In the News
This Article was published in The Oregonian on Thursday, August 11, 2005
Ashley Marcus, Wash Jo,
Joyce & Paul Maier
Making A Difference
Family helps change lives of Kenyan children
By Jill Smith
The life dream sounded so familiar, remembers Ashley Maier of Beaverton: I want to be a doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher, journalist. But these children were in Kenya, where 50 percent of the population is unemployed. These children attended schools that didn't have electricity and classes in which 10 to 20 students might have to share a single textbook. These children had no indoor plumbing and used donkeys to carry heavy jugs of water from Lake Victoria. These children - most of them - had lost one or both parents to AIDS and struggled to pay for school. "They had such big dreams," remembers Ashley, 21, an Oregon State University student. "They're trying for all the same things we are. But we have so many more opportunities to attain the goals."
Ashley and her parents traveled to Kenya after a 29-year-old man named Wash Jo spoke at their church, Bethlehem Lutheran in Aloha. Jo was raised in Kenya but majored in public health education at Portland State University. He now spends much of his spare time trying to raise money for orphaned children in Kenya. Ashley's mother, Joyce Maier, was moved by Jo's talk but noticed that others in her congregation were skeptical. She could understand that. "There are so many places out there that say 'Come and help these kids' and then you find out that (only) 50 percent of the money goes to the kids.'"
Maier and her husband, Paul, decided writing a check wasn't enough. "If I went there and made sure this is a legitimate situation, I could come home here and raise a ruckus and do more," she said. Cashing in Paul's free airline miles, the three Maiers - two other children stayed behind - flew to Africa in May. They were struck by the poverty outside Nairobi. "It's everywhere," Joyce Maier said. "I kind of thought it would just be in little spots. You see the people just sitting. There are mud huts everywhere - little tiny structures that have been put up with sticks and mud."
The family visited three schools where many of the children were orphans. Maier became close to one girl who had 12 brothers and sisters but whose mother had died. One day the girl was missing, and Maier asked a teacher where she was. "Oh, they buried her father today," the teacher replied. "I just burst into tears," Maier remembers. But the teacher had a more world-weary attitude. "It happens all the time," she told Maier. "You can't get upset about it."
The Kenyan government does not pay for high schools, Maier said. Tuition, room and board for one student cost about $400 a year. Education greatly increases a child's chance of getting a job, even with the 50 percent unemployment rate, Jo said. Those who do not go to school might help their families live off the land. If their parents have died, they might live with a grandmother or neighbor, Jo said. Older ones sometimes try to find jobs in the cities but usually end up living on the streets, resorting to prostitution or returning to their village - as AIDS carriers, he said.
Ashley Maier, treasurer for the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at Oregon State University, hopes to raise money this year to help sponsor high school girls in Kenya.
Joyce Maier has already gotten co-workers at Oswego Spa & Laser in Lake Oswego, friends and church members to sponsor 10 children. Her family supports one more. Maier knows there are needy people in Oregon, but says "The poorest person in America is rich compared to Africa." "I could go and find somebody downtown who could use $400 and it would last them two weeks and it wouldn't change their lives," she said. But in Kenya, "I could change someone's life with the money that I spend at Costco every month. And it's not just to keep a roof over their heads, but to give them hope."