Dear P4P Friend,

Meet Joan Akinyi Omuga, mother of four, community health volunteer, and farmer, all coupled in one amazing woman.  Joan, a lady in her mid-thirties, has seen it all and even in the hardest times, she has never given up.

 Joan was married to Mr. Omuga, the deputy head teacher of Magongo Primary School. When her husband passed away seven years ago, Joan became the family’s sole breadwinner. Her children, Edwin age 18, Fiona 16, Humphrey 12 and Caroline 10, are all going to school thanks to their mum’s hard work to pay tuition for the oldest to attend boarding school. This is not a light burden for a parent who does not have a regular income, but she manages.

Most of the P4P volunteers who have travelled to Kenya have met Joan and many remarked how memorable she is because of her always-present smile and her sharp dressing. What most may not know is that Joan is HIV positive.  She breaks this news in the middle of our interview, and somehow I do not know how to proceed.

Joan and her late husband were tested for HIV before they got married; both were negative so she says she never took any precautions. When she found out she was positive in 2007 while pregnant, she says she was bitter and was in denial. Luckily, she was able to join a support group, enabling her to move on. She was so inspired by other people’s stories, she decided to become a Community Health Volunteer (CHV) to help uplift her community and to encourage others living with HIV that there is life after that diagnosis.

Joan has her community at heart, always yearning for change and always looking for new knowledge and skills to enable her to offer assistance in her community. Because of this resilience, Joan got involved with Partnering for Progress translating for the teams, distributing Days for Girls kits, supporting Maendeleo Pamoja projects among other things.

Joan was quick to tell me that she has benefitted greatly from the CHV training. The agriculture project enabled her to produce subsistence crops as well as a surplus. She used income from the surplus to buy fertilizer and was able to pay school fees for her children. Joan is grateful to P4P for the support it provides in health, education, water and economic empowerment.

A volunteer comments: “Joan is such a kind uplifting soul. She has an easy smile and is always willing to help in any way possible. ~ Chrisdee Imthurn

Retire? Who Me?

Meet P4P Volunteer Eileen Dugger

By Renée Sande

P4P’s newest board member, Eileen Dugger, is retired—sort of. She may not be at her job as contracts and public information administrator for the Pend Oreille PUD, where she worked for 23 years, but she is far from idle.

In addition to sitting on the P4P Board, she also owns a small wedding and special occasion cake business, Sweet Creations Cakes.

“It’s a lot of fun, and through it I have met so many wonderful people,” said Eileen.

When pressed, Eileen modestly admits she is also currently training for a monumental bike ride. Veteran of many 200-mile Seattle to Portland (STP) rides, this will be her longest haul yet.

“We’ll be doing the northern tier ride from Anacortes, Washington, to Bar Harbor Maine,” Eileen says. “It’s approximately 4,200 miles, and we’re hoping to complete it within 11 weeks.”

That’s over 50 miles a day. Over the Continental Divide. Across prairies. In the summer. A distance, an elevation and an excursion most of us could not accomplish in a single DAY, let ALONE day after day.