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Children Who Changed a Village They Had Never Seen
By Kinya Kaunjuga
One day, someone presses play on a video.
Children are dancing.
You don’t understand the words they’re singing. Their skin color is different. Most are barefoot, dancing on a dirt floor. Their hair is cut so close it barely shows. The sounds are unfamiliar. Everything feels like a world you’ve never seen before.
But they’re children.
Just like you.
Before long, you’re smiling with them.
Maybe you’re even laughing.
Perhaps you’re dancing a little too.
Then comes the part you weren’t expecting.
Someone explains that when those children become sick, many of them have no doctor nearby. Some families travel for hours. Others travel for days before reaching medical care.
You stop smiling.
That doesn’t seem fair.
Then you hear another part of the story.
Four young clinical officers have made an unusual decision.
After graduating from university—a path most people hope will lead them away from hardship—they chose to return to their village in Kapoeta, South Sudan.
Not because jobs were waiting.
There weren’t any.
Not because life would be easier.
It wouldn’t be.
They returned because no one else was coming.
Their dream was simple: build a medical facility where their neighbors could receive care close to home.
The children listening to this story decided they wanted to become part of it.
They organized a fundraiser.
They gave what they could.
Parents joined in.
Teachers joined in.
Together they raised enough money to purchase laboratory equipment for a clinic on another continent.
Months later, the donation arrived in Nairobi in the hands of one of the clinicians.
His name is Lobai.
From our many online calls, I thought I knew what to expect.
South Sudan is home to some of the tallest people in the world, so I found myself looking for someone who would stand above everyone else as he walked through the mall.
Instead, I recognized his smile.
It was impossible to miss.
Warm, gentle and unhurried, it seemed to put everyone around him at ease before he had spoken a single word.
Back home in Kapoeta, people rarely call him by his name.
They simply call him Diktor—the Toposa word for “doctor.”
Children passing the clinic call out to him. Neighbors greet him the same way. Somewhere along the journey home, his profession quietly became his identity.
Lobai belongs to the Toposa people of eastern South Sudan. His clinic is called Nyakicha Medical Clinic, a name that means light in his language. It stands on land given by Salt & Light Church, whose congregation offered part of its compound so the clinic could be built where people from across the town could reach it.
Returning home was never simply about opening a clinic.
It was about bringing light to a place that had waited a long time for it.
Lobai and his two friends had each left home to study medicine in Kenya. Like countless young graduates before them, they could have built careers elsewhere.
Instead, they chose to come back.
Today, together with one nurse, they are caring for patients in a town where access to healthcare has long been limited.
Lobai knows something about sacrifice.
His father had trained in medicine before leaving clinical work to serve in government. During the years of conflict that eventually led to South Sudan’s independence, the war separated him from his family. Lobai saw his father only once more before he died.
Now another generation has returned to serve the same land.
Not through politics.
Through medicine.
That is why Lobai had travelled to Nairobi.
David Miner, Banda Health’s Client Engagement Lead, had recently helped install BandaGo, our health management software, at Nyakicha Medical Clinic. Lobai had also come to purchase the laboratory equipment made possible by the generosity of hundreds of schoolchildren whose kindness had travelled farther than they ever imagined.
Patients are already being treated.
Soon, the laboratory will be open too.
News of what these young clinicians have built has spread quickly across the region. So many people have been encouraged by their decision to return home that government officials are expected to attend the clinic’s formal opening later this year.
Yet when I asked Lobai what had been most memorable in recent weeks, he didn’t mention the opening ceremony.
He talked about another village.
Just before traveling to Kenya, he had organized a medical outreach to a remote community that had never before received visitors from outside.
The people welcomed them with overwhelming joy.
After treating the sick, listening to families and praying with them, the villagers asked only one thing.
Please come back.
As Lobai spoke, I found myself thinking about the children who had first watched that video.
None of them have been to Kapoeta.
Most never will.
They may never know the names of the patients whose blood will one day be tested using the laboratory equipment they helped provide.
They may never meet Lobai.
They may never hear someone call him Diktor.
But somewhere in Kapoeta, children who will never know their names will grow up with a doctor a little closer to home.
Sometimes kindness doesn’t need a passport to cross borders.
Sometimes it only needs someone willing to tell one story to another.
Outtakes
Help Us Reach 1000 Places with Healthcare and Hope
Banda’s work isn’t complicated. We bring hope to people with little or no access to healthcare. We use technology to strengthen the clinics caring for the sick, and partnerships to help their communities address overwhelming social and economic realities.
Today, our small Banda team is helping more than 200 clinics care for over 1.2 million patients each year. And you make this work possible. In 2025, 92% of our funding came from individuals like you. Thank you for standing with us and strengthening our arms. Our next goal is to reach 1,000 clinics.
Our greatest need currently is to raise the remaining $360,000 of this year’s budget. These funds will support our work integrating AI-powered clinical decision support and key maternal and child health workflows into BandaGo—giving frontline clinics more tools to care for their patients.
Even with these major upgrades, it costs just 45 cents per patient visit to upgrade, deploy, and support this transformative platform. So every gift—whether $50 or $50,000—is a huge help!
Feel free to email Steve at sletchford@bandahealth.org with any questions. We have secure donation options through PayPal, stock gifts, a donor-advised fund, check, cryptocurrency, and more.
Thank you for helping us take the next step. We truly could not do it without you.
Steve, Wes and the Banda team.
Kinya Kaunjuga
Kinya, our corporate storyteller, is an Aggie, and has lived and worked in Africa, Asia and North America. She’s met people from almost every part of the world and believes everybody has a story worth listening to.