Text by Sam Mednick
Nyomon Lilian will never forget the day she decided to become a midwife. “Watching my neighbor die during childbirth emboldened me to make the decision to enroll in midwifery,” says the 25-year-old. “The woman assisting her had no knowledge of what to do.” A few years ago, in her hometown of Kajo Keji, in South Sudan’s Equatoria region, Lilian watched as her neighbor bled out after giving birth. The mother was rushed to the hospital but it was too late. She died, leaving behind five small children. Although Lilian says it was a life-changing moment, she admits that it wasn’t the first time she had seen a woman die during childbirth. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” she says. “Women dying because of bleeding.”
When Lilian heard on the local radio station about the midwifery scholarship programme being offered by the SMS Project, she applied that same day. Currently in her second year of a three-year midwifery course, the eager student and her 58 classmates haven’t had it easy. Studying in a war zone is complicated at best and fatal at worst. When fighting broke out in Lilian’s hometown in Kajo Keji early in 2017, she and the rest of the students in the school were forced to flee.