Working with an HIV-AIDS Affected Kenyan Community

I met Ken Ariri (right) and Joseph Ouko (left) - both orphaned by HIV-AIDS at a young age) at the Holistic Community Kenya monthly Noodle Soup Meeting last year. They made a presentation of their school for HIV-AIDS orphans in Nyanza Province in Kenya. I was deeply touched and inspired by their story, and their dedication to educating orphans at Hill Breeze School. I told them about my work with tsunami orphans in Sri Lanka. They asked if I could do similar work in their community. I told them I would be honored to, and promised I would come as soon as I could work a visit into my schedule. I would do my work under the auspices of the Holistic Community Kenya (HCK) Outreach Program.

It took me a while, but true to my word, on September 29 and 30, 2011, I flew to Kisumu from Nairobi, and took a taxi to Oyugis, the town closest to Hill Breeze School. Sheila Otieno of HCK accompanied me throughout my visit. We spent the night at her mother's house. It was my first experience of rural Kenyan life.

During my visit, I observed the children's activities, met some School Board members, took photographs, and shared the Creative Holistic Integration (CHI) Wholeness Exercise (WE) with the teachers, an HIV positive Womens' group and two Oyugis-based youth groups (including YES who do street theater and puppetry for AIDS education). I plan to go back regularly to continue sharing holistic self-care tools with this community.

I gave the Hill Breeze School a gift of a Kodak digital camera with which they could create a visual history of and document the school's evolution and progress.

Before I returned to Nairobi, I promised to create and administrate a blog on their behalf to tell the world their story. To read the blog, click on the URL below: http://hillbreezeschool.blogspot.com