On World AIDS Day, woman releases book

from Inside Bay Area

Group becomes 'hands and feet of Jesus' in Africa

By Tim Hunt

Editor's note: Former Herald editor and associate publisher is traveling in Africa to Kenya and Malawi with a Heart for Africa team. He is chair of the Heart for Africa board and filed this report from Malawi on World AIDS Day.

LILONGWE, Malawi

A TEAM OF 27 NORTH AMERICANS arrive here today to work in the poorest areas of Lilongwe with Theresa Malila and her Somebody Cares organization of Lilongwe.

Leading the Heart for Africa team is Janine Maxwell, whose book Its Not Okay With Me, is being released today on World AIDS Day. Maxwells book describes her transformation from successful marketing agency owner to leader of this faith-based humanitarian organization based in Atlanta.

Its appropriate that Im here in Africa as the book God led me to write is being released in North America. My heart is here coming alongside Africans who are doing the work of caring for some of Gods poorest and neediest kids, Maxwell said. Im excited to have other North Americans here with me to be the hands and feet of Jesus along with our African partners.

Too many of Gods precious children die in Africa every day because theres no food, no safe water and the HIV/AIDS pandemic has left in its wake 15 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. God has called me and my family to do what we can to help change this awful reality, Maxwell continued.

Maxwells life changed dramatically after she was in New York City with one of her clients, Kelloggs Canada, when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred. The first chapter of her book traces her escape from New York City after which she fell into a deep depression and began questioning what she was doing with her life.

In 2003, she went to Kenya on a mission trip, which began the transformation of her life. By mid-2004, God had led Maxwell and her husband, Ian, to close their agency, Onyx, and search for a way to make a difference. Their client list included many of the Fortune 50 companies in Canada and they had 75 employees.

Meanwhile, she continued to travel to Africa and began raising money to help orphans. In 2005, her entire family went to Africa to spend the summer as volunteers with Dream for Africa, the predecessor organization to Heart for Africa. Two months after they agreed to join the staff, Ian Maxwell was named president in late September 2005.

The organization has taken more than 4,500 North Americans to Swaziland, South Africa and Malawi to plant gardens to help Africans move toward food security. In Swaziland, more than 95 percent of the homesteads have been planted.

The book chronicles some of the amazing incidents Maxwell encountered while working in Africa, such as one involving a young girl named Lillian and her sisters. On Maxwells first trip to Kenya in 2003, she was in the Kipsongo slum in Kitale with Charles Mully, founder of the Mully Childrens Family.

They were told to go into one hut and discovered a girl who weighed just 12 pounds and was near death. They took her to a hospital and later learned her parents had both died of AIDS and shed lived alone in that hut for eight months. Amazingly, with treatment and lots of prayer, Lillian recovered and now lives in the Mully home in Ndali.

Equally amazing, on two successive trips into that slum — months apart — Maxwell recognized two girls who looked remarkably like Lillian. They were the sisters that Mully and Maxwell did not know existed. The three sisters now all live in Ndali.

Maxwells book tells of the awful poverty and living conditions of millions of African children, but also provides hope that if caring people intervene, they can make a big difference, one child and one family at a time.

The title calls people to action by agreeing that its not OK that:

- A child in sub-Saharan Africa dies every three seconds because of hunger and malnutrition.

- Every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS.

- Orphans live alone or in gangs on the streets because, in many heavily AIDS-infected countries, theres no one to care for them. The governments are simply overwhelmed by the numbers. Last year, the World Health Organization estimated there are more than 15 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.

- Orphans and poor children live in deplorable conditions in slums and scavenge garbage dumps for something to eat. In many slums, theres no clean water supply or no simple sanitation, such as pit toilets.

Here in Malawi, the Heart for Africa team will spend several days working in the Nagona slum, as well as several villages outside of Lilongwe. Team members will be putting roofs on mud huts damaged in the recent torrential rains and planting community gardens to help the Malawians grow nutritious vegetables to improve their diet.

The lack of food and poverty multiplies the effects of HIV/AIDS. Even if the anti-viral drugs are available, many Africans are so malnourished that their bodies cannot process the drugs.

The community gardens are one way that Heart for Africa is helping Africans toward a sustainable food supply. North Americans plant vegetable seedlings and then Somebody Cares provides the ongoing support for the community gardens and the families they feed. Heart for Africa focuses its efforts on hunger, orphans, poverty and education.

Working in the villages of Deya, Matunda, Chatimba and Njewa, Heart for Africa and Somebody Cares have installed three bore holes, fixed a fourth bore hole, committed to building a school that will break ground in February, planted community gardens and brought immediate aid and comfort to thousands of people in Malawi.

Somebody Cares, the Lilongwe-based partner organization, provides home-based care in the poorest areas of this city. Its headed by Theresa Malila, who received Heart for Africas Woman of the Year award in 2005.

For additional information about the book, visit http://www.itsnotokwithme.com. To learn more about Heart for Africa, visit http://www.heartforafrica.org.