Tony Cummings recounts his ongoing involvement with the suffering of Sudan

Still digesting these cold truths, my eyes focused on a small child sitting on a heap of rusting tin cans, who began to vomit. It was at this moment that I realised that my visit to Sudan wasn't going to progress the way I presumed it would. There would be no journey to the south. Instead, my mission was to bring to the attention of Buzz readers the plight of the people deemed politically too dangerous for the big organisations, and 'old news' by many western journalists. A people for whom Jesus died, as much as anybody else. A people marooned in a living hell. John and I continued through Hila Shok, as he explained more. "The authorities don't want us here. But look at this place. Do you think the people want to be here?" John waved a hand in a gesture of mute frustration and anger. At that moment, another child recognised John's burly appearance and ran towards him over a mound of rags, disturbing the giant black beetles living underneath in the process. John embraced him and conversed with him in the Bentiu tongue.

"He tells me his mother is sick and needs to go to hospital. It hurts me to come here. The people look to me for help. Yet I can help only a fraction of them. My organisation has no money; even the car I drive is borrowed from Oxfam and the food we distribute and the vaccinations we give aren't enough to stop people dying. I'm praying to God for a miracle."

We stumbled on, clambering over rubbish as we continued our tour of camps filled with people utterly broken. Evident among the Bentiu were simultaneous feelings of dejection, despair, listlessness and fear. But it could be so quiet: the silence would only be interrupted by chattering children or the occasional, raucous sound of group laughter. In Hila Shok camp, the pungent smell of crude beer drifted through the air, suggesting the way that some reacted to the madness surrounding them.

"These people were simple peasants who have brewed beer for generations in their homes in the south", explained John Gai's helper, a tall, thin black man who, most days, tried to teach some of the children in the sackcloth hovel Hila Shok called a school. "Now, they brew it as it's the only way they can make any money - though they risk imprisonment and even death, trying to sell alcohol in an Islamic State. Quite a few of the men have simply given in to the hopelessness of it all. They've become alcoholics, trying to stay drunk all the time."

But even in that quasi-hell, there were Christians clinging to faith. We passed a group of adults, mainly men, sitting impassively in the dirt and dust. It was explained that these were Christians who had gathered to pray for their friend, paralysed down one side of his body. It was a profound moment for me. This man of thirtyeight years of age, looking more like sixtyeight. But as we paused briefly to listen to the solemn prayers, we tried to avoid eye contact with him - with that plaintive, pleading look. We moved off again.

John suddenly went off on a tangent, disappearing into a hut to emerge a matter of seconds later with an elderly lady, whom he intended to take to hospital. This lady, little more than a bag of bones, was carried by him to the back seat of his jeep. He whispered, "She's been shot in the side and the hands. She's one of the lucky ones! God brought you and Steve and the money you gave me means she'll have a doctor at the hospital to look at her. I tried to take her yesterday, but the hospital turned her away because I didn't have the money to pay them."

I realised that the few Sudanese pounds which had been forthcoming when Steve and I spontaneously emptied our pockets after meeting John was all he had that week to help this mass of suffering humanity.

I left Sudan utterly shaken. Back in the UK I was soon at my desk at Buzz sorting out my notes and getting Steve Reynolds' photographs developed. But the publishers of Buzz had some news for me. They were reorganising their publishing company and making me redundant. But the last thing I was to have published before I left full time employment at Buzz was the cover story, Rubbish Dump Kids in the February of the following year. It was published with a tear-out slip, to be used by the reader if they wanted to respond financially to the plight of the Bentius.

Hila Shok camp

I had made a special arrangement with World Vision. I said that I knew about the politics of Sudan and that World Vision were unable to help me officially. But could they do something unofficially? Could they be the conduit through which Buzz fed money? They had the contacts there, so if I got the money to them could they get it to John Gai to spend it either in getting his people off the dumps and back to the south (his long-term aim) or in the short-term, providing medical care to keep some people alive?

World Vision agreed. The article duly appeared and God did a miracle through that one article. Everyone at Buzz was astonished. Letter after letter came in. With them, cheques for £10, or £30, or £50. Some kids sent their pocket money. Several OAPs gave half their weekly pension. Eventually, the amount raised came to about £26,000. All this from one article in a magazine. I rejoiced.

The years went by. In 1989 I'd been given a vision by God to launch a Christian music magazine called Cross Rhythms. My life had settled into a new routine. Occasionally when the continuing turmoil in Sudan made the news I would think of my experiences there and wondered how John Gai and the Bentiu people were faring. One day in the office in Stoke-on-Trent I got a phonecall. To my utter amazement, it was from John Gai. "Where are you, John?" I cried. "I'm in London!" "LONDON! How on earth did you get to London?" "Well, it's quite a story."

He apparently was living there. He'd been granted refugee status and had been given £45.00 with which to make his way in this country. I got the National Express to London as soon as I could. In his flat John updated his story.

In 1987, he'd eventually received my letters, telling him that I'd sent financial assistance through World Vision. He duly went to them, where they informed him that they were passing on US$13,000 to his charity. John immediately hired a couple of nurses, bought a whole load of medicine and set up a clinic for the 'Rubbish Dump People'. He erected a tent in the middle of a dump. Soon, infant mortality among the Bentius began to plummet. People were cured of illnesses that had until then been killing them. Eventually though, the money ran out. John returned to World Vision for more of the money raised by Buzz. He was told bluntly, "I'm sorry, Mr Gai, but there's no more money."

Just a few days later, John was arrested. He was an 'Enemy of Allah', or something similar. There was no trial. John was simply thrown into a Khartoum prison. There the authorities showed their special technique in dealing with political undesirables. That involved going to the marketplace, gathering a group of locals, taking them to a disused warehouse nearby, arming them with heavy sticks and getting them to stand in two lines across the middle of the warehouse. The prisoners were then forced to run through the two lines as the sticks were swung at them. This was repeated again and again. This could go on for hours, sometimes. John, being a strong and burly man, took particularly heavy beatings. Eventually, after days of this treatment, his body was completely smashed up. He lay there, in his cell, with numerous broken bones, head wounds and half his teeth missing. He was now paralysed down one side. He cried out to God. Then he passed out.