11/12/97
News directors, editors: Kenyan Benson Bonyo is currently in his fourth year as an OU-COM student, completing his clinical rotations at Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital in Cleveland. He is available for interviews at 330/971-4642 (beeper) before 5 p.m. or 330-733-1547 (home) after 7 pm. Bonyo also could be available for interviews in Columbus or Athens on Friday, Nov. 14. To schedule an interview, contact Gary Snyder, College of Osteopathic Medicine, at 614/593-2199. He leaves for Kenya on Sunday, Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. from Port Columbus Airport. The other 29 members of the SHARE team leave from Port Columbus Friday, Nov. 28 at 3 p.m. In Kenya Nov. 18-Dec. 21, contact Bonyo and the SHARE team at 011-254-35-23245 or 011-254-35-43770 (phone); 011-254-35-23242 (fax) (Milimani Hotel).

ATHENS, Ohio -- This Thanksgiving holiday season holds a special meaning for Benson Bonyo, a fourth-year medical student at Ohio University. Bonyo will return to his homeland in Kenya next week, leading a 29-member health care and research team from the university's College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM) to fulfill a promise he made to himself nearly 30 years ago when he saw his 9-month-old sister die of dehydration.

"I can still see her face, her pain," Bonyo says. "When I see pediatric patients in the states, I now know my sister's life could have been saved."

Bonyo leaves for Kenya on Nov. 16 and will be joined on Nov. 28 by 14 OU-COM students and three physicians who are traveling to the East African country for a month to provide medical care to patients at three hospitals in Kissumu, as well as rural clinics in Ahero and Mosogo. In addition to medical service, the four-week program, Students Health Assistance/Rural Experience (SHARE) Kenya II, will give OU-COM students a first-hand understanding of medical problems in an undeveloped country where an estimated 70 percent of the population lacks access to good health care, which often leads to tragic deaths, like that of Bonyo's sister.

OU-COM's emphasis is on family medicine and team members will meet with Kenyan officials to establish student and physician exchanges with hospitals and universities in Kenya. In addition, a research team from the university's Tropical and Geographical Disease Institute will be part of the group, collecting information on malaria and other tropical diseases that will be used to develop a seminar, "Pests and Pestilence in Africa."

For Bonyo, after 10 years in the United States, the Thanksgiving mission home is part of a journey that began in poverty with the death of his sister. Growing up in a village of farmers with an average income of $100 a year, Bonyo got a break when he was awarded a scholarship to a Roman Catholic boarding school where the nuns encouraged him to pursue college and a medical career.

"Being able to go to school is probably what saved me," Bonyo says. "The nuns encouraged me and that was the beginning of everything."

After graduating from high school, Bonyo applied to dozens of schools, but only one, Northwood Community College in Texas, offered him a full-tuition scholarship with room and board. Bonyo raised the money for airfare to the United States by bicycling door to door in his village, displaying the scholarship letter and collecting small donations. He went on to graduate from the University of Texas and was admitted to OU-COM in 1991.

"The reception in my village will be very warm; they are all excited that we are coming," says Bonyo, who is scheduled to receive his doctor of osteopathic medicine degree from OU-COM in June 1998. "We can't solve all the health care problems in Kenya. We are just trying to help, to make a difference, and hopefully our work will have a ripple effect."