All About Me

My name is Erika Grad, and this is my first blog post of the season. Perhaps you're one of my family members, my close friend, or just a random person who has happened to stumble across this blog. No matter how you managed to find this, I'd like all of you to know just a few things about me.

Me with students at Victory Academy in Meru, Kenya

If there's one thing anyone should know about me, it's that I love doing international service. My most recent endeavor took me to Kenya, East Africa. I traveled to the impoverished nation with a non-profit called Matanya's Hope, which is a program dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty in Kenya by offering educational sponsorship to children who would otherwise have none and by assisting with projects critical to their survival. Now, my intention of going to Kenya was not to caravan through the game parks to see animals, but rather an opportunity to expand my own global perspective and help people in desperate need. I wanted the real experience of living in a third world nation for three weeks. I lived with the Mugo family in the tiny village of Matanya (where the program was founded and the name originates) in their "luxury" (by Kenyan standards) three room house with corrugated tin walls and roofing, and a concrete floor. Food was cooked in a makeshift kitchen located behind the house. Breakfast and dinner were the only two meals of the day. Goat that made me gag, beans with the consistency and thickness of cement that I had to choke down, and kale that was bitter were all painstakingly prepared over a coal fire that also served as the house's only heating unit and light source. No electricity, no running water, no toilets, no contact with the outside world for three weeks. And much to my surprise, it was the best three weeks of my life. 

In rural Kenya I met Kisui, a boy with one of the worst cases
of Scoliosis, and who is unable to access or afford a surgical
 procedure that will improve and prolong the quality of his life. 

But my work began by traveling around the country to various boarding schools and villages to deliver school supplies, shoes, and medical supplies. For Americans, it's difficult to imagine what a life without shoes is like, but it is much harder to picture a life either without access healthcare at all (for most Kenyans) or without affordable healthcare (for many Americans) .Witnessing firsthand how needy many Kenyans were inspired me, in part, to create this blog in order to bring to light the reality of global healthcare and the vast inequalities that plague the healthcare system. Over the course of the next several months, I will be examining the healthcare systems of various nations, and hopefully, provide insight and answer questions about: why so many people are dying, the costs of care and how it affects lives, tax hikes and its effects on medicare, how the recession is impacting American healthcare, and how the upcoming election will impact the future of American healthcare.


  
Click the link below for more about Matanya's Hope and how you can help save lives one child at a time.
 http://www.matanyashope.org/