Six Months in Sudan

In 2006 James Maskalyk, a young, single ER physician, gave up a successful practice at one of Toronto’s finest hospitals to join Doctors Without Borders. Armed with a wide set of medical skills and unburdened by a family of his own, he volunteered to serve in the world's most dangerous places. After months of waiting, he received his assignment: a small village called Abyei, sandwiched in between two military compounds on the border of northern and southern Sudan. Six Months in...
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In 2006 James Maskalyk, a young, single ER physician, gave up a successful practice at one of Toronto’s finest hospitals to join Doctors Without Borders. Armed with a wide set of medical skills and unburdened by a family of his own, he volunteered to serve in the world's most dangerous places. After months of waiting, he received his assignment: a small village called Abyei, sandwiched in between two military compounds on the border of northern and southern Sudan. Six Months in Sudanis the riveting memoir of a young doctor trying to heal a village on the brink of devastation. With tribal factions at war all around him, Maskalyk tries to keep the peace in his makeshift hospital while waging his own battle against war’s terrible offspring—disease, starvation, and, perhaps most frightening, the numbness and hardening that threatens his resolve. In spite of the many losses he endures, there are victories great and small, medical and political, personal and communal, which buoy his spirits. And there are lighter moments, too—nights listening to the village jazz band and morning jogs across the African desert. A memoir of volunteerism that recallsThree Cups of Tea,Six Months in Sudanis written with humanity, conviction, and piercing insight. Maskalyk chronicles the unthinkable cost of war for one community, and one man’s courageous effort to bring about lasting change.