Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Closer to Home: Willow Glen resident Shelly Viramontez, principal at Monroe Middle School, talks with Ethiopian Kaleab Abateneh. He gave $3 to a school fundraiser, which raised more than $2,500 to purchase medicine to immunize residents living on the Ivory Coast.

Global Need

Helping to bring health and hope to Africans

By Alicia Upano

Meningitis has crept into the far reaches of the Ivory Coast on the continent of Africa, and getting medical help to its inhabitants is no easy task. The roads leading into the villages are mere footpaths, some only large enough for a single person.

But volunteers such as Monroe Middle School Principal Shelly Viramontez were determined to reach out and help those living thousands of miles away.

To accomplish this, she journeyed across underdeveloped roads by Jeep and motorcycle in February. She and a group of volunteers from the Hanna Project arrived at a clearing, after passing through miles of wilderness, to find hundreds of Africans gathered for meningitis vaccines.

Viramontez could see women coming toward her, with two little feet peeking out from behind their backs--babies strapped tightly and resembling human knapsacks. The women would accept the shot, then turn, allowing their babies to be immunized as well.

For six days, Viramontez and 21 volunteers, including her husband, Joe, and her 17-year-old son, Jake, visited numerous villages in the northern region of the Ivory Coast. Among the residents, the disease played no favorites. After outbreaks of epidemic proportions over the past year, these Africans saw the group and their medicine as a connection to hope and a better future.

The volunteers also dressed wounds ranging from cobra bites to a foot accidentally split by a machete. Cases that required surgery--including correcting cleft palates and removing tumors--were done at the volunteer base camp in Doropo, near the border of Burkina Faso. The Ivory Coast, or Cote d'Ivoire, is bordered by Burkina Faso and Ghana to the east and Liberia to the west.

When the volunteers left for the next village, or turned in after a long day, the villagers bestowed gifts upon them--roosters, eggs or the wild sweet root, inyam.

"It was so difficult to accept gifts from them when we knew we were so much better off," Shelly says.

But then she was told a local proverb, "You are never too poor to give, and you are never too rich to receive."

"It was humbling," says Joe, who is a captain in the Santa Clara County Fire Department, "but it was such an honor."

The Viramontez family began planning their February trip last November, when longtime family friend Mike Cousineau shared his vision to return to the Ivory Coast. Cousineau lived there for 27 years before the civil war broke out in 2002.

Cousineau is also the director of the Antioch, Tenn.-based Hanna Project. Named after Carlisle Hanna, who does missionary work in India, the Hanna Project was created to help people better their lives.

"We want to bring help, hope and healing to people in need," Cousineau says.

He combined his humanitarian work with his expertise in Africa. He knew the rebels controlled the territory along the northern Ivory Coast. Those living in the region had been deprived of medical attention for more than three years. He dreamed of bringing a team to the area to immunize 20,000 people for the first Hanna Project.

Jake was the first on board. The Valley Christian High School senior makes documentaries and hopes to study film at the University of Southern California next year. He has also been interning at the Campbell multimedia company, Design Reactor, for the past two years.

His interest in going to Africa was two-pronged--he could help the Hanna Project by creating a promotional documentary to recruit volunteers and assist fundraising efforts, and make his own documentary to enter into local film festivals.

"His skills have increased dramatically. I needed a videographer to document what we're doing," Cousineau says. "He was really the catalyst that sparked the family."

Shelly and Joe agreed to go as a family and looked forward to returning to Africa. The couple had visited Cousineau in the Ivory Coast in 1997.

In the months before the trip, Shelly Viramontez also involved her middle school. During December and January, the school collected funds for the Hanna Project.

By mid-February, the school had raised $2,579 for the project. An anonymous business in Tulsa, Okla., also matched 50 cents for each $1, bringing the total sent from the school to nearly $3,900. Some students, particularly those from Africa, took pride in donating $3 because they knew it could save another child's life, she says.

Shelly Viramontez remembers one African student, Kaleab Abateneh, approaching her on the playground.

"Mrs. Viramontez, Mrs. Viramontez, I donated $3 to the Hanna Project," Kaleab said.

"You know, when I give that kid a shot, I'll tell him that this is from Kaleab, because he cares," Shelly Viramontez told the Monroe student.

Shelly did have training to give shots, but it was restricted to practicing on oranges until she got to Africa in early February.

The family flew to the Ivory Coast capitol of Abidjan, a trek of more than 30 hours.

Once in Africa, the group was escorted by the United Nations from the government-held territory in the south to the rebel-held northern region.

"It was as far in the bush as you can get," Cousineau says.

Yet it was familiar terrain to Cousineau.

"I previously made contact with rebel leaders and officers, and they knew we were coming and what we wanted to do," Cousineau says. "They were very accommodating."

Only a week before, the region had an avian flu outbreak, and Monroe teachers had warned Shelly not to go near the chickens.

But on the very first day, Shelly's team was given two roosters as a gift of gratitude. "I thought, 'Good thing my teachers can't see me now,' " she says.

The first day also brought a grave realization--there weren't enough vaccines for everybody.

"When you're standing there with the last shot in your hand to save somebody's life and you still see a line, that's really hard," Joe says.

In all, the Hanna Project could give only 12,500 immunizations. In addition to the meningitis vaccines, the group brought intestinal worm medication for children. Again the need was far greater than imagined. Volunteers ran out of the medication on the first day. Some volunteers were moved to tears.

"The overwhelming part was the need far exceeded the resources we had," Shelly says, "but it made a difference."

For the next five days, the group continued the work they came to do. The day began with breakfast in Doropo, and then the 22-person group was broken into six teams of four to five volunteers. The teams each had a medical professional, a French- speaker and someone who could speak the native dialect, Lobi.

The teams drove for an hour or more to find the village that was expecting them. First, they met the village chief, who welcomed them and offered them water.

Then, it was customary to "share the news." The chief would tell the group the news of his village, and the African team members would offer news from Doropo. Only then could the volunteers begin to give shots and dress the wounds of the villagers.

Joe's background as a firefighter made him the medical professional for his team, while Jake moved among the teams, digitally recording the experience.

The Africans may have had little in the way of material possessions, Shelly says, but relationships were prized. The volunteers saw how the women cared for each other's children and worried as much about their friends' health as their own.

"You start to think, who's better off?" Shelly says.

When the volunteers finished, they used the customary practice of asking the chief for "the road," a symbolic gesture.

"They would offer you half the road, so you could always come back," she says.

The Viramontez family, who live in the Willow Glen neighborhood of San Jose, plan to return in three years with their oldest daughter, Megan. Megan could not travel to Africa this year due to her studies at the University of Arizona. Joe, who was initially reluctant to make the trip, can't wait to go back.

Joe and Shelly Viramontez have a long history in service--Joe has spent 24 years as a firefighter and Shelly a decade in education. Shelly's dream is to one day use her educational skills to open a school in rural Africa, where today none exist. She envisions training locals to run the school.

"Education is the great liberator," she says. "It's giving them the opportunity they wouldn't have had."