***The following story is one I wrote a few years back. It reminds me to KEEP GOING even when it is a struggle. I found great inspiration from the man in this story and though he doesn't know it, he's changed my life. Thank you.***
Overcoming Tragedy – Hard work and connecting with a group dedicated to helping the poor enabled one African man cope with the loss of his family members who had HIV/AIDS
By Christine McCall, Daily News staff
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
NEWPORT — Now he has a smile on his face and can laugh.
For Erick Omondi Okoth, the smiles and laughs come after years of suffering and hardship. Okoth is 29 and lives in the Nyatike Division of the Migori District in Kenya. He was born into a polygamous family, which is common for that region, and in 2002 at the age of 23 he found himself the sole guardian of 15 orphans — seven brothers and eight cousins — after all the adults in the family died from HIV/AIDS.
Okoth is a beneficiary of Catholic Relief Services — or CRS — which is an organization dedicated to helping the poor and vulnerable in 94 countries. Tuesday night, Okoth and Timon Mainga, the HIV/AIDS unit manager for CRS in Kenya, spoke at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center about the prevalence of the disease in their country and how CRS has provided much-needed assistance.
Tragedy struck the family when Okoth’s father died in 1998 and left behind three ill wives. His mother and his father’s two other wives died four years later, and by that time six of his uncles and their wives also had died. The lone surviving uncle fled from the home because he believed the family was cursed. Even before the wives, aunts and uncles died, Okoth took on a tremendous amount of responsibility in caring for the family.
Okoth was forced to drop out of secondary school to care for his large family. The situation was grim and it was a constant struggle to provide for and put food on the table for himself, his brothers, cousins and grandmother.
“Life was not easy,” Okoth said. “If I (am) down, who will be up? I have to come up for the other children.”
Lisa D’Ambrogi Railey works for CRS and is the regional representative in New England. She hopes that people realize that “… our brothers and sisters around the world have difficult lives and daily struggles.” But when it comes right down to it Railey said, “They are no different than Americans. They want a better life for their kids.”
That is what Okoth wanted for his brothers and cousins and his belief that he could do it became a reality. Okoth met people from the Lake Region Community Development Organization in 2003. The organization is a partner of The Children Behind under CRS in Kenya. Okoth said he and his family feel so blessed for receiving assistance. The organization has provided Okoth’s family with food, health care, a better home, school fees and counseling, among many other services.
Because of services and training provided by CRS, Okoth was given the opportunity to take part in vocational training and later opened a butchery business. That sufficed for a while, but he needed to make more money to properly care for his family.
Determined to do so, Okoth started a catering business. In a decent month, Okoth brings home what is equivalent to $158.
CRS also has allowed his brothers and cousins to stay in school. What makes Okoth smile a lot these days is the fact that his 23-year-old brother Kennedy Odhiambo Okoth graduated from high school. Okoth said his brother is the first in the family to graduate from high school.
“We are looking forward to him going to college,” his older brother said. There will be even more smiles when a second brother of Okoth’s and a cousin graduate from high school in November.
Not only has Okoth been selfless in providing for his family, but he also is striving to do even more in his community. Okoth is a community mentor at home for the AIDS, Population and Health Integrated Assistance project, also known as APHIA II, which provides people with information about HIV/AIDS, home-based care counseling and counseling about food and nutrition. He also started an organization in his community to provide support to people who have HIV/AIDS or those who are affected by the disease in another form.
Okoth is grateful for all the help he has received and now is happy to give back to others. He has a journal filled with inspirational quotes and one that he reads often to keep him going is by Allan Loymc Ginnis, a Christian psychotherapist. The quote reads, “There is no more noble occupation than to assist another human being and to help someone succeed.”
HIV/AIDS is prevalent throughout Kenya. With a population of 34 million people, about 6 percent of the country’s population is infected with the disease. That number has significantly decreased in the past several years and is down from 14 percent. However, in Okoth’s district the prevalence is still high, with about 14 percent of the population infected.
There are 2.4 million orphans in Kenya and about 1.8 of those have been affected by HIV/AIDS in some form or another, according to Mainga. As head of the CRS/Kenya unit, Mainga is responsible for providing technical and leadership skills to his team to help promote prevention, offer care and support for the population of those affected by the disease. The unit promotes home testing and educates people about reproductive health, malaria, shelter and medical care.
“This program has saved lives,” Mainga said. “I’m also happy to say that this program has given orphans hope. If you have hope, you can overcome anything. If you don’t have hope, you can decide to go on the 25th floor and throw yourself down.”
Mainga’s unit works with 15 partners, reaching 75,000 orphans and vulnerable children and 45,000 people living with HIV/AIDS.
“We have given them an alternative in life by ensuring them that they are in school, by ensuring them that they get training which will help them … by ensuring that they don’t go out there and contract the virus,” Mainga said. “We are also happy that through this program we have been able to build the capacity of the local people with skills which will live with them forever.”
Even though Okoth has experienced much pain and sacrifice in the past 10 years, he chooses to look on the bright side and focus on how far his family has come.
“I know that if I don’t smile, I will be stressed to death,” he said.
After hearing Okoth’s story, it made Leona Johnson, 17, re-evaluate her life. “It makes me feel guilty because I take my life for granted,” she said.
The Newport resident had never heard of CRS before Tuesday night and previously was preoccupied with having the latest cell phone and new sneakers. But now that Johnson knows the organization exists, she said it makes her want to do something to help.
“The challenge is big,” Mainga said.
To help conquer that challenge, Mainga said it is all about support — whether that support comes in the form of a monetary donation, prayer, lending a shoulder to cry on or just spreading the word.
For more information about Catholic Relief Services, visit www.crs.org.
