Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Africa

  • The Great Rift Valley

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States In the vast, parched desert of Africa’s Great Rift Valley, night fell like an ocean wave, predictable yet unexpected, with weight and substance and astonishing force. The darkness filled our eyes and expanded our lungs, enveloped our salty skin. Each evening the last rays of equatorial sun bathed our…

  • Letter from South Sudan: War through a mother’s eyes

    Wangira Dorcas OsungaKenya, Nairobi Our village Mading is at the heart of South Sudan. We are 120 miles away from Juba, the capital. We are at the East Bank, fed by the White Nile. The weather is tropical, with a rare wet season. Our land is not green, nor does it bear much fruit. Perhaps that…

  • Christiaan Barnard

    Shameemah AbrahamsSouth Africa The year 1945 is iconic as the end of one of the most pivotal and devastating periods in human history—World War II. That same year, as the world began to rebuild, in the coastal city of Cape Town at the tip of Africa, a young medical graduate began what would become an…