Steve James honors his daughter's memory with humanitarian work

Sunday, December 26, 2004

By STEVE DOYLE Times Staff Writer, steved@htimes.com

First in a two-part series

Steve James' T-shirt tells only part of the story.

Somebody in Kenya Loves Me, it says. Actually, hundreds of people in the east African nation love James, a big-hearted Huntsville Hospital employee.

They love him for opening an orphanage that has rescued 32 children from the brink of starvation. They love him for piping fresh water to arid villages that time forgot. They love him for turning a primitive hospital with spotty electricity into one of Kenya's best health-care providers.

Mostly, they love James for believing the old-fashioned notion that one person really can make a difference. It all started with a TV commercial. You've seen the ads: African kids in fly-infested huts, their bellies disfigured by hunger. For just a few pennies a day, the announcer says, you can save a child.

James, 49, was skeptical. He wondered if the kids were real. And he figured the relief workers pocketed most of the money.

James' 16-year-old daughter, Brittney, was more trusting. After seeing a Christian Children's Fund commercial in 1998, Brittney and a friend from Cullman High School pledged $24 a month to a hungry Kenyan boy named Newton.

The friend eventually dropped out, but not Brittney. For three years, she worked after school at doctors' offices to keep her promise to Newton.

Before starting college in Asheville, N.C., Brittney begged James to take her to Kenya so she could meet him.

Dad's response: Africa is too dangerous.

They went to Italy instead.

Barely a year later, on Sept. 14, 2001, Brittney was found dead in her off-campus apartment (James suspects foul play, but no one was ever charged). She was 19.

James and his wife, Greta, figured the best way to honor Brittney would be to do something nice for Newton. They set up a college fund for him at a SouthTrust bank in Cullman and asked friends to donate money instead of sending flowers for her funeral.

Within days, they had $3,000 - a huge sum in Kenya.

The story could have ended there, and everyone would have applauded the Jameses for making some good come out of Brittney's death.

But something told Steve James the college fund wasn't enough. He had to do more. He had to go to Kenya.

"I just felt drawn there," he said last week. "It was out of my control."

Out of Africa

James' to-do list for that first trip to Kenya in March 2002 was short: Meet Newton. Volunteer at a hospital.

Before leaving, James, a nurse anesthetist, e-mailed several hospitals asking if they wanted his help. Only one wrote back: Ojele (pronounced ah-joe-lay) Hospital in Migori, a dusty, AIDS-wracked town in western Kenya.

Not wanting to arrive empty-handed, James asked his bosses at Cullman Regional Medical Center, where he worked at the time, if they had any surplus medical equipment. They did. Slightly-used heart monitors. Surgical supplies. A cauterizing tool. Enough good will to fill a large wooden pallet.

James spent $2,000 having the stuff flown across the Atlantic.

Greta was scared. She didn't want James, a lymphoma survivor, tromping around a Third World country still plagued by typhoid, malaria and yellow fever (not to mention lions, rhinos and stampeding wildebeest).

But James, a devout Christian, felt God was pointing him toward Kenya. He was convinced of it after learning the names of the Ojele Hospital administrator and his wife:

Joseph and Mary.

Overwhelmed

Kenya was much, much worse than in the TV commercials.

Everyone seemed to live in smoky huts made of dried mud and cow dung. No electricity, no toilets. Children left homeless and parentless by AIDS wandered the roads or were forced to work in the fields.

Conditions weren't any better at the hospital.

Because there was no running water, surgeons rinsed their bloody hands in a communal Igloo cooler. Patients slept two to a bed. Needles were dunked in Clorox and re-used. A hospital patron tried to sell James a live chicken for $2; he needed money to get his dying daughter a blood transfusion.

James called home crying. "I was overwhelmed" by the poverty, he said. "I was just a wreck."

A couple of nights later, James had a dream about Brittney. She told him she was proud that he had gone to Kenya.

James saw it as another sign from above. After meeting Newton and his mother at a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya's sprawling capital, James made up his mind. He was coming back. And he was bringing reinforcements.

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