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Man behind Bono AIDs Day visit is no stranger to global fights
BY TOBY MANTHEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Earlier this fall, Nelson Okuku Miruka requested a speaker for World AIDS Day.
Mayor Don Wesely couldn't come.
Rep. Doug Bereuter never replied.
Chuck Hagel's representative phoned Miruka: The United States senator couldn't make it.
Frustrated, Miruka made a call to Washington, D.C., to the Global AIDS Alliance. David Bryden, the alliance's communication director, suggested a speaker with no government title: Bono.
Sunday the U2 singer, who Britain's "Q" music magazine recently named the most influential person in music, is scheduled to speak to nearly 2,300 people at the Lied Center for Performing Arts about AIDS in Africa. Much of the credit for his visit goes to Miruka.
Kelly Bartling, national news editor for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's University Communications, described Miruka as eloquent and passionate.
"Without his hard work, we wouldn't have Bono to speak to us on World AIDS Day," she said.
Creating headlines and finding himself next to the powerful is nothing new to the 33-year-old Miruka, president of Lincoln's Save Sub-Saharan Orphans, a group that helps African children orphaned by AIDS or other circumstances.
At 21, Miruka was the youngest person ever to serve as the government reporter for the president of Uganda, a job that landed him in a military prison. A dark purple, beetle-sized scar from a bullet marks his elbow, a reminder of the time he reported on war in southern Sudan.
Miruka brushes off the wound as a trifle compared with the mental scars left by AIDS: the death of two sisters and four in-laws and a sea of orphans in his Kenyan homeland.
His passion to help orphans has even led Miruka and his wife to temporarily divorce and live in separate counties.
The divorce allows his wife to pursue a nursing degree so she can one day care for orphans. It allows their three children to receive benefits from the Swedish government. And it allows him to pursue his doctorate at UNL, using most of his $7,000-a-year fellowship to develop his charity group.
Meanwhile, he frets over his divorce.
"I went and explained what was happening in Africa," he said. "Sweden said it wasn't their concern. When you have to divorce your wife, it's the most horrible thing. But we have decided to fight this war in my family."
A life touched AIDS
Miruka is no stranger to war.
He was born in the Kenyan section of Mfangano Island, an island surrounded by Lake Victoria and claimed by three countries. He doesn't know the day he was born -- he's chosen July 1, 1969, for official documents -- because peasant families don't take birthdays seriously enough to remember them.
While attending Uganda's Mackerere University at age 19, he became a newspaper war correspondent, covering conflicts in southern Sudan between the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army and government forces.
While finishing his degree in 1992, he was also reporting in the Rakai district of Uganda, an epicenter of AIDS in Africa.
There, the disease is known as "Slim," because of the skeletal appearance of its victims.
"There was so much," he said of the prevalence of the disease. "It was like a song: Slim, Slim, Slim."
Two of his sisters would die of the disease, leaving seven children behind. Four of his ex-wife's siblings also died from AIDS.
And Miruka had his own brush with death when grazed by a bullet as he crawled on his hands and knees to report from the front line in Sudan.
"I was shot, but people were still waiting for the story," he said.
Delivering such articles helped Miruka gain his position as the official government reporter for the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni.
But Miruka used the position to write about AIDS. If Museveni addressed the disease as a minor issue in a speech, Miruka used the topic in his article's introduction.
"I became a very radical reporter," Miruka said of his time with Museveni. "I wrote about corruption in the Bank of Uganda. It created a problem."
Miruka was covering a meeting between President Museveni and Central Bank of Uganda officials when he heard Museveni complaining of corruption that involved several government ministers as well as the government press secretary, Miruka's boss. One minister was using $40 million in foreign aid, claiming it was needed to build a wall around his living compound.
The international press was told to leave the meeting; Miruka was allowed to stay.
Afterward, he wrote two articles: For the first, he wrote a vague account of the meeting for the government, saying "exactly what the press secretary wanted to hear, in a very small article." The second article he wrote for a local newspaper with the headline: "President castigates corruption in Central Bank of Uganda."
The press secretary accused him of spying and revealing presidential secrets. Miruka was taken to a military barracks cell for three weeks, until officers -- friends from Mackerere University -- helped smuggle him out. He was then taken by what he now believes was a United Nations-related group to Rwanda and then to Sweden. His family also escaped the country.
Miruka always knew he ran a risk by writing the article.
"But I did not hide my identity,"he said. "I came from a poor family. When Isaw those things ... Ilooked at the ministers as thieves. I was fed up."
In 1996, Miruka took a scholarship as a political science student at Nebraska Wesleyan University, whose recruiters had noticed him at a center in Sweden where universities look for students. He then studied from 1997-98, to earn a master's of public administration from the University of South Dakota. In 1999 he worked with children orphaned by AIDS at Hale House Center in New York. That same year he enrolled at UNLas a doctorate student and founded Save Sub-Saharan Orphans.
All of this, he said, is to help fight AIDS in Africa.
"Iwas shocked when my sisters died. You'd see it everywhere in the streets," he said of the effects of the disease in Africa. "It was like a flood that invaded. Ifelt it was time to do something."
He has returned to Uganda twice for Save Sub-Saharan Orphans, building a school for 300 orphans with no government assistance.
"You go there as a humanitarian, and people will entertain you even if you are a dissident," he said.
The school is the type of project Miruka has in mind for his 30-member group, which is based on the idea that Africans will eventually save their continent and not rely on the aid of Western governments, as it has done in the past.
"This is the mind-set we're turning around," he said. "With a small amount of money, we're doing things without the government."
"Nelson is basically interested in the (African) orphanages considering the deaths of his sisters," said ThridWorld Oforah, a community activist in Lincoln who works with the NAACP and Miruka's charity among others. "He's hands-on ... physically working out in the sun in Uganda."
Meanwhile, Miruka waits for the day he can be reunited with his wife and children.
Said Ruby Evande, a UNL biochemistry doctoral student and Save Sub-Saharan Orphans member: "We're all separated from our family. It's something common for African students. The separation is there for the goals of the future, for education and for the solidity of our group."
"AIDS has ruined us so much," Miruka said, forehead wrinkled. "My wife told me: `Just go and do this work. Iwill take care of the children.'"
Man behind Bono AIDs Day visit is no stranger to global fights
BY TOBY MANTHEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Earlier this fall, Nelson Okuku Miruka requested a speaker for World AIDS Day.
Mayor Don Wesely couldn't come.
Rep. Doug Bereuter never replied.
Chuck Hagel's representative phoned Miruka: The United States senator couldn't make it.
Frustrated, Miruka made a call to Washington, D.C., to the Global AIDS Alliance. David Bryden, the alliance's communication director, suggested a speaker with no government title: Bono.
Sunday the U2 singer, who Britain's "Q" music magazine recently named the most influential person in music, is scheduled to speak to nearly 2,300 people at the Lied Center for Performing Arts about AIDS in Africa. Much of the credit for his visit goes to Miruka.
Kelly Bartling, national news editor for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's University Communications, described Miruka as eloquent and passionate.
"Without his hard work, we wouldn't have Bono to speak to us on World AIDS Day," she said.
Creating headlines and finding himself next to the powerful is nothing new to the 33-year-old Miruka, president of Lincoln's Save Sub-Saharan Orphans, a group that helps African children orphaned by AIDS or other circumstances.
At 21, Miruka was the youngest person ever to serve as the government reporter for the president of Uganda, a job that landed him in a military prison. A dark purple, beetle-sized scar from a bullet marks his elbow, a reminder of the time he reported on war in southern Sudan.
Miruka brushes off the wound as a trifle compared with the mental scars left by AIDS: the death of two sisters and four in-laws and a sea of orphans in his Kenyan homeland.
His passion to help orphans has even led Miruka and his wife to temporarily divorce and live in separate counties.
The divorce allows his wife to pursue a nursing degree so she can one day care for orphans. It allows their three children to receive benefits from the Swedish government. And it allows him to pursue his doctorate at UNL, using most of his $7,000-a-year fellowship to develop his charity group.
Meanwhile, he frets over his divorce.
"I went and explained what was happening in Africa," he said. "Sweden said it wasn't their concern. When you have to divorce your wife, it's the most horrible thing. But we have decided to fight this war in my family."
A life touched AIDS
Miruka is no stranger to war.
He was born in the Kenyan section of Mfangano Island, an island surrounded by Lake Victoria and claimed by three countries. He doesn't know the day he was born -- he's chosen July 1, 1969, for official documents -- because peasant families don't take birthdays seriously enough to remember them.
While attending Uganda's Mackerere University at age 19, he became a newspaper war correspondent, covering conflicts in southern Sudan between the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army and government forces.
While finishing his degree in 1992, he was also reporting in the Rakai district of Uganda, an epicenter of AIDS in Africa.
There, the disease is known as "Slim," because of the skeletal appearance of its victims.
"There was so much," he said of the prevalence of the disease. "It was like a song: Slim, Slim, Slim."
Two of his sisters would die of the disease, leaving seven children behind. Four of his ex-wife's siblings also died from AIDS.
And Miruka had his own brush with death when grazed by a bullet as he crawled on his hands and knees to report from the front line in Sudan.
"I was shot, but people were still waiting for the story," he said.
Delivering such articles helped Miruka gain his position as the official government reporter for the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni.
But Miruka used the position to write about AIDS. If Museveni addressed the disease as a minor issue in a speech, Miruka used the topic in his article's introduction.
"I became a very radical reporter," Miruka said of his time with Museveni. "I wrote about corruption in the Bank of Uganda. It created a problem."
Miruka was covering a meeting between President Museveni and Central Bank of Uganda officials when he heard Museveni complaining of corruption that involved several government ministers as well as the government press secretary, Miruka's boss. One minister was using $40 million in foreign aid, claiming it was needed to build a wall around his living compound.
The international press was told to leave the meeting; Miruka was allowed to stay.
Afterward, he wrote two articles: For the first, he wrote a vague account of the meeting for the government, saying "exactly what the press secretary wanted to hear, in a very small article." The second article he wrote for a local newspaper with the headline: "President castigates corruption in Central Bank of Uganda."
The press secretary accused him of spying and revealing presidential secrets. Miruka was taken to a military barracks cell for three weeks, until officers -- friends from Mackerere University -- helped smuggle him out. He was then taken by what he now believes was a United Nations-related group to Rwanda and then to Sweden. His family also escaped the country.
Miruka always knew he ran a risk by writing the article.
"But I did not hide my identity,"he said. "I came from a poor family. When Isaw those things ... Ilooked at the ministers as thieves. I was fed up."
In 1996, Miruka took a scholarship as a political science student at Nebraska Wesleyan University, whose recruiters had noticed him at a center in Sweden where universities look for students. He then studied from 1997-98, to earn a master's of public administration from the University of South Dakota. In 1999 he worked with children orphaned by AIDS at Hale House Center in New York. That same year he enrolled at UNLas a doctorate student and founded Save Sub-Saharan Orphans.
All of this, he said, is to help fight AIDS in Africa.
"Iwas shocked when my sisters died. You'd see it everywhere in the streets," he said of the effects of the disease in Africa. "It was like a flood that invaded. Ifelt it was time to do something."
He has returned to Uganda twice for Save Sub-Saharan Orphans, building a school for 300 orphans with no government assistance.
"You go there as a humanitarian, and people will entertain you even if you are a dissident," he said.
The school is the type of project Miruka has in mind for his 30-member group, which is based on the idea that Africans will eventually save their continent and not rely on the aid of Western governments, as it has done in the past.
"This is the mind-set we're turning around," he said. "With a small amount of money, we're doing things without the government."
"Nelson is basically interested in the (African) orphanages considering the deaths of his sisters," said ThridWorld Oforah, a community activist in Lincoln who works with the NAACP and Miruka's charity among others. "He's hands-on ... physically working out in the sun in Uganda."
Meanwhile, Miruka waits for the day he can be reunited with his wife and children.
Said Ruby Evande, a UNL biochemistry doctoral student and Save Sub-Saharan Orphans member: "We're all separated from our family. It's something common for African students. The separation is there for the goals of the future, for education and for the solidity of our group."
"AIDS has ruined us so much," Miruka said, forehead wrinkled. "My wife told me: `Just go and do this work. Iwill take care of the children.'"
