Meet Akello Susan, the Abaana's Hope Medical Clinic Nurse

When the troubles of life start to weigh us down, God, the Father of compassion, is there to comfort us. In the good times and bad, God is in control, and He will not leave our side. Whether we’re facing harsh living conditions, financial burdens, or death of a loved one, like Akello Susan has experienced, we can have confidence that God will be our strength, our comforter, and our guide. 

Susan was born in 1996 in a village near Gulu when the rebel war, led by Joseph Kony, was still plaguing northern Uganda. Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted children from the villages they attacked and forced them to become soldiers and slaves.

“I saw the rebels, but I was still young, so they did not arrest me. I lived in the bush for some time just to hide from them,” she said.

Susan is the seventh born of 10 children. She has four sisters, four brothers, and one brother who passed away. Her mother is Catholic, and her father, who passed away in 2015, was a Protestant. He told Susan and her siblings they had to decide for themselves what to believe and which form of faith to follow. When Susan was in high school, she made the decision to follow Christ.

“It was just the grace of God that made me want to make that decision,” Susan said. “I don’t know more about it, but I’m just praying to God to help me to know more.”

After high school, Susan studied to become a nurse. She attended an institution in Gulu where she could complete her nursing training. School fees made attending further education difficult, and her family could not afford to send her or her siblings to school after primary school. By the grace of God, Susan received a scholarship from Invisible Children, a Christian organization that worked in Central Africa and helped to increase awareness of the activities of Kony and Lord’s Resistance Army. This allowed her to pursue a nursing career.

She spent four years studying to earn her nursing certificate while also working in the training center at the hospital next to her school. After earning her certificate, she continued to work there for five more months until she heard about Abaana’s Hope. 

In 2015, a friend of hers, who was working at Abaana’s Hope, told her about the community and ministry located outside of Gulu. There was an opening at the Abaana’s Hope Medical Clinic for a nurse, so her friend encouraged her to apply for the nursing position. Two days after her interview, she received a phone call to inform her she could have the job.

Susan cares for three categories of patients – the Living Stones Christian School (LSCS) students, the Abaana’s Hope employees, and the Pastor Training Center students. When anyone is sick, they go to Nurse Susan for treatment and medical care. If there is a condition she doesn’t know how to treat or doesn’t have the resources to treat, she sends the patient to the main hospital in Gulu.

“Mostly, we have the malaria crisis, almost every year and every month, and a cough. When I say cough, it means either an agitating cough, asthma, pneumonia, or anything that makes you cough that you’re allergic to,” Susan said.

For a patient with malaria, there are three lines of treatment, which include tablets that can be swallowed or injections. To treat patients suffering from a cough or infection, Susan uses antibiotics and medications that best fit the condition. She is the only nurse working in the Abaana’s Hope Medical Clinic, and she sees nearly 7,000 patient visits a year. Once a year, when she does a medical checkup screening for all the LSCS students, she has others who will help her collect data like weight, temperature, and blood pressure.

Susan’s husband, Okot Daniel Simon, is also a health care worker at a hospital, David Fagalie Medical Center, in the Agago district, which is nearly 3 hours away from Gulu. The couple met in college when Simon was studying for his diploma and Susan was studying for her certificate. They studied together and worked in the same ward. 

“It was all in God’s plan,” Susan said. They still discuss the sicknesses and injuries they treat and share medical knowledge with each other, either over a phone call or when Simon comes home.

“If I don’t know something, if the patients come with a rare condition, I normally call him and say, ‘Can you help me with this?’ For him, it’s sometimes funny, and he says, ‘You need to first pay school fees’ before he tells me,” Susan laughed.

She and her husband have two daughters – Kicaber Michelle is three years old and will be enrolling at Living Stones Christian School next year and Pimar Gianna is three months old. Susan also cares for her sister’s daughter, Lamara Abigli, who is seven.

“God is the one who created us in this world, so he knows the plan for us,” Susan said. “What I normally say when I fall sick, I say, ‘God, you’re the one who gave life and you’re the one who takes it. It is upon you. I give my life to you.’ If we run to human beings, we won’t be able to be comforted. It is only God who can.”