Creating a New Africa

through the
CHILDREN SHE HELPS
By Ingrid Ricks
You might wonder what makes a sixty-one year old woman
give up her cherished daily latte and other comforts of home
in northwest Washington to hole up in a snake-prone hut
deep in the bush in Southern Sudan or endure harrowing,
jam-packed bus rides through the pot-holed roads of Uganda
with children throwing up around her.

Over the past twenty-six years, Suzanne Nelson has grown

accustomed to seeing teenage boys with automatic rifles
manning stick-marked border crossings, and has learned to
adapt to the lack of basic western conveniences such as
toilets, toilet paper and refrigeration. She’s foregone a
husband and children of her own, has even endured six weeks
on life support with failed kidneys and collapsed lungs after
contracting Black Water Fever – all part of a determined
quest to make life better for the millions of orphaned children
struggling to survive in Africa.

As a founding member and International Director of the world-renowned African Children’s Choir,
Suzanne can’t imagine any other path.

“It goes back to my mom, who was always helping people in need,” she says, the admiration audible in
her voice. “Here she was a single mother working as a waitress, but she made helping others her life.
We would work in soup kitchens and she would find homeless families, round up a place for them to live
and then go to the Goodwill and furnish their new place. Once she came across a blind woman who was
living in a roach-infested apartment – I mean they were in her fridge, her food, her clothes, everywhere
– and my mom enlisted me to help get rid of them. I hate bugs, but her example and that experience
impacted me in an incredible way. I knew my life was going to be about helping people who were
hurting in whatever form that took.”

Anyone who has caught a performance of The African Children’s Choir on The Tonight Show, American
Idol, CNN International, The Ellen DeGeneres show or at one of countless concert halls or churches
around the world knows the magnetic pull and transformational power of these remarkable children.

Through its parent organization Music For Life, the Choir, now in its 26th year, has shined the world
spotlight on African children in need, and has been instrumental in providing an education, help and
hope to thousands of orphaned children throughout Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and South Africa.

But what most people don’t know is the key role Suzanne has played in the Choir’s success. While
founder Ray Barnett, a tireless Irish Canadian minister, serves as the frontline visionary and CEO for the
organization, Suzanne works nonstop behind the scenes to help ensure Ray’s vision becomes reality.
Suzanne was 25 when she first met Ray in 1974. At the time, Ray was involved in human rights work in
the Soviet Union, striving to free Christians who had been jailed for their belief, and Suzanne
immediately stepped in to help. A few years later, Ray traveled to Uganda to see how he could help an
entire Christian congregation who had been imprisoned under then-dictator Idi Amin. It was while there
that he witnessed the horrible impact of the massacre Amin had been waging in the country. Hundreds
of thousands of people had been killed – leaving behind an overwhelming mass of orphaned children
who were struggling to survive.

Ray left Uganda determined to help the

children and over the next few years, he,
Suzanne and a few other volunteers scrambled
to do what they could to raise awareness and
funding to provide desperately needed aid –
but few people listened. Then, during one of
his regular trips to the country, Ray heard an
young boy singing and it hit him: If he couldn’t
bring the world to the Ugandan children, he
would bring the children to them in the form of
a choir.

“When Ray told me what he wanted to do, my initial reaction was ‘oh boy’,” recalls Suzanne. “I mean,
here we were with minus no money and only Ray and myself and a few other volunteers, and we’re
supposed to get these kids to Canada and then feed, clothe and house them while training them and
organizing concerts. I thought, how are we supposed to do that?”

Despite the seemingly impossible task, Suzanne went to work. She helped coordinate with a church in
Vancouver to establish an office, secure and interface with host families, and raise support for plane
tickets. Cindy Kilburn, a volunteer music instructor, headed to Uganda to help select and train the choir
and tackle the issue of passports and visas.

Suzanne, who readily admits that they often “jumped in with both feet” without thinking about long-
term planning, says they learned and adapted as they went along.

“It was hard,” she remembers. “The Canadians didn’t want a bunch of children coming over who could
end up being refugees and it was tough convincing them that the kids would only be here for a few
months and would then go back. We talked a travel agency into letting us pay for the tickets over a six-
week period and the church lent us a bus so we could take the kids to and from concerts throughout the
Vancouver area. Then it hit us – what about school? We hadn’t thought about that. We ended up
adopting an accelerated Christian education program and had volunteers help us. Eventually we
transitioned to an international curriculum – but that’s how we started.”

Originally the plan was to bring one choir of orphaned children to the West so they could generate
awareness about the plight of children in Uganda and raise enough money to build a children’s home for
them and other back at home. But despite the rudimentary nature of the performances, the children
had such a moving impact on the audiences that Ray decided to keep the choir program going and the
African Children’s Choir was born.

The donations and loans raised through the initial choir tour enabled the shoe-string organization to
start the children’s home in Uganda’s capitol city, Kampala and the first choir children returned home.
In the meantime, the next choir was selected
and trained. Over the years, despite a constant
lack of funds and never-ending logistical issues,
Suzanne, Ray and their small team of staff
members and volunteers just kept going and
growing, putting one foot in front of another
and helping wherever their hearts led them.

Soon the organization acquired a primary

school in Kampala to educate the returning
Choir children. Music For Life also began other
children’s homes and started funding several
literacy schools throughout the city and
surrounding areas. In 1993, when I first met Ray and Suzanne,
they had just learned about the Lost Boys of Sudan and decided
to head to that war-ravaged region to assess how they could
help there. The next year, they were off to Rwanda to help
children orphaned by the recent genocide.

Then, as now, I was struck by Suzanne’s calming force, ever-

ready smile and her ability to look pulled together and polished
even in the most miserable conditions. At 5 ‘8 with warm blue
eyes and curly chestnut hair that looks good even after a day in
the African bush with temperatures swelling to 115 degrees,
Suzanne has a presence about her that makes people take
notice. And she has a way of interacting and connecting with people that inspires them to do whatever
they can to help.

“A lot of my job has been to nurture the relationships with volunteers and staff members because if you
don’t have a good relationship, you aren’t going to get anywhere,” Suzanne acknowledged recently as
we met over steaming tall lattes, where she was telling me about the African jewelry parties she
recently kicked off to raise more funds for the organization. “It’s all about team work and mutual
respect.”

It’s not to say there haven’t been challenges over the years. Along with the constant lack of funding
and balancing act required to keep the choirs going on the road, and the schools and other programs
running smoothly in the field, Suzanne has faced down some serious personal challenges, including
narrowly escaping death after contracting Black Water Fever during a field evaluation trip to East Africa.
At first her doctor back in Arlington, a small town situated an hour north of Seattle, suspected a
standard case of malaria and sent her home to rest at the mobile trailer situated next to the
administrative office on the Choir's base property. By the time Suzanne was rushed to a small rural
hospital a few days later, her kidneys had shut down, she had blown up to twice her size, her skin was
yellow and her toes were black. During the helicopter ride to Harborview in Seattle, her lungs collapsed
and she had to be intubated. For the next six weeks, she was in intensive care in a precarious situation
that few people thought she would survive.

“I laid there and thought about what people say about giving up,” says Suzanne. “I thought, `I can’t even
die comfortably with all these tubes crammed down my throat.’ But I was at peace knowing I was in
God's hands.”

That incident, which Suzanne says her family and loved ones prayed her through, definitely goes down
as a hard time for her. But she says by far the lowest points over the years have come when she
encounters human suffering on such a massive scale that she can’t help but feel that everything she is
doing is just a drop in the bucket.

She points to the time a few years

ago when she and I were in the
Nkomazi region of South Africa,
trying to get a handle on the
enormous AIDS pandemic in the
area, where an estimated forty
percent of the population was
infected with the HIV virus. A local
relief worker took us to visit a
nineteen-year girl who was sitting on
her own body bag, waiting to die.
The relief worker told us that her
family had left her to die by herself
because they were too overwhelmed
caring for other sick family members.

Another time, recalls Suzanne, she had caught a UN plane full of nurses into Southern Sudan, trying to
determine what it was her organization could do to help, and was struck by the hundreds of people who
were milling around on the desert floor “either stark naked or in rags and so skinny it was clear they
were starving to death.”

“I was standing on my own when a distressed woman came over to me,” remembers Suzanne. “She was
so tall and dignified and she had this little baby in a straw basket and she’s pleading with me to help her.
So I’m trying to push my way through the lines to get her to one of the nurses but I could see that baby
and if it lived a couple more hours, it was a miracle. Then, just a few hours later, we are back at the UN
camp in Uganda where everyone is fed and healthy and I’m thinking, `how can this be?’”
Despite the enormity of the problems, what makes Suzanne keep going are the occasional moments
when she pauses to look back over the past twenty-six years and see the remarkable feats her
organization has accomplished.

In Southern Sudan, where the organization started by establishing three schools under three different
trees, Music For Life has been instrumental in building and operating fifteen primary schools, a trade
school, and a high school, along with launching the first teacher’s training college in region, which has
gone on to graduate thousands of teachers. The efforts have multiplied, and in an area where fifteen
years ago there was nothing but a few scattered huts amid the bush, there is now a thriving village of
40,000 residents.

In Uganda, the organization now runs three literacy schools, five Music for Life Centers, and a Choir
training facility, and has recently completed its flagship African Children's Choir Primary Boarding
School. In South Africa, where the organization launched a primary school for the Choir children in
2003, there are now 10 Music for Life Centers in operation —each hosting fifty children a week who,
along with physical care, receive emotional development and support through music and dance. Two
more Music For Life Centers are
currently operating in Kenya and the
organization is working to start more as
funding permits.

Along with these accomplishment is the

satisfaction of seeing the Choir
children, all of whom come from the
most desperate situations imaginable,
transform into world ambassadors of
hope who hold their own among world
leaders and celebrities – whether its
performing for the Queen of England or
President George Bush, or stepping
onto the world stage with the likes of Paul McCarty and Sting to sing at Live8.

Suzanne may have never married – not that she’s ruling it out should she meet the right person who
shares her vision – but she’s not wanting for family. She maintains a tight bond with her now 87-year-
old mother, her brother and sister and enjoys her role as aunt and great aunt to her nieces and
nephews. She also has nearly 1,000 Choir children who love her like a mother and fondly refer to her as
“Auntie Suzanne.”

Suzanne views the Choir children as an extended family and says the ultimate reward comes from
watching them grow and develop into incredible leaders who are taking what they have been given and
giving back to Africa. Children from the early choirs are now engineers, journalists, teachers and
performers. Many of Choir children have also gone into relief work and are taking leadership roles with
Music For Life. Robert Kalyesubula, whom Suzanne remembers as a shy boy from the second choir
whose parents had both been killed by Idi Amin, is now a renowned Ugandan doctor currently on a year
scholarship at Yale University. He calls Suzanne “an outstanding person who looks out for opportunities
to make lives of children throughout the world better.”

“I personally met Auntie Suzanne in 1985 while I was only eight years old and she has been a
great inspiration to me ever since,” Dr Kalyesubula says. “As a result of this I am now a physician taking
care of multitudes of patients in my country in addition to having founded an organization supporting
over 150 orphans and vulnerable children with medical care, education and life skills.”

It’s this full-circle journey that embodies the organization’s motto: Helping Africa’s Most Vulnerable
Children Today, So They Can Help Africa Tomorrow. It’s also what embodies Suzanne’s lifelong dream.

“We are already seeing former Choir children take positions of leadership in the organization and in
their communities, but I really want to see this expand,” she says. “Through Music For Life and the
African Children’s Choir, we are reaching thousands of children today, but I can see the children we are
helping fan out all over Africa and reach millions in the years ahead. That’s my dream. That’s what this
is all about.”

Hear the African Children’s Choir Perform: Click Here

To learn more about the African Children’s Choir and how you can get involved, please visit:
www.africanchildrenschoir.com

Dream Blog Author Ingrid Ricks is currently pursuing her dream to find a publisher
for her first book, HIPPIE BOY: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR, a true story about a feisty
teenage girl who escapes her abusive Mormon stepfather by joining her free-
wheeling dad on the road as a tool-selling vagabond — until his arrest forces her to
take charge of her life. For more information, visit www.ingridricks.com or read
excerpts on Scribd: Hippie Boy – Chapter 1, Running From the Mormons, and
Arrested. To read other Dream profiles, visit: www.dreamitseekit.com