While many Tufts students donate time and money to various AIDS charities and organizations, few experience the epidemic firsthand. Senior Arek Majak, did just that while spending her summer working for UNAIDS in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
"My experience in Sudan opened my eyes," Majak said of UNAIDS, which is the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
Her experience also put her in touch with her roots. Her family is from Awil, which is in the Bahr Ghazal in Southern Sudan. The political science major was also born there.
Her immediate family left the country, however, after her father received a grant to earn his Ph.D. in the United States. Due to a 1989 coup that brought a military junta to power in Sudan and the civil war that followed, the Majek family was able to obtain political asylum.
As the situation worsened in Sudan, Majak's parents applied for and received permanent U.S. residency, and Majak attended school in Santa Barbara, Calif., becoming an American citizen in December of 2003.
"Because of the war, most of my family has relocated to Khartoum, although I still have some relatives in the South," Majak said.
Majak's interest in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in her home country was spurred while studying abroad through the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London last year. While there, Majek decided to take a course on HIV/AIDS and development.
That course included a final paper on mobility and migration as a factor in facilitating the spread of the disease. The paper assignment specified that students examine those factors in reference to one particular country. For Majak, the choice of which country to focus on was clear. She planned to spend Easter break with her family in Khartoum, and to concentrate her paper on the situation in her home country.
During her time back in Sudan that spring, Majak met Simona Seravesi, a UNAIDS staff member whose main task was monitoring the HIV/AIDS situation in South Sudan. Majak was offered a position with UNAIDS. The Sudan office was understaffed, as they were still in the process of defining their work in the country, and eager for help.
Once her time in London came to an end, Majak began her work with UNAIDS. She started work on June 12 - coincidentally, the start date of Sudan's National Aids Advocacy Week.
During that week, several events were hosted and sponsored by the Sudanese government through the Sudanese National Aids Program (SNAP), along with other aid agencies in the country including UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Majak said the incidental timing of her job and the event gave her "real momentum in the field."
Majak was able to meet representatives from various agencies and organizations and quickly became well-acquainted with many different AIDS Advocacy campaigns. She attended events and symposiums hosted by government ministries such as the Ministry of Armed Services, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Sports and Youth and the Ministry of Guidance.
"It wasn't a formal internship because the UN has a policy on not having undergraduate interns, but also the fact that you have to be 25 years old," Majak said. "So technically, I was a 'volunteer,' although I was working full time and performing the duties of an intern. I was happy to get work experience, while also having the chance to spend time with my family in Sudan," Majak said.
While working with UNAIDS, Majak flew to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to help monitor and evaluate the allocation of funds donated by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development for projects initiated by selected local non-governmental organizations.
Those funds (totaling $600,000) were distributed among six non-governmental organizations: the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Association, the Sudan Council of Churches, Help Age International, the Agency for Co-operation and Research in Development and the Association of People Living with AIDS.
"From my experience with UNAIDS work in Sudan, I was most satisfied with fieldwork because it's more personal, in the sense that it put real faces behind the numbers," Majak said.
Majak's hands-on experience augmented her concern over the AIDS epidemic. She learned the WHO's 3 by 5 Initiative - which was supposed to treat 30,000 HIV/AIDS patients by the end of 2005 - had not yet begun, due to problems with the allocation of funds.
Although Majak was frustrated by the lack of urgency for the situation of HIV/AIDS in Sudan, coupled with the devastation from the aftermath of Sudan's civil war, she still maintains an optimistic attitude. She believes there's a dire need to recognize the problem and initiate a way to deal with it, as well as to rebuilding the country's southern section.
"[South Sudan] needs to improve infrastructure and important sectors such as healthcare and education, among many other things," Majak said.
After graduation, Majak plans to return to Sudan with her family and continue helping the country. "There's still so much that needs to be done," Majak said. "As of now, I'm torn between development work or whether I should get involved in politics," she said.
"[This is especially important], since it appears more likely that South Sudan might very well become an independent nation in six years' time," she said.
Though she is unsure of what route to take, Majak is certain about one thing: after graduation she will return to Sudan to help in whichever capacity that she is able.
- Sydne Summer contributed to this article.
