When MILTON OCHIENG’ left Kenya to study in the United States, he became the first person from his village to board an airplane. Milton received a college scholarship to Dartmouth College, but was unable to afford the airfare until neighbors in Lwala came up with the money by selling chickens and cows. Now a medical student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Milton is building a health clinic for the people who sent him to America to become a doctor.

FRED OCHIENG’ followed his older brother Milton to Dartmouth College, becoming only the second person from their village set foot in the United States. If Milton takes after their father, Fred says he takes after their mother. One friend calls Fred “the most peaceful person I’ve ever met.” It was during his time at Dartmouth that Fred raised the first $9,000 to begin building their father’s clinic back home in Lwala, Kenya. Fred is now studying medicine at Vanderbilt.

OMONDI OCHIENG’ is the oldest brother and lives at home in Lwala. He was enrolled in a local teacher’s college once, but dropped out to take care of his parents after they became sick. Before college, Omondi served in Kenya’s General Service Unit as a bodyguard to President Moi Kibaki. He left the service at his family’s insistence after he was shot in the arm during an ambush at a refugee camp. Today, Omondi manages the clinic in Lwala.

JENA LEE met Milton in Lwala through her friend Joel Wickre (link) while traveling in Kenya on behalf of Blood:Water Mission (link), an African development organization started by the rock band Jars of Clay. Jena, as it happened, actually lived just a few blocks away from Milton in Nashville, Tennessee, and soon volunteered to help him raise money the Lwala clinic. By organizing a benefit concert featuring Jars of Clay, and later convincing Blood:Water Mission to provide a critical grant, Jena managed to raise tens of thousands of dollars.

JOEL WICKRE and Milton got to know each other in college during a service trip to Nicaragua, where Milton began to consider, for the first time, establishing a clinic in Lwala. After their return, the two began assembling a team at Dartmouth to help raise money for the clinic’s construction. Later, Joel left medical school and moved with his wife to Lwala to help plan for its opening. He is now the executive director of Milton’s nonprofit, the Lwala Community Alliance (link), based in Hanover, New Hampshire.

FILMMAKER BIOS

Director/producer BARRY SIMMONS first heard about Milton Ochieng’ while he was still a television reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. The two met for the first time in December, 2005, at a local coffee shop, and within weeks Barry left his job to begin filming what would eventually become Sons of Lwala. Barry graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and during his career he won eight regional Emmys. After leaving local television, Barry received a fellowship at the International Reporting Project (link) at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, which sent him to Kenya to begin production on Sons of Lwala. He has also served as a fellow at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (link) in Washington, D.C.

Director of Photography IAIN MONTGOMERY met Barry while they were working together at WTVF-TV in Nashville. Iain somehow managed to keep his full-time job as a news photographer while moonlighting on Sons of Lwala. While in Kenya, he and Barry also shot a two-part news series on the water crisis in Kenya, for which they were awarded a regional Emmy.

Lwala is a farming village in western Kenya in a province called Nyanza, which has the highest rates of HIV and child mortality in the country – and the lowest life expectancy.

Opening the clinic was just the beginning of the story. Keeping it open will be the real challenge.

Sons of Lwala takes us along on this moving journey of two brothers who lose their parents in Africa, but discover a family in America.