Registration is full for the St. Louis premiere of the documentary Sons of Lwala. The film chronicles the journey of Milton Ochieng, M.D., a medical resident at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, and his brother Fred, a medical student at Vanderbilt. The brothers left their native Lwala, Kenya, to come to the United States to attend college and then medical school but never forgot about the impoverished village from which they came.
The film tells the story of the brothers’ efforts to build the first medical clinic in Lwala. To the average American that might not sound impressive, but in Kenya such medical help is rare. Their village has no electricity or running water.
“You’d either have to get the person in the back of a bicycle or in a wheelbarrow if they’re bleeding and literally push them on the wheelbarrow for 45 minutes or an hour to get to the nearest paved road — then flag down a taxi,” says Milton Ochieng. “Sometimes, it would take two hours to get to the hospital.”
He remembers helping push a woman on such a trip who died during childbirth on their journey.
“They had to push her back in this bloody wheelbarrow,” says Dr. Ochieng. “And I just remember the eerie cries of the women as her body was being brought back.”
He credits that experience with helping him decide to become a physician. From Dartmouth, he attended medical school at Vanderbilt University before moving to St. Louis as a medical resident. All the while, the two brothers worked together to create the clinic by raising money in the United States.
Although the clinic opened April 2, 2007 and has seen over 25,000 patients – 65% of them under age 5 – his parents did not live to see their children’s work come to fruition, both dying of AIDS in 2004.
Their vision and hard work have earned Milton and Fred Ochieng honors as ABC News’ “Persons of the Week” in early 2009. Dr. Ochieng is also part of elite company as winner of the 2009 Trailblazer in Diversity Award from the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute. Previous winners of the award include Dr. Maya Angelou, actor and activist Danny Glover and BET founder Sheila Johnson.
For more information about their work visit:
Sons of Lwala film trailer
http://www.sonsoflwala.com/site.html
Caring for a Village
Washington University Magazine
http://magazine.wustl.edu/Fall09/Milton Ochieng.html
The Lwala Community Alliance