Mapping Development

Today I read an article in the BBC that had some really interesting and disturbing maps of Sudan and South Sudan that show differences in development across the two countries. I want to share them with you because I think so often it is hard to imagine what life is like for Joe-Deng in South Sudan. This is no Kenya, people. This is the last frontier of development.

Water and Sanitation

80% of South Sudanese have no toilet facilities, not even a pit latrine (ie. hole in the dirt). This may not make sense to our American readers. After all, they have to go somewhere, right? Yes! They go anywhere- behind the house, in the crop fields, by the river, maybe in a communal poop field. You can only imagine the disease this causes, especially among children.

And John and I have a toilet. Not a pit latrine, not an outhouse, not a gravity toilet, but an honest to God fully functioning flush toilet. Y’all, in South Sudan, we are the one percent.

Food Consumption

Not having enough food is so common in South Sudan that the end of the dry season is often referred to as the hunger season.

Infant Mortality

Friends, there are not many development statistics that can make me cry anymore, but this is one of them. I can’t tell you what it is like to hear someone say that their child has died and, in South Sudan, it happens far too often. One in ten babies dies before his first birthday. One in ten. This is a hard, hard idea to wrap my heart around.

And don’t even get me started on their poor mommas. South Sudan has some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

Education

In so many ways, this is the worst map of all. Because if less than 5% of South Sudanese children complete primary school, what hope can we have for the future? Many of you may never have met someone who has never spent a day in school. It is a hard thing to describe, but you can see a difference in them. Even a few years of basic education makes a person more open. They consider new ideas in a different way. They walk differently. It is amazing what even a primary education can do for a person, a community, or a country.

For many of us, it is difficult to imagine what this type of extreme underdevelopment looks like. It is what your life would be like if you were dropped in the middle of swampland with nothing. It is whole communities of people who sleep on mud floors, protected only by a grass hut, even during months of pounding rain. They have no access to health care if they get sick, no education at all, no clean water to drink, and often not nearly enough food for their families. They have seen children die of diarrhea; they have watched years pass with nothing to mark the time, but the movement of a herd of cows; they have never had a chance to be friends with people different from themselves. What would a life like that feel like? What would a country filled with people who have never known education, health, or economic opportunity look like?

Well, unless big change comes fast, we’re about to find out.

-Stephanie

These excellent maps are courtesy of the BBC. If you want to see more maps or these maps bigger, go here.