. “My work for me is the most important thing.”
A version of this article previously appeared on One.org.
Original article from TakePart
