SHARE

Making a Difference

Dr. Martha MacGuffie believes that an individual can make a difference. She likes to end her lectures with a photograph and a question, “Is it sunrise or sunset?” The picture is of the island of Rusinga in Kenya and you can’t tell from looking whether it’s dawn or dusk. Not coincidentally, Rusinga is the place where Mary Leakey discovered the skull of proconsul Africanus, the 20-million year old ancestor of man. Today the island has AIDS. MacGuffie tells her audiences that it’s up to them to decide if life is beginning or ending in this beautiful part of the world.

In 1979, two of MacGuffie’s sons received blood transfusions to treat a mild blood disorder, and contracted AIDS. Since then, MacGuffie lectures to raise AIDS awareness.

Whether she’s speaking to school children or adult clubs and organizations, MacGuffie, an articulate and vibrant woman in her early 80’s, consistently brings her audiences to action. Not long ago, a particularly boisterous high school audience were so moved by a Friday afternoon lecture that on Saturday they presented her with a $1,500 donation – Monday’s lunch money from the entire class. The Lions Club were so taken with her message that they presented her with their humanitarian award – the me one they presented to other Theresa – and a large sum of money to rebuild a Kenyan Hospital. They got MacGuffie’s message loud and clear and did what they could do to help. “I’m a Lion and a Rotarian,” MacGuffie said, “that’s 2.6 million people in total. How can I get $1 from each of them?”

MacGuffie co-founded with Rockland County resident Renee Brilliant, M.D. the Society for Hospital and Resources Exchange (S.H.A.R.E.). S.H.A.R.E. is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing medical help to the sick and needy children of Africa. Over years of watching life in Kenya on S.H.A.R.E. sponsored medical relief missions, MacGuffie developed what she calls her recipe to break the third word cycle of poverty and disease. “The problem is food, the recipe gives it to them,” she said. The recipe is simple, and relatively inexpensive. “Every village needs 2 bulls, a plow and chain, a donkey and donkey cart, treated mosquito nets and a solar oven,” said MacGuffie. “With food, people with AIDS get out of bed. They can work and when they can work, they can make money. And when they make money they can send their kids to school, and can afford the transportation to the hospital for the free AIDS drugs”.

A solar oven costs $10,000. Actress Ellen Burstyn, also a Rockland County resident and friend of MacGuffie, decided she wanted to help get the first oven. Susan McTigue, Burstyn’s long-time personal assistant and museum director, conceived and organized a show of Burstyn’s photographs at the Belskie Museum in Closter, N.J. The museum sold prints of Burstyn’s photos, taken on her travels, to benefit S.H.A.R.E. and raised $ 10,000 – enough money for that critical item on MacGuffie’s wish list: a solar-powered oven large enough to feed an entire village in Kenya. McTigue said, “I knew we had a specific goal: the solar oven. I knew we had Ellen’s photos and could turn them into cash; and I knew that if people know their money was going to buy something specific, they would be so much more generous.”

That first sun oven, which can bake hundreds of loaves of bread per day and also purify many gallons of water, is now in use in the village of Oyugis in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya. This part of the world is ideal for solar energy, with “362 days a year of enough sun to at least pasteurize water,” said MacGuffie. It is also, according to MacGuffie, a place where one in every two people has AIDS, a place where most of the men and many of the women have died of AIDS leaving hundreds of thousands of orphans, a place where sickness from malaria makes it impossible for the people to farm the second crop per year that they need to survive, and a place where the people are too weak to get to the clinic for AIDS medication and too poor to even send their children to school. When asked about Oxfam and other aid organizations, MacGuffie said, “Nobody works where we do, it’s too dangerous. We picked the place where conditions were worst, and figured if we could make a difference there, we could make a difference anywhere.”

Before the solar oven, the Oyugis villagers gathered wood to burn for cooking. Wood was their only source of power, but wood fires were dangerous and unhealthy: children were routinely burned and the inhalation of smoke was bad for everyone. Deforestation was also a problem, and foraging for enough wood could take up to 4 hours per day. With the sun oven, there is no danger of fire and the women can spend more time every day farming. And with the bull and plow women can farm more ground, and grow more food. With the recipe the Kenyans can help themselves. “The children,” said MacGuffie, “will live and grow up because of the women helping themselves.”

The women are an important piece of the puzzle in Kenya. According to MacGuffie, since the men are largely gone, dead from AIDS, the women who are left are the only chance for the future. Educating girls, something frowned upon in Kenya, is another S.H.A.R.E. project, sponsoring orphans to keep them in school. MacGuffie is fighting a difficult battle; but until the women are empowered, the spread of AIDS in Africa will not stop.

”$10 million would complete the infrastructure of Kenya,” said MacGuffie. But, according to MacGuffie, U.S. government aid money doesn’t get to the people. It goes into Kenyan government bank accounts. S.H.A.R.E. is different; bypassing politics and working directly with the people. When MacGuffie and her S.H.A.R.E. staff travel to Kenya on their frequent medical missions, they bring cash to buy bulls and carts and deliver them to the villagers themselves.

MacGuffie wants to send more solar powered ovens to Kenya. She just needs the money. Each oven costs approximately $10,000, with shipping costs bringing the total cost to $13,000. MacGuffie’s daughter Pamela Hudson once told NBC television that her mother believes in the power of one person to make a difference. MacGuffie is working hard to spread that message. Tax-deductible donations can be made to S.H.A.R.E. at 591 South Mountain Road, New City, New York 10956.

Ellen Burstyn will be honored on Thursday, December 1, 2005, for her work on behalf of SHARE, at a dinner to be held at The View in Piermont from 7:00 – 10:00 pm. Tickets for the charity event can be purchased by calling (845) 634-8797 ($150.00 per person).

To make a contribution to this outstanding organization, checks can be sent to SHARE, P.O.Box 705, Monsey, NY 10952.