Kenya

Bill Freivogel, for the Pulitzer Center
Addis Ababa, Kenya

LWALA, KENYA- In 2006, NewsChannel 5 reported about a Vanderbilt University medical student who was the first person from his Kenyan village to fly in an airplane.

People back home sold their livestock to pay for his ticket to the United States.

Now they need Milton Ochieng back to save his dying village.

Every student at Vanderbilt Medical School encounters AIDS. But only Ochieng has been orphaned by it.

First his mother, then his father - he learned of their deaths through email.

"I don't think anything really prepared me for it," Ochieng said.

David Morse, for the Pulitzer Center

This was, for all of us, a big journey. Most blogs written from the saddle like this one just kind of stop. Though I can't provide closure for myself entirely, and expect that may be true for the others - the experience is still running through us - I feel some need to say goodbye or at least "See you later" to those who have followed our journey from afar.

Global health advocates are trying desperately to get your attention. They worry that statistics have lost their meaning. Who can wrap their mind around 6,500 Africans dying of AIDS every day, anyway? As the director of a global health advocacy firm in Washington told me the other day, "We need a story."

That's when I told her about Milton Ochieng'.