KIM LAWTON, correspondent: The famine in East Africa continues to worsen with humanitarian officials now saying that more than 12 million people are in need of emergency food assistance. The United States this week announced an additional $117 million of aid for the region and urged other nations to follow suit. More than 400,000 Somali refugees have flooded into camps in Ethiopia and Kenya seeking help. This week, former US Ambassador to the UN World Food Program Tony Hall was in Kenya visiting one of the largest refugee camps. I spoke with him there via Skype.

Well, Ambassador Hall, tell us about the conditions that you’ve being seeing on the ground there.

AMBASSADOR TONY HALL (Former US Ambassador to the UN World Food Program and Executive Director, Alliance to End Hunger): Well, the situation on the ground, it’s bad and it’s not getting any better. I think that the sheer volume of people that are coming over the border, it’s overwhelming. I must say that the UN and the NGOs that are working on the ground are doing a great job. I think the people that are donating money, I think they, you know, they ought to feel good about the fact that their money is getting through. These programs are working. People are being served. But the volume of people, I mean, and the volume of the problem is amazing. Twenty-nine thousand children have died in the last 90 days. Four-hundred thousand people have been fleeing from Somalia because of the tremendous amount of violence and coupled with the drought—these people have not only been fleeing because of violence, they’ve been fleeing because they’ve lost their livelihood.

LAWTON: What are the biggest challenges the aid groups face right now?

HALL: I think the biggest challenge probably is the sheer volume of people that are coming. Fifteen-hundred people are coming over the border every day. I mean, they’re walking for, you know, a month-and-a-half to two months. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, I can’t imagine this, but they’re walking basically with whatever they can carry over a desert. In some cases they’re walking a hundred to two hundred miles, and they’re fleeing a very violent terrorist group. They have to also be very careful about, you know, these gangs, and they’re out there, thugs that are out there robbing them of whatever they have. The women are very susceptible to being raped along the way. They arrive, and when you see them, I mean, they are exhausted. Many of their children are malnourished, but, you know, they have this tremendous gift of wanting to survive, and, you know, when they get here you see a little bit of hope in their eyes even though they’re exhausted and thin and malnourished, and they think, well, they’ve arrived, and there’s a little bit of hope here, because there’s water and there’s food and there’s a place for them to stay, and that’s pretty neat.

LAWTON: How can you make the case for more aid, more donations coming in in the face of this global economic crisis we’re seeing here in the US, the stock market, and around the world? How can you make the case for people to give?

HALL: Our country has always been generous. Our country is a country that is known for its humanitarian aid, its development assistance, not only in our own country but overseas. That’s what we’re known for, and I think for us to reach out and to, you know, to help the least of these is—it shows moral authority, and it shows what we’re all about.

LAWTON: Ambassador Tony Hall, thank you very much.

Originally broadcast June 13, 2008

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: From its location on the edge of the city, the North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis boasts a number of global ties.

Reverend KEVIN ARMSTRONG (Pastor, North United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, speaking to Joseph Okuya from Kenya): Joseph, please come here and join me as we welcome you.

DE SAM LAZARO: None are closer than those to Kenya.

Rev. ARMSTRONG (speaking to Mr. Okuya): As you know, we’ve been praying with and for you, for the people of Kenya. It helps us to know a little bit from you. How are things now?

DE SAM LAZARO: The honored guest told of the deadly post-election violence in his country.

JOSEPH OKUYA: Of course, we see that at the peak the leaders have made some kind of an agreement. But down in the grassroots, it’s still smoldering.

“We’re taking care of the poorest of the poor.”

DE SAM LAZARO: The Kenya connection traces back almost two decades to one couple from this congregation. In recent months, Joseph and Sara Ellen Mamlin have brought them news from the frontlines of a distant conflict.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin first visited here in the late ’80s to set up an exchange program between his employer, Indiana University School of Medicine and a med school in the western Kenyan city of Eldoret. He returned a decade later to a worsening AIDS problem here and decided stay on and set up a small HIV clinic — or so he thought.

Dr. JOSEPH MAMLIN: It grew to where I had 1,500 patients out of this one room and just lying all around on the ground. We had the largest village-based HIV clinic in Kenya, and we were just working out of this one room. And then I was home visiting my children and grandchildren years ago, and someone called my wife and asked to meet her at JC Penney at a shopping mall. And she just anonymously handed her a check and said, “Joe needs a clinic.” And this is what you see here. This is all from an anonymous donor in Indianapolis from the church.

We had the National Minister of Health and the U.S. ambassador dedicating, but that’s not the real dedication. Here I see a beautiful lady coming by here. This is Rose Beargen. She’s one of the very first patients I treated here many years ago and I’m the one looking sick now instead of her. And — but she was essentially dying of PCP pneumonia. She was almost a dead woman.

DE SAM LAZARO: Today she runs the clinic’s outreach program. The miracle of her recovery began in this pharmacy. It’s well-stocked with antiretroviral drugs for HIV, thanks to a major grant from the U.S government’s President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin with Rose

Dr. MAMLIN: Look what we have here. This is PEPFAR in action. People who’ve been in this business and watching people die in Kenya will walk in a room like this, they will cry. To see this umbilical cord to life made available by the American people free of charge for all of these patients is a miracle and it’s just simply wonderful.

DE SAM LAZARO : Today, some 60,000 patients receive care in 18 regional centers. Mamlin notes only two American doctors work alongside several hundred Kenyan colleagues and staff, a staff so dedicated, he says, that many were on the frontlines of emergency care during the turmoil. None of the acrimony from the ethnic violence that followed December’s elections spilled into the compounds of their clinics.

HENRY MUITIRIRI: I think in the organization we didn’t have any inciter who could come and incite us to fight. We work as one.

DE SAM LAZARO: Many employees took shelter in the project’s compound. Even though they were from tribes fighting each other on the outside, they drew on faith to stay together inside.

PANINAH MUSULA: We had a Christian group. We had prayers. We had to sing together. We had to pray together. That united us that we could not rise against one another.

SAMMY KIMANI: We need to believe that we can have peace back, and we need it. We had hope.

DE SAM LAZARO : But all around them the devastation did not spare even churches — the toll not just in death and property damage, but also interruption in the careful drug regimens for AIDS patients.

Dr. MAMLIN (talking with patient): You missed two days.

UNIDENTIFIED PATIENT: There was no means to come here.

Dr. MAMLIN: I want you to know that missing your medicine even two days is dangerous. I know you could do nothing. It’s not your fault.

A displaced Kenyan

DE SAM LAZARO: The most immediate challenge was in tracking down the thousands of patients who fled the violence, making sure they were supplied with their drugs. Many scattered into makeshift camps for displaced people, some of which still remain. Thirty-seven-year-old Purity Wambui took shelter in this church. She got a coveted indoor spot since she has a newborn. That makes life easier, but hardly easy.

PURITY WAMBUI: The health becomes deteriorated because you have nothing to eat. Before, we used to have balanced diet, but now it’s hard to get that balanced diet. We just rely on maize and yellow peas. Milk — milk is a dream.

DE SAM LAZARO: Nonetheless she’s grateful, not just for drugs that have kept her alive but for provisions the Indiana partnership distributes to her entire family. It’s the middle step in restoring patients, says Mamlin.

Dr. MAMLIN: When I first pick up a patient who’s wasted, they look up at me and you can tell, even if they say nothing, they just want the drugs so they can live. And about six or eight weeks, when they see that they’re living, they kind of look back at you and say, “I’m hungry!” And then let another two or three months go by as they are walking around and looking normal, they wonder how do I get back on my feet and become a whole person again?

DE SAM LAZARO: That takes clinics into matters far beyond the immediate medical needs. Each day there are tough calls to make on how to disburse limited funds.

Dr. MAMLIN (speaking to patient): You have no school fees?

DE SAM LAZARO: Mamlin turned down this mother’s request for school fees.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin

Dr. MAMLIN (reading request from patient): “To whom it may concern.” That’s usually my middle name. No, you have to see Diana, the social worker. There are so many of these it’s impossible for me to do all of them.

DE SAM LAZARO: The next patient, a tailor named Clement, was luckier.

CLEMENT (speaking to Dr. Mamlin): When I went out to vote, but when I came back they looted my house.

DE SAM LAZARO: Luckier, that is, for someone who’d lost all his belongings, including his sewing machine.

Dr. MAMLIN (to Clement): I have some friends in U.S., and they’ve donated a little bit money for me to use. So I’m going to qualify you for that, and I’ll get you a machine, and I’ll get you materials to get back in business.

CLEMENT: I thank you very much, sir.

Dr. MAMLIN: Do you want to reconstitute immune systems or do you want to reconstitute lives? And those are two totally different problems, and we’ve decided to go after lives. We’re taking care of the poorest of the poor.

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s a choice that may be rooted in faith, but faith is a matter Mamlin does not share publicly.

Dr. MAMLIN: I have much more concern about what needs to be done as an expression of whatever faith system we have. I guess I’m raised in tradition that tends to avoid putting things like that on your shoulder.

Rev. ARMSTRONG: There’s a wise old church leader who said preach the Gospel and, if necessary, use words.

DE SAM LAZARO: Back in Indianapolis, Pastor Armstrong says what began as a public health program has also spawned numerous exchanges between worship communities here and in Kenya. For the Hoosiers, he says it’s widened their understanding of a distant land and a complex epidemic, and it’s helped them spiritually.

Rev. ARMSTRONG: Who are the people you want your children to learn the Christian faith from? The Mamlins would be at the top of that list. And so for us to be able to find some way to be alongside them in their journey not only was a way for us to strengthen our friendship but also for us to deepen our own faith.

DE SAM LAZARO: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

OLIVER KISAKA (National Council of Churches of Kenya): Forty-five years for Kenya is very a short period of time for 45 tribes to have come together and meshed into one and perfected the art of democracy and common sharing of space. I think in that sense people should not be overly judgmental against any African country. They are trying to shift from systems they were used to, to a totally new approach when you are dealing with more than one culture. Democracy is not an African system. It’s a land system. It’s a good system, but it is not inherently African.

Most Kenyans are religious. The country would be about 95 to 97 percent religious, 70 to 80 percent of that being from one of the Christian traditions. Another sizable percentage, perhaps 15 to 20, being from the Islamic community, and maybe 2 to 3 percent being Hindu and others. So Kenya is generally a religious community. But how this religion works out in economics, how it works out in politics, how it works out in ethnicity, how it works out in aesthetics, how it works out in defining ethical values, how it works as a true worship, as a religion itself — those are the critical questions that we are now being called upon to engage. We have assumed we are a peaceful country. We have assumed that our religion is deep enough. The truth is that it is not deep enough.

When push came to shove, there were ministers who sided with their ethnic communities. In other words, they were not prophetic to their ethnic communities. The right thing would have been to tell the community “You cannot do this. You can’t burn other peoples’ property, even if you are aggrieved.” But they were silent.

Nobody in Kenya was not divided, doesn’t matter who — the teachers, the law society, the civil society organizations. Everybody was divided. It was a very difficult situation for the country, and we felt if someone was going to bring healing into the country someone was needed to take responsibility for their part. So we decided to go ahead and do so. We still hope the rest can actually come to that point, because anything else is really denial. We are in denial. We have treated one another as if we were not Kenyans, and there is no way we can heal one another if we are still pointing fingers across the table. We need everybody to say “I had a part to play in what this became.”

When we entered the crisis we decided, we analyzed it in three parts. We said it was a spiritual crisis, a political crisis, and a humanitarian crisis, because of the internally displaced people, and we then set up committees to respond to this: a humanitarian committee, a spiritual committee, and a political mediation committee. Each of these have been working since that time. We told the people we regret that we were divided and that our divisions were along ethnic lines. So we committed ourselves to be able to start afresh and do things differently for the sake of the country.

There has been a lot of call for healing, for renewal, and in a sense we are saying renewal for all of us. Without sounding careless, the Christian tradition is a tradition of renewal, is a tradition of redemption, is a tradition of forgiveness. The most difficult things for Christians to attempt to do is not to own up to what you are wrong about. If you are able to own up sincerely and turn around, there is forgiveness, and there is a new opportunity. So most of the ministers have dealt with this and are preaching healing, they are preaching reconciliation. They are using our experience as a lesson. They are saying we didn’t know it would get this bad. We have talked about Rwanda, but this is who we are. We cannot point fingers anymore. We must work on a new way of how we will live together. So the message is a message of reconciliation, is a message of “Let’s begin again,” a message of “We can’t pretend we were holier than others. Let’s own up, let’s face it, let’s address it.”

One of the sad things of the missionary experience, it outlawed African-ness. If African culture is seen to be anti-Christian and yet I cannot be a white, then what does it leave for me? It leaves me a big vacuum. I have forsaken my African values, I cannot quite live the Western values I lived, so where does that leave me? I think that the minister today, I as a minister must wrestle with that and help Kenyans develop new values that can allow them to be African and be Christian without feeling a sense of contradiction. Our preaching ministry cannot be business as usual for us to be able to address ethnicity. Somebody else must stand up and tell the people that although where we are today it seems that we can’t live together as tribes, that is something we can work out. I think we have the God-given capacity to address any human problems anywhere. Human beings are known for that. The first and second world wars were very bad wars, but Europe still lives together. Europe works together. They have just raised their stakes a little higher, determined how to live together. I think what it’s calling for is for Kenyans to develop a way of living together, and religion has a great path, because then it can give the right theological undergird for this kind of living together.

Religion in Kenya is not zero. It held at some point. It was pushed from the ideal, but it did not go beyond a certain point, meaning there is a deposit of it. We can easily be so negative about this situation that we paint Kenya as a country of hopeless people who don’t know where they are going. I think Kenyans are very hopeful people. I think that the problem we faced is that people were trying to say something, and nobody was hearing them.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a profile today of the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for peace. Wangari Maathai is a conservationist whose movement has caused the planting of 30 million trees in Kenya and also helped lead to free elections. Recently, Maathai visited Chicago, as Judy Valente reports.

JUDY VALENTE: Wangari Maathai of Kenya has been called fondly Mama Miti, Swahili for Mother of Trees. Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, she has become an international ambassador for care of the environment.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I want to thank you for coming to this program, because it means a lot to my school and to the community.

VALENTE: She preaches a gospel of conservation wherever she goes, like this school on Chicago’s struggling west side where students recently named a garden in her honor.

Dr. WANGARI MAATHAI (Founder, Green Belt Movement, speaking to students): Wow. Thank you very much that even before we met, you thought that you would associate me with a lovely garden such as this.

VALENTE: Her message is simple, but urgent.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking to students): We cannot live in peace with each other if we do not manage our environment responsibly and accountably.

VALENTE: Trained as a biologist, and the first black woman in East Africa to earn a PhD, Maathai began in the 1970s speaking out against the rapid deforestation of Kenya’s once rich woodlands. The destruction of trees had led to a shortage of topsoil and fresh water. She sought international funding to put Kenya’s women to work cultivating trees. The project became known as the Green Belt Movement. Maathai says she drew inspiration for her movement from the Bible.

Dr. MAATHAI: The Book of Genesis came to mean much more to me than just a book on how God created. It helped me understand that the creation is how God has made it possible for us to live on this planet, that we need to be very grateful for what he gave us, and we need to take care if it. God would have wanted us to be his custodians, rather than dominion.

VALENTE: Maathai grew up in a village at the foot of Mount Kenya. Her family was Christian, but as a child she took to heart the spiritual beliefs of her Kikuyu ancestors who revered Mount Kenya for the fresh water it provided. They considered some trees sacred.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking at Trinity United Church of Christ): I want to urge you that as we leave church today you look at the trees and the green vegetation with a special respect, and you thank them. You see a tree, you see a bush, you thank them for taking care of the carbon dioxide you breathe out.

The actual process of planting a tree is very, almost very spiritual. So you’re almost repeating the acts of God. There is something about touching the soil and going down on your knees. It’s almost like you are humbling yourself to the wonders of creation.

VALENTE: Maathai was educated by Irish and Italian missionary nuns and converted to Catholicism as a teen. Through a Kennedy family scholarship, she was able to attend Mount St. Scholastica, now Benedictine College, in the Midwest.

Dr. MAATHAI (speaking to students): I was recommended as one of 300 students who came to the United States in 1960, and I ended up in Kansas, where I picked up this accent. Sister Thomasita, come here, Sister Thomasita!

VALENTE: She rarely misses an opportunity to acknowledge the Benedictine sisters who encouraged her interest in science, provided support over the years, and recommended her for the Nobel Prize.

Dr. MAATHAI (with Sister Thomasita Homan on school steps): These are the sisters that are responsible for my being here for four years in Atchison, the four most wonderful years of my life. Thank you, Sister.

In Kansas, I stayed for four years with those nuns. They were like my mothers, my sisters, my family, and one of the greatest things that people still ask me is, “Why do you do what you do?” And in a light touch I like to tell them that, “That’s the nun in me.”

Sister THOMASITA HOMAN, OSB (Benedictine College): She has listened to people. She has heard their pain. She has listened to the planet and heard the planet’s pain. And she has carried that Benedictine value of listening to a point that’s worldwide. She’s said yes, by my actions the world is my community.

VALENTE: In her 2006 autobiography, UNBOWED, Maathai describes how her environmental work led her to seek democratic reforms and greater human rights in Kenya under a repressive regime. She was at various times placed under house arrest, beaten, and thrown into jail.

Dr. MAATHAI (addressing crowd at Al Raby School): We need to govern ourselves in a way that we promote human rights and promote the rule of law. We promote democracy and we promote inclusiveness, so that everybody in the community will feel that they are a part of that community.

VALENTE: Today, as a member of Kenya’s parliament and her government’s assistant minister of environment, she makes a strong case that caring for the environment is also a path to peace.

Dr. MAATHAI: I realized that when the environment becomes degraded and resources become scarce, people will fight over them, people who would normally call each other brothers and sisters suddenly are quite willing to confront each other. Psalm 23 is, for me, a wonderful psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want,” and of course when the psalmist talks about that the Lord lets me lie on green pastures, I mean how wonderful that is to lie on green pastures and to drink from waters that never go dry.

VALENTE: The divorced mother of three grown children, Maathai usually travels with her daughter, Wanjira. At 67, the Nobel laureate has embarked on an ambitious new project, the planting of a billion trees worldwide.

Dr. MAATHAI: We need at least 10 trees to take care of our own carbon dioxide, and so if you don’t have 10 trees somewhere where you can say “these are my trees,” you are using somebody else’s tree, and you ought to get up and plant your own.

VALENTE: When she tires these days from her many speeches and world travels, Maathai often takes comfort from a hymn which she first learned to sing in her native Kikuyu tongue.

Dr. MAATHAI singing “Amazing Grace” in Kikuyu and English.

VALENTE: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.