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The outdoor industry has been a long-time support of AFCA’s life-saving work. We work to provide sustainable programing for kids who are infected and affected by AIDS. AFCA’s major fundraisers include Climb Up So Kids Can Grow Up and Vacation with a Purpose. The Climb Up program takes teams who have committed to and met a fundraising goal on adventure trips like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. This is where the outdoor industry comes in, and Outdoor Retailer in particular. Companies who specialize in hiking and outdoor gear for camping and outdoor adventures support AFCA with product donations, so that our climbers can focus [...]

Representative John Lewis tweeted last Monday about HIV/AIDS and the impact of the epidemic. Rep. Lewis has said that “HIV/AIDS is not a disease that discriminates. It affects all of us—our friends, our family, our neighbors. We must fight this together.” In this global community, the American Foundation for Children with AIDS (AFCA) tirelessly works to support those hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic: the children who are infected and/or affected. Our blog relays countless stories of lives impacted through our work at hospitals, schools, and with community programs. AFCA provides lifesaving medications for kids, supports livelihood programs including livestock and garden projects, funds community health initiatives by training midwives [...]

I listen to the sounds of children playing soccer, arguing about rules, and celebrating goals. Paper crinkling under ladders and the smell of fresh paint and turpentine accost me from the other side, interrupted by the sound of a stiff broom being used on the wooden floor. Singing from the kitchen, in N’debele. The stirring of pots with lunch in them. Chirping of an occasional bird. The soccer ball rolling past outside the window. A door creaking open as someone enters the farmhouse to find out if it is time to collect eggs. The snapping of a sheet before it is tucked under a mattress as someone makes beds. I love [...]

I wake up at 2:00am and listen.  I hear a sound I’ve never heard in Zimbabwe, in all the years I’ve been coming to this amazing country and I am confused. Then, I realize I am hearing raindrops -slow, steady, refreshing.  I step outside the hut and smell the rain. The floor is wet, the dirt is wet and the grass is wet as far as I can see in the light of the moon.  I can’t help feeling overjoyed and one must share joy, so I wake Eric up with, “It’s raining” and I can hear him smile in the darkness. Twenty of us from all over the country [...]

I drag my body through the Kisumu airport, through the Nairobi airport, and through the Johannesburg airport. I find myself telling me (in my head) to stand up tall, to make my backpack look light, to pat my cheeks to make them look like I have color in them, and to not look sick.  The last thing I need is to get quarantined somewhere!  So, even though I really, really want to lean on every counter I approach, I hold it together and make it through customs and flights and airports just fine.  I do find myself running to the bathrooms in each airport and there comes a point where [...]

Class 7 students join us in the warm breeze as we garden. We dig holes, throw in manure/compost, and plant tomatoes, peppers, carrots, kale, and spinach. They are amazed by my insistence of adding mulch and more mulch to protect the roots from the sun and to keep the moisture in the earth. 10 centimeters of mulch? Yep, that would be about right, I say. We work together and all our hands are muddy, but I see that we are all smiling and having a good time, knowing that good food will come out of our labors. I pray that this will be a successful garden, as it hasn’t rained as [...]

The sky is orange and purple at 6:05am in this part of Kenya and the birds start their frantic cries, as though looking for a lost one. They bring in the day with a racket and I realize how little I know about birds. I don’t recognize a specific type of cry they make, which leaves me with a bit of a sad feeling. It is almost as though I can’t greet them properly if I don’t know who they are. Two kids are sick in the small hospital, seemingly with malaria, but no one is sure. The nurse is in a training in Nairobi, leaving the hospital in the [...]

I hear what sounds like thousands of birds tweeting and I find myself drawn to them. I walk towards the sound and can’t believe the cacophony! I ask the hospital administrator if these are birds and he says, “yes, they are bahds”, in his beautiful Ugandan accent.  I ask him what sort of birds they are and he says he doesn’t really know their name, but that these birds are thought to sometimes pass on ebola or rabies to people.   Completely confused, I ask if birds can actually share rabies and ebola and he says, “of course, as they are mammals”.  Now, I find myself thinking – “a mammal [...]

She walks alone for a long time, for a very long time.  Finally, she arrives, exhausted, at the clinic, where her real work begins. Hours later, the babe arrives. Twin screams are heard – one leaving this world and one entering it. No father is known and no one visits the clinic, asking for his wife or baby. Staff are left with this little one and they agree to raise her as their own, to love her, to care for her, and to give her a home. Someone must have been humming a tune that day because the baby is named Grace. Seven months pass and I meet Grace, with [...]

I have been given a new name. We start the day early, heading out of Kampala towards the east of the country.  We pass by the town of Jinja, where the Nile starts. We drive through gorgeous views, boasting 100 colors of green.  Plantain trees, tea farms, corn fields, newly planted potato plants, cassava, rice paddies, and all sorts of vegetation fly by as we make good time towards a hospital called Holy Innocents.  When we think we are close, we find out we are not.  We turn off the main road onto a road made of red. Red dirt is everywhere, breaking up the green and I enter into [...]