The Buckeye Satellite Clinic in the Mongalla Internally Displaced Persons camp. Credit: Courtesy of the Buckeye Clinic in South Sudan
Thirty-eight years ago, Bol Aweng and Jok Dau heard a sound that would change their lives forever.
The two boys lived in Piol, a village in South Sudan. While feeding their families’ livestock one day, the village was heavily attacked.
“I was tending the cow with some of my friends. We heard the sound of a gun,” Aweng said. “And that was not just the sound of one gun. It was one gun, then more guns. It involved a big sound of guns, like artillery, and involved tanks rolling into the village, and also included bombing from the sky.”
Frightened, Aweng and Dau, only 6-years-old, ran from the village, their families and the lives they had once known.
“At that moment, I was scared and had to run away and leave the cow behind. As I ran away, I found myself too far away from the village, and my family members were not with me,” Aweng said. “I was still together with my friends. Every time we looked back to the village, the village was turned into fire. All you could see was the smoke, the fire and no sign of life in the village.”
As the boys fled, they were joined by children from other villages who had fled similar scenes. The group, which totaled over 30,000 refugee children, later became known as “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”
On the journey, many died from disease, hunger, animals and soldier attacks. They walked over 1,000 miles, arriving in Ethiopia over two months later.
The children stayed in a makeshift refugee community before conflict struck again.
“We were there and things were good, until in 1990 or 1991 when Ethiopia was involved in their own civil war and the government was overthrown,” Aweng said. “We were kicked out exactly the way we were kicked out in the village.”
The Lost Boys were once again forced to flee.
Conflict in Sudan was ongoing, so they walked until they reached a refugee camp in Northern Kenya. On the trek, thousands of children died by animal attacks, hunger and drowning.
“In the [Ethiopia] camp, we were about 35,000. When we traveled all the way to Kenya, including some of the things that happened in the camp, our number went down to 16,000,” Aweng said.
Aweng and Dau stayed in the camp for 10 years, trying to return to a normal daily routine. They attended school but were unable to access the materials necessary to thrive.
“You don’t have all the supplies that you need, and you rely only on what has been given to you by the United Nations — no access to anything else,” Aweng said. “You cannot go out and buy your school supplies or buy the book or have a place where you will get exactly what you need.”
Around 10 years later, they were given the opportunity to resettle in the United States. On Sept. 15, 2001, Aweng and Dau set out for Nashville. The boys lived with a host family for five years before moving to Columbus to attend Ohio State.
Aweng, a student in fine arts, took a class with Malcom Cochran, a professor in the Department of Art.
“Malcolm was my professor, and after hearing my story, he became connected to me beyond what the teacher would do to the student where they just do the teaching and then after teaching, they just go ahead and let the student go,” Aweng said. “He never let me go. He was my teacher, and he saw the dream that I had to change the life of the people, and he was able to be stay with me.”
Cochran, moved by Aweng’s story and Cochran’s daughter’s experience as a peace corps volunteer in Guinea, was motivated to help. The opportunity arose soon after, when Aweng and Dau found a way to support the people in their old village.
During college, Aweng was able to return to his village, Piol, for the first time. The village had been abandoned for 20 years due to war, and restoration seemed like an impossible feat.
“It was overwhelming to think about what to do to help the people — either help them with agriculture, help them with starting school, just basic needs, shelter, nothing was there,” Aweng said. “We had to do something, at least something that is doable.
“That’s when we thought about building a medical clinic,” Aweng said. “Because if anybody is healthy, they would go and find the food. If a child is healthy, they would be able to go to school, or they would be in the shelters or do anything that they need to do, so long as they are healthy.”
Aweng and Dau spoke to the village chief, who illustrated the extreme lack of healthcare resources.
The only medical services that existed in the village were provided by a man with no formal training, whose only resource was a UNICEF-provided aid kit of malaria medication, aspirin and cough syrup. South Sudan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, in part due to limited healthcare professionals to facilitate births.
“The chief said that what they really need more than anything else is maternal and child health care,” Cochran said. “They took a Buckeye necklace to the chief and told him that it’s considered good luck here and and he said ‘if you build this, we will call it the Buckeye Clinic.’”
Aweng and Dau returned to Columbus with renewed motivation and a clear goal: to create Buckeye Clinic.
They fundraised throughout central Ohio, reaching out to churches, schools and community groups for support.
The Scioto Ridge United Methodist Church adopted the project as a mission project, fundraising within its congregation. Other groups fundraised in various ways, from traditional banquets to friendly competitions.
“They did everything: a workathon, a bake sale, a chili cook off,” Aweng said.
Schools in Dublin, Hilliard and other central Ohio districts also hosted a Penny War, where classes competed to fill jars with coins.
“Those kids end up getting us thousands and thousands of dollars. All those pennies and nickels — all those coins — count and turned into a very big check that helped us to establish the clinic,” Aweng said.
In 2012, Aweng and Dau used these funds to open Buckeye Clinic in their old hometown. Cochran joined the initiative as vice president of the steering committee, using his artistic expertise to put together annual reports and design building concepts for clinic construction.
The clinic operated for eight years, providing vaccinations, deliveries and other medical care to residents of Piol and surrounding villages. The clinic also provided food to people in the village, as farming was restricted due to resumed conflict.
“Mothers came from a very long distance to have their children given a [vaccine],” Aweng said. “At the same time, mothers came there to have babies in a clean environment. So it was terrific and it worked really well.”
In 2020, intense flooding submerged the village and residents were forced to evacuate to higher ground in the town of Mongalla, South Sudan.
“People had to go to the safe place, which was higher ground. When they were there, they had to start over again from the high ground,” Aweng said. “It was just middle of nowhere. Nothing was going on. So we decided to at least do something temporary in that place.”
They created a satellite clinic in the safe area to continue providing critical medical care.
“What we had was only the tents that we just put in the fans, and those tents were used to admit people in them, and were used also as consultation rooms, and we just operate like that,” Aweng said. “The tents were destroyed by the wind and the sun, so we ended up building another temporary building that is now operating.”
The doors of the satellite clinic were opened in 2021, and this location continues to see patients as they wait for flooding in Piol to clear.
“We call it the satellite clinic because it’s still our hope to go back to Piol but they’re still flooding, so that’s a long way out. So we essentially reestablished the clinic in Mongalia,” Cochran said.
The safe area is much more densely populated, with refugees from multiple flooded villages living in camps. The clinic aims to provide services for all of these people, not just those that fled from Piol.
“We serve anybody and everybody, including people from what is called the host communities, meaning the people who were there before in the surrounding areas,” Cochran said. “We get stories of some people having walked for two hours to get there to get the medical treatment.”
It has been difficult for the clinic to continue supplying quality care amid cuts to federal funding, including the United States Agency for International Development, Cochran said.
“We did not have direct [agency] support, but [the agency] provided medications and supplies to the country and Ministries of Health, and then we would get the get those supplies and medicines from them, with all of that being cut off, we now have to buy much more of the medications,” Cochran said.
Additionally, other clinics funded by the agency were unable to continue services, increasing the burden on Buckeye Clinic.
“When [the agency] suspended services out of the U.S., that caused many other clinics that were supported by the [agency] to shut down. The overflow from those clinics came to our clinic,” Aweng said.
In October, the clinic attended to 250 patients a day, including 37 baby deliveries, Aweng said.
“At this moment, the situation in the clinic is very, very overwhelming,” Aweng said.
Other charity organizations and national governments have stepped in to fill the gap in resources in lieu of American foreign aid.
“It has surprised us, on the board and in the management of the clinic, that we have gotten things from the Egyptian government, Australia, Doctors without Borders, a Polish humanitarian agency,” Cochran said. “We have had these things coming in from other places,” Cochran said.
Despite the United States government’s decision to limit federal funding towards initiatives such as Buckeye Clinic, the clinic organizers remain motivated, Cochran said.
“People have so little and are so resourceful and are so incredibly grateful for the care that they’re getting that it just seems unconscionable to walk away. I can’t imagine, especially now, pulling back or pulling out, and neither can others on the board,” Cochran said.
The clinic relies on crowdfunding and grants to continue its volunteer-led healthcare initiative. To continue offering medical services, the clinic is in need of financial support which can be donated at its website.
