11/16/2008

Mama Maria Kenya - 3rd Annual Benefit Auction

Posted by Brandon |

What an inspiring evening we had last night at the 3rd Annual Benefit Auction for Mama Maria Kenya! I can't thank them enough for putting on such a great event and for all the work that Peter Kithene and the Mama Maria crew are doing bringing essential medical care to the the people of rural Kenya.

Peter was named a CNN Global Hero Medical Marvel award winner earlier this year. Please watch this video to learn more about this amazing man and Mama Maria Kenya...


And thank you to Yelp for getting involved with and promoting such a great charity. Without Yelp, who gave us free tickets to the event, we may have never heard about Mama Maria Kenya. But after last night, my wife - who is in medicine herself and knows lots and lots of people with interests in international medicine, including herself - and I will more than likely continue to be involved in one way or another and we hope to be able to attend the event again next year.

We won one of the items that we bid on in the silent auction, we also purchased a soccer ball to go to the children in Muhuru Bay and a couple of pieces of clothing and we won a gift basket as a consolation prize for the 50/50 drawing that we entered. We wished we could've bid on a couple of the items in the live auction - especially the two week trip to Kenya to see the Mama Maria Kenya clinic and go on safari for a few days that, I think, ended up going for $2,500 - a steal if you ask me. But we couldn't quite swing it this year, maybe sometime in the future.

The dinner portion of the evening was delicious and might've been worth the price alone ($80 per plate). Maya Soleil played some Afro-World music after the live auction and led us all in some African aerobics out on the dance floor. You should've seen your boy Brandon breaking it down! I can really dance when all I have to do is mimic the person on stage.

It really was inspiring to hear about the selfless work that Peter and Mama Maria Kenya are doing, and encouraging to see so many people so passionate and so willing to open up their pocketbooks to support their work.

This sounds really stupid, but earlier in the day, after a trip to Alderwood Mall, I was bemoaning the state of the American people. I had been so optimistic about America the last few weeks until my trip to the mall made me question that optimism. The worst of the worst of American values are on display at a mall in the suburbs on a Saturday. But then I went to this benefit and my optimism returned. These people didn't have to give money to a clinic in rural Africa, they wanted to and for no other reason than it was the right thing to do.

So thanks again to Peter, his wife Katrina and Mama Maria, thanks to Yelp for getting involved, and thanks to all of the donors who made the night successful.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used to build houses in Mexico, usually small shed like buildings on dump sites, you'd think we'd given those people the Taj Mahal. On the way home, the leaders would treat us to a day at Disneyland... it would make me physically ill to see the cultural differences and the money spent at DL... I'm sure your mall experience was somewhat similar... I still don't really like DL.

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