Appin’s Anna is making a difference in South Sudan
A 28-year-old from Appin has stunned relatives by taking on a job in one of the world’s most dangerous countries – despite being a self-confessed hypochondriac who was too scared to play contact sports at school.
Anna Salvarli works in South Sudan as an aid worker, and has admitted that her relatives are surprised by what she does for a living.
Anna said: ‘My parents found it amusing that I wanted to work in South Sudan because I am the kind of person that won’t do certain sports, such as shinty or hockey, because I think it’s too dangerous.
‘Even out cycling with my mum, I’ll be like ‘I need to stop here. That is too steep a hill’ and she is just looking at me going ‘You work in South Sudan. How can you be scared of a hill?’.
‘My mum knows that I’m generally quite a risk-adverse person and not gung-ho in any way, so I think that helps her not worry about me too much.’
Anna added: ‘I’ve always wanted to do humanitarian work. On my primary school report when I left for high school, my headteacher wrote something like “I look forward to Anna working for the UN one day”.
‘I’ve been to cities like Singapore and Sydney thinking ‘I’d love to live here’ but I cannot imagine a single job that I could feel interested enough in.
‘So, while here in South Sudan some weekends kind of suck, I’m spending most of my waking hours working and loving my job.’
Anna was first posted to South Sudan three years ago while working with the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and is now a technical solutions coordinator for the Danish Refugee Council, helping to repair the damage of a violent civil war which has claimed 383,000 lives, with 115 aid workers killed since violence erupted in December of 2013.
Anna lives in a shipping container in Bentiu, one of the worst hit areas of the conflict, but she travels around the country offering assistance where needed, providing humanitarian aid to people outside of camps.
The threat of violence is not the only risk that Anna faces; the health risks of living in South Sudan became all too real when she had to be medevac’d to Juba, the country’s capital, after falling ill with suspected malaria.
She continued: ‘I looked grey for about a week and had the interesting experience of being medevac’d. It turned out it was just flu.’
The climate provides its challenges for Anna as well as the scale of poverty.
‘I’ve gone from 50 °C living in a metal container to the heaviest rain storms I have ever seen in my life.
‘The levels of poverty are staggering. You see people walk for two days just to get food and that’s part of what they do every month.
‘Most of the remote locations that we go to, a school is a teacher, who is a volunteer, teaching under a tree, with children sitting around on the ground.
‘I’ve been to some locations where there was a ‘school building’ and it’s four walls – nothing else. There’s not even a roof. The teachers will say ‘‘When it rains, it is difficult’’ and I’m thinking ‘‘Of course, it’s difficult. You don’t have a roof’’.’
Anna has admitted that her work and what she has seen makes it difficult when she returns home.
‘It can make it tricky coming back to Scotland and hearing what people moan about.
‘I remember my mum trying to put away a roast chicken and complaining because there wasn’t enough space in the fridge. I kind of exploded at her saying, “You are actually complaining that you have too much food”.’
Anna has said that she is proud of the support that Britain is giving to South Sudan.
‘I spent the best part of two years working with DFID here and its impact is huge. It really does make a huge difference.
‘The projects I liked best were nutrition programmes that we funded in the north of the country because when children were coming you could see the difference in their weight and health over the weeks.’
The UK give lifesaving aid in 2018 to more than 221,000 people in South Sudan, provided more than 100,000 children with nutrition support and supplied 142,000 people with emergency water, sanitation and hygiene.
International development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP said: ‘UK aid is saving and transforming lives in South Sudan, thanks to support from the British people and incredible people like Anna.
‘We are providing emergency aid, as well as helping to deliver healthcare and education.
‘I am so proud of those like Anna who are taking on huge personal risk to help make a difference in the country, working alongside British aid workers and our military personnel.
‘South Sudan’s leaders have an opportunity in the coming weeks to show their people that peace is the best solution and help build a strong democracy.’