kenyan orphan

New Hearing Brings New Life to HIV-Positive Kenyan Orphan

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 2/15/07)

Eleven-year-old Mungai traveled from Kenya to the United States last October in time to be “Mr. Incredible” for Halloween.
HIV-positive, Mungai grew up in Nyumbani Children’s Home, the first orphanage for HIV-positive children in Kenya, founded by Jesuit Medical Doctor Father Angelo D’Agostino in 1992. Father D’Agostino, who passed away last October, started Nyumbani when he opened the doors of his own home to three HIV-positive children after they were rejected from an orphanage due to their HIV status.
Mungai is one of the hundreds of typical children to have since taken refuge at the orphanage — except that in addition to his HIV-positive status, he was struck deaf two years ago as a result of secondary meningitis.
Mungai’s life changed when he met Tomi Browne, a doctor of audiology and parishioner at St. Luke Church in McLean, in December 2005. At the encouragement of former patient Father D’Agostino, Tomi, her husband, Jeff, and their three sons traveled to Nyumbani, bringing more than $50,000 worth of Christmas presents with them, thanks to contributions from family, friends and complete strangers.
Because of Tomi’s background in audiology and her knowledge of sign language, Mungai and Tomi immediately bonded.
“We say that Mungai kind of adopted Tomi,” said Sister Julie Mulvihill, a sister of St. Francis of Philadelphia, who works at Nyumbani as the international volunteer coordinator.
“I fell in love with him,” Tomi said. And she got to work.
After raising money for a hearing aid that didn’t improve Mungai’s hearing, it was Tomi’s professional opinion that started Mungai on the road to the United States for a cochlear implant, what the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) defines as “a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.”
“Because of Tomi’s presence and her influence we were at least in a position to look into it,” Sister Julie said.
First, they needed medical information to see if he was a candidate to have the surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In order for the surgery to proceed, Tomi had to promise that Mungai would have follow-up care, making it necessary for her to return to Kenya on a regular basis.
“The cochlear implant is something that takes a rather lengthy period of the body accommodating to it,” Tomi said. She said a good analogy was giving someone the car keys, but still having to teach him how to drive.
Promises were made, $90,000 was raised from family and friends, and Mungai left Kenya to go to the United States for medical attention — the first person to ever do so.
“We hope he won’t be the last, but he is the first,” Sister Julie said.
Even though the surgery was in Philadelphia, Mungai wanted his time in the United States to be spent with Tomi. As a result, the trio ferried from Washington to Philadelphia for the consultations, surgery and treatments.
Mungai was successfully implanted on Jan. 11 and was activated on Jan. 22. The cochlear implant is made up of two pieces: one external portion that sits behind the ear and magnetically connects to one internal portion surgically inserted under the skin.
The NIDCD said the implant gives “a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech.”
“It is a different way of hearing than ‘normal,’” Tomi said, but the result is no less miraculous.
“He is doing so great and the changes in him already have been pretty amazing,” Tomi said. “He is a much happier child, much less frustrated. He loves knowing what’s going on.”
“He is still relearning how to hear,” she added. “He’s going to seen a good bit of adjustment on this because his test responses are going to be changing over the next few months.”
Mungai and Sister Julie are scheduled to return to Nyumbani on Feb. 22. Mungai has missed his friends since the day he left, and Sister Julie said she can’t wait to get back to the people of amazing faith.
“There’s a dependence on God and a trust in God,” she said. “They strengthen my faith, they give me hope. They help me believe in the compassion of God. I try to be a presence for people, but basically I get more than I give.”
Nyumbani has three components: an orphanage, which houses 100; a village, which serves both 1,000 orphaned children and 200 “orphaned adults,” parents whose children have died of AIDS and who have no one to care for them; and an outreach program to the slums that reaches 3,000.
The hope is that in five years it will be self-sustaining.
“Father D’Agostino gave the children at the orphanage life,” Sister Julie said. “We’re trying to give them a quality of life.”
Mungai is their number one example. He has survived tuberculosis, rickets, pneumonia, herpes zoster, secondary meningitis, congestive heart failure and now deafness.
“Look at him now,” Tomi said. “He’s a piece of work.”
Mungai is a ball of energy, moving nonstop. At Tomi’s McLean home he was outside playing with dogs Linus and Lucy, then he was inside licking Reddi Wip off of waffles. When the house did get quiet, Tomi looked up, alarmed, and asked where he was. Not to worry, he was in the next room playing with one of her sons.
Mungai has “established a presence” at Mass at St. Luke. The first time he heard the contemporary choir after having the implant, Mungai raised his arms like a conductor who’d just gotten his dream job.
Sister Julie said that when she and Mungai return to Kenya there is now hope for his future — a hope that stemmed from the people of the family of God helping one another.
“We look at each other and realize that we’re different: we’re not better, we’re not worse, but we’re all children of God,” Sister Julie said. “God made us imperfect so we would need each other.”
In Nyumbani “you can see the Holy Spirit run rampant,” Tomi said. “It’s only through the generosity of people that things can be accomplished.”
Tomi’s latest fund-raising effort is the “IcareIwear” jewelry line. Using beads made from clay in Kenya, Tomi creates and sells necklaces, earrings and other pieces. All profits go back to Kenya.
For information go to www.heartofthevillage.org and www.nyumbani.org.