Sounding the Alarm

Hii babra , i have lost my through the eye cancer , he has been in the hospital for two weeks . now he is dead. so ai now working on how i can transiport the body for burrial, pass my sorry to gerry and the others . Things has gone crazy for now .bye bye .

I received this email yesterday from a Kenyan friend. He was my askari (house guard) when I lived in Kakamega. His life is very typical of African lives. I knew him as an honest, hard working man who cared deeply about his family, who valued education, who worked very hard, and who cared about the welfare of others.

In the photo, Julius' son is the small boy on the left. The other boy is a neighbour.

When this son was just a toddler Julius came to me for help about his eye. Then it was diagnosed simply as an infection that required hospitalization and drugs. Julius took the boy and his grandmother to the hospital and returned to work. His wife had a new baby girl to look after so she couldn't stay with her son at the hospital. In Africa patients require family members to be there with them because there are not enough staff or resources to ensure that they are kept clean.. Even food must be brought in by the family care giver.

Julius was most concerned about the health of his son's eye because he wanted him to have the education he had been denied through poverty. It was important that he see well.

During my time there, Julius came to me occasionally for small loans which he repaid faithfully. The last loan he needed was for seed to plant his field in corn. I remember writing out a contract for that loan. I gave him the money on the Saturday before his Sunday off. (Askaris get one day off every two weeks) He was to pay me back at a set amount per month. On the Monday morning when he came in to work he brought me the full amount. When I asked why, he said his wife had got a job making school uniforms and he didn't need the money.

I didn't see Julius for three years after I left Kenya. We corresponded and I asked him to check on a child being helped at the Daisy Centre for Handicapped Children. He sent regular reports on this child and on other students I knew who were being helped by ACCES where he was working.

When I visited Julius and his family in 2006, the children were happy and healthy and Julius had built a small house on his tiny plot of land. He was working the night shift as an askari and farming by day. His wife was expecting their third child. He introduced me to his neighbours and to their oldest son who was a bright boy who was getting ready to enter high school.Julius was encouraging him and was prepared to help him financially. I left thinking that life was good for Julius and his family.

Over the course of the last two years, Julius lost his job, the new baby died soon after her birth, his wife was killed in a traffic accident, and now this tragedy has befallen his family.

Julius has, with help from Canada (Sound the Alarm), managed to pay the costs for two years of schooling for his young neighbour, and he has somehow cobbled together enough money to bury his infant daughter and his wife and to pay the medical costs associated with his son's eye cancer. All this on a plot of land perhaps 1 acre in size. He stays in touch regularly but seldom asks for anything except help with the school fees.

My experience in Africa is with people like Julius, people who are decent and hard working, people who care about others. They are without exception people who don't give up when life becomes overwhelming and who stretch out their hands to help others whenever they can.

I know there are the scammers from Nigeria but the Africans I know are people like Julius whose lives are fraught with misfortune but who keep on following their own hard working, decent paths.

A Rwandan man I met on this last trip told me that if you pull one African out of a well he has fallen into, he will emerge with 100 others hanging onto him. If you push one African into that well, he will drag 100 along with him.

Sound the Alarm is having a benefit concert at the Black Sheep Inn later this month. Layla and her organization are helping educate young Africans like Julius' neighbour. They have provided funds to improve the lives of children at the Daisy Centre. They have made it possible for a man who makes jewellery to board his teenaged daughter at school so that she will be safer than the girls who must walk long distances in the dark to school. They are helping people like Julius pull children out of the well. I will be attending that concert. I hope to see some of you there too.