If you’re lucky, you have someone special in your life who not only is a great person, but also inspires you to be a better person.

Such is the case with a young, beautiful and compassionate 26-year-old licensed social worker who is in my life.

In July of this year, this young woman embarked upon a trip unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Though She’d been on medical mission trips to the Dominican Republic in the past and found that gratifying, there was just something that made her feel uneasy about staying in a resort hotel while providing needed health care to those with dirt floors in their homes and virtually no money to meet the basic needs of their families.

Katie Chisolm's trip to Kenya has been inspiring and life-changing, not only for her but also for her proud father.

This young woman inherited many wonderful traits from her lovely mother, including compassion, sincerity, sense of sacrifice, honesty and an overwhelming desire to help those who have it so much worse than we do. As such, she got it in her head to “put her money where her mouth was” and take a trip to one of the most remote and most impoverished places in the world.

She had always had a dream to go to South Africa – a dream she shared with a former employer of mine. This former employer, who lives in New Mexico, just happens to be on the board of directors for an Albuquerque-based organization called Global Health Partnerships, which is dedicated to serving the “poorest of the poor” in the African nation of Kenya.

It was at this point where this young social worker’s life would begin to change.

The arrangements made, she went on her first international trip on her own. Flight itineraries and schedule mishaps led to her leaving a day later than the group she was supposed to travel  with. While her parents anguished, she ventured off with the utmost of confidence, reaching her destination without too much adversity.

Her responsibilities on this trip would include community education, data accumulation regarding birth weights and malnutrition, dietary habits and intake by moms and their children.

Upon her safe return from the one-month journey to Kenya, the young social worker began to tell stories about what she saw, heard, felt and did while in Kenya, and those stories touched those close to her very deeply. The stories told of abject poverty, rampant infant malnutrition, maternal and infant mortality, the many hours of walking just to reach a place to get dirty water, only to walk that many hours back to their village – a daily struggle just to survive.

What struck her most, she said, was that, in spite of literally every curve that life and nature could possibly throw at the Kenyan people, they remain focused on family, religion, education and respect for each other even in the face of famine and drought. They didn’t ask for what they have to endure, and they play the cards that are dealt them, every day with dignity, love of life and mutual respect.

There is so much I could write about that month-long “immersion” in Kenyan life and culture, but am limited by space.

A day in the life of the young social worker:
Up at dawn. No shower today (or any day). The beautiful sunrise belies the dire situation that exists here. Put on one of five sets of scrubs that is her wardrobe for a month. Meet up with the group and plan the day. Today may be a 10-mile hike to a village for weighing or data gathering or, a 10-mile hike to another village for education class to pregnant and nursing mothers, or a three-to-a-seat motorbike ride to yet another village for nutritional assessments.

It could also be a rickety ambulance ride into Nairobi with a child who has a blood hemoglobin barely compatible with life. It could also be seeing the wide-eyed excitement of a young child gobbling down a packet of “PlumpyNut,” a life-saving peanut-buttery paste that can literally transform these children into healthier kids.
 

The Baskets of Kisesini
Since there is little I the way of earning potential for most people in this tribe, except for the husbands and fathers who travel hours and hours to Nairobi to secure jobs, but earn so little that it may be weeks or months before they see their families again. This is where the strong women of the various communities within the Tribe came together with a plan to earn money to build a health clinic; They make baskets.

I cannot begin to tell you how absolutely beautiful these baskets are, nor can I make you understand the tremendous work effort that is required to make them. I will say, however, that it takes roughly one month for one woman to make a complete basket. These women take special plant leaves, when they can obtain them, and pull individual strands apart to create the “yarn” if you will. Then they roll these fibers to ready them for use. The strands are boiled in a process to dye them. The women sit in groups, on the dirt, and relentlessly engage in basket making.

The money they earn has led to the construction of their very own medical “clinic.” Mind you, they sell these baskets for a paltry 500 schillings (around $4 to $5 U.S.).

Though the clinic may not look like anything special, to the people of the Kamba Tribe, it’s the difference between life and death.

Is the life of a Kenyan baby his/her mother and the survival of the Kisesini people worth the price of a basket? I’ll let you answer that. I know what mine is.

The young social worker made many new friends while serving this Kenyan tribe. Many were mission participants, but the most endearing ones were the people themselves.

One co-worker, Sydney, a New Mexico medical student, not only spent the entire month along with the rest of the group, she went back and is spending an additional six months there. Read more about Sydney’s writing on her blog at http://ghpusa.wordpress.com click on “Sydney.” Her writing only matters if someone reads it.

For those who haven’t surmised as much, that young social worker is my one-in-a-million daughter, Katie. The former employer in this story is Dr. Ruth O’Keefe, retired Toledo orthopedic surgeon, and my dear friend.

Life-changing
The stories Katie told were, to me, life-changing – women delivering babies along a dirt roadside, under a bush to hide from the weather, babies with blood hemoglobin levels barely compatible with life and yet these people cherish life and family, with all that they don’t have, they have more than many of us.

Now I know there are those who may be saying right now; “Poverty. It’s everywhere. Why, then are these people so special when we have poverty right here in our own back yards?”

My answer to that is, I am saddened by and appreciate the poverty, unemployment, lack of access to health care and widespread hopelessness that is experienced by too many of our own people.

I will also say that our country is arguably the only one with such vast resources available to our poor and hungry,
and that many of them do not take advantage of them. In Kenya, however, there are no alternatives; no surplus resources, agencies or funding for college education or Employee Assistance Programs at their places of work.

I feel a bit guilty when I awaken in the morning and find it difficult to decide what to eat for breakfast, what to wear to work, which car to drive and “what does my 401k look like today?” when there are people who awaken every morning and know what they have to do – survive.

For information about The “Baskets of Kisesini,” contact Katie Chisholm at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For more information about Global Health Partnerships, visit http://ghp-usa.org.