[Previous entry: "Stage Play “Doubt” At RH Pavilion"] [Next entry: "SJI Library Surveys Island Residents"]

11/02/2007: "Mama na Dada Comes To Friday Harbor"

(FH Mayor Jones and Council Member Carrie Brooks are joined by Joanruth Baumann & Dick Coffey in honoring Daniel Rateng)

Daniel Rateng, (in photo above) received a Proclamation from Friday Harbor Mayor David Jones at the Town Council meeting on Thursday. Mayor Jones cited Rateng’s work with "Mama Na Dada" (Swahili for “Mother and Sister.) in “improving the quality of life for Kunya and neighboring villages through community education and sustainability projects".

The Mayor also presented a Commendation letter to Joanruth Baumann and Dick Coffey for their “continued outreach efforts in raising the needed revenue required to install a water purification and distribution system for the village”

The village is Kunya, and is a fishing village on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Like so many villages in Africa, Kunya has been hit hard by HIV, Malaria, and Typhoid. Clean water will help not only make their lives better, but will save lives.


Rateng arrived in Friday Harbor on Friday, October 23, for a six-week visit. He will speak at schools and community meetings here. He is an HIV-AIDS counselor, and is here to aid a local group's effort to raise $40,000 to provide a clean water system for Kunya village in western Kenya. The group's work grew from the seven-week visit by a Friday Harbor couple to Kunya this year. The group is sponsoring an African evening at the Mullis Center on November 9, with a dinner, music, pictures, and talks by Daniel and another Kenyan.

Daniel works with Mama na Dada*, a Kenyan organization that helps members of its communities to organize themselves to identify and find ways to solve pressing community problems. They have designed a system to treat, store, and distribute water for Kunya; they need money to complete the construction of the system. The goal of the local group is to raise that money.

The need for clean water in Kunya is serious. Kunya is a farming and fishing village on the shore of Lake Victoria, and although the lake water is contaminated with parasites and diseases such as cholera and typhoid, residents have only that water to use, usually without treatment. Since about half of the population of the area is children, and since nearly half of the residents of the area have compromised immune systems, diseases introduced from the water kill hundreds each year.

The story of Daniel’s life is an inspiring one. Now 29 years old, he was born into a poor family and left motherless as a child; nonetheless, he overcame considerable cultural and financial odds to obtain his education, earning a college degree in social work. He directs Mama na Dada's Stay Alive One-Stop Youth Center in Nairobi and also works with their programs in Kunya, where they have organized the community to build a health clinic, secondary school, and day-care center, all of which are now operating with local volunteers. Daniel teaches about HIV and AIDS and counsels those with the diseases on how to extend their lives. He also directs projects helping farmers to find ways to grow higher yields of more nutritious crops; hunger and malnutrition can be deadly for anyone but especially so for children and those with HIV or AIDS.

Daniel consistently puts his community's needs ahead of his own. He often works for little or no pay; Mama na Dada is a small, local organization always with uncertain funding. This trip to Friday Harbor fulfills a life's dream for him and, aside from a recent brief trip within Africa, marks his first time away from Kenya. So Friday Harbor is providing his introduction to the western world and the United States.

For further information about Daniel, the water project, or various medical, water, and other special-interest-group lunches planned, please call Joanruth Baumann at 378-6362.