The Miracle of the Cow

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Daughter #1 is a born humanitarian. She’s been goading our family into good works since she was old enough to talk. However, when she called me and asked me to help to save a cow, I was somewhat taken aback. I didn’t know said critter, and I was unlikely to ever have opportunity to be introduced since the cow lived about 8,000 miles away in Kenya.

Daughter #1 has supervised many a family project for children in need from dozens of gift boxes for the often forgotten children in the in the Juvenile Justice system to Sub-for-Santa projects including a couple of memorable ones. One helped a single mom and her several young children–most of whom spoke no English–with gifts and the food for a Christmas feast. We found the family in a tiny basement apartment; the only furniture evident was several tattered mattresses on the floor. Another family project provided an unusually specific kind of Christmas for a household with at least two deaf children and very limited means to help them.

It was somewhat reassuring that Daughter #1 actually knew the cow. The cow turned out to be the sole provider of milk products for a state-sponsored deaf residence school (N’gala) of 220 students in N’akuru, the third largest city in Kenya–which is about a three hour bus ride from Nairobi. It is a town so small that it doesn’t even boast a single stop light. Daughter #1 and a couple of her colleagues—Liz, a teacher/professor for the deaf at Utah State, and Sue, an executive with the Holiday Rotary Club—had spent two weeks at this school every other summer for several years leading a group of volunteers, composed of both teens and adults, to tackle problems for which the school had no expertise or simply could not afford.

Volunteers planted 200 trees around the compound as a wind break to control the dry dusty winds which restricted successful food gardens and exacerbated allergies for many students. They installed solar panels on the bunk houses, constructed a greatly improved water system, bought serger sewing machines for students to learn to make their own and family clothing, provided computers to help students interact with the modern world. One year they sponsored  vision clinic with a local doctor volunteer. The group screened all 220 students and found 60 students with vision problems severe enough to warrant glasses, a life-changing gift for students who use their eyes to read language in the fingers of their friends and teachers.

Another year my brother-in-law, an oral surgeon, opened a two week clinic near the school for dental health. Not only students took advantage of his services. The staff at the dental clinic where he set up shop and the workers at the local hospital all lined up begging the doctor to fix the pain in their mouths. For many of the students who were treated at the clinic, it was the first time any of them had ever gone without debilitating discomfort in their jaws and gums. My brother-in-law still tells the story of one young girl who became “addicted” to Tylenol when she discovered a life without agony was possible..

Now their only cow was ill. Richard, the director of the school, called Daughter #1. They could not afford the veterinary medicine to cure the animal. Did she know any way that supporters in America could help? She called me, and I walked down the hall from my classroom at Bingham High to the room of my friend and colleague, Margaret, who was the advisor for the National Honor Society. Time was short. In fact, there was a literal “dead” line—the cow could not last very many more days. Would her students be willing to provide assistance?

The NHS president called an emergency meeting after school. Part of the Honor Society oath encourages students to “give back” to their community. The student response was instantaneous. Unlike adults, they didn’t ask dumb questions like how do you know this isn’t a scam? and why can’t those people get off their butts and go to work? They pulled out their wallets, dug through their backpacks, searched the recesses of their lockers, cleaned out the glove boxes of their cars, and asked their buddies for any available cash. They dumped random change and small bills onto a table in the library where the treasurer gathered it up and started counting. By the end of the afternoon, the total was upwards of $700.00. More than enough to save a cow in a country so far away that most of them would never see it.

We cut a check for the money, delivered it to the Sue’s Holiday Rotary Club who wired the money to a sister club in N’akuru. The vet made a visit, treated the problem, and the cow was saved. I’m guessing most of those NHS students never thought again about their generosity. But a whole raft of deaf students in a little valley in Kenya had their day’s allotment of milk on their morning cereal thanks to this group of unlikely angels in American T-shirts and jeans. It doesn’t take much to work a miracle. Daughter #1 and her friends specialize in them.