Thank you for checking out our blog-spot for Project AIDS Orphan. We are trying a new format and will hopefully be able to keep you updated on our current projects and happenings in Kenya. Please browse the blog and our website and send us your feedback and questions.

Introductions

Karibu means welcome in Sawahili and you are welcome to browse about the projects we have going on in Kenya, East Africa. I’d like to introduce you to some key players in this endeavor. First there is my American husband, Paul Bilak, and his friend and co-worker, David Okong’o who spent countless hours on the bumpy Kenyan roads. These two met while both were working at the Kijabe Medical Centre. Both are medical professionals with wives who are educators and both have three children, two boys and one girl. Basically they are the African and American version of the same person. Oh, and both have back country(or in America we might say hillbilly) roots which in each culture translates to strong family ties and altruistic values. All in all some very good guys, who on the way to remote health clinics rode miles and miles together  through the Kenyan countryside talking about their families, their dreams and solving the worlds’ problems, or at least discussing them. Of course, this is sub-Sahara Africa and a major problem is AIDS. And the year the discussions began was 2000. Now David who was born and raised in Kenya had been thinking of the pandemic long before Paul had a true sense of the impact of AIDS on ones daily life. I guess you could say that David educated Paul on the subject in very practical, rubber meets the road ways. Not to say that the  experience from the real life drama of treating patients infected by AIDS at each of the clinics they visited wasn’t educational enough, but he began to learn more of the impact of AIDS through David’s experience with the nearing death of his brother who would be leaving 2 children without a mother or father to care for them.

Thus began the talks of how care would be provided for these 2 kids. David who is one of 13 children and who comes a fine Kenyan family where the parents made sure the children all received an education and most went on to become upstanding members of their communities, would bear the financial burden and his parents in their 70’s would take the children into their home and feed, clothe and educate them. There would be other family members at the homestead to help out as well. However as 7 years have passed the number of children orphaned by AIDS in this one highly educated, Christian, “upwardly mobile” family has grown to 18. I say this not as a judgment in any way but as a wake up to all of us that AIDS is endemic in Africa for whatever reason all people are affected not just infected. Even me.

Monica Bilak