Milton and his younger brother, Fred Ochieng '05, who followed Milton to Dartmouth a year later, made sure to honor this request.
Both aspiring doctors, they fund-raised and campaigned to raise awareness about the suffering in their hometown, Lwala, in the hopes of opening a health clinic for their community.
"Sons of Lwala: Here, You Belong to Everyone" (2008), which will be screened at the Hopkins Center for the Arts on Saturday, follows the Ochiengs as they return to Africa to pay back the gift of their education by establishing the Lwala Community Health Clinic.
During Milton and Fred's time at Dartmouth, their mother died from AIDS. They returned to Kenya and learned that their father, also HIV positive, hoped to build a clinic in their local area. The brothers wanted to help.
"Milton and Fred came home from that with the visions," said Joel Wickre '03, a classmate of the brothers, in an interview with The Dartmouth. Wickre directs the Ochieng brothers' nonprofit organization, the Lwala Community Alliance.
Wickre met Milton in 2001 on a Tucker Foundation community service trip to Nicaragua. They became friends, but Wickre explained that his involvement in the program really began after he visited the Ochiengs in Lwala and saw firsthand the village's desperate need for a medical facility.
Many people were dying from preventable diseases, and over 100 people were infected with HIV.
"Dartmouth developed a sense of how my education and the other things that are available to me should be put to use for these global problems," he explained.
Bill Young, professor emeritus in obstetrics and gynecology at Dartmouth Medical School and current chair of the Lwala Community Alliance, was also on that trip to Nicaragua.
Young grew close to the brothers, as well. "Milton and Fred sought my help in applying to graduate school," Young said. "During this time, their mother died, planning for the clinic started, and then their father died. We went through challenging times together," he said
With the help of others in the Dartmouth community and people across the country, the Ochiengs set to work on their goal. For two years, they raised money to build and supply the clinic.
"Sons of Lwala" joins the brothers in 2005, as they struggle to raise the $90,000 needed to build the clinical facility. The film follows them until the clinic's opening in April 2007 and includes many interviews with those involved in the project.
Wickre, who is interviewed in the film, claims, "The film is a rare story of hope and pride, which is not usually what we hear out of Africa. It's there, obviously, but most of the stuff we hear is disaster and hopelessness. This is a very hopeful story. For Dartmouth, it's a story about community and community going beyond the bounds of the College and beyond the bounds of our country."
Young described his role in the film, joking, "Unfortunately, Milton was filming in Lwala in 2005 when I was dancing badly, and of course they put that in the film."
Today, the Lwala Community Health Clinic is run by Milton and Fred's older brother, Omundi, and a staff of 16 Kenyans. Doctors there see more than 1,500 patients per month, providing patients with basic primary care as well as maternal and child health services. Eighty-five percent of patients receive these services free of charge due to continued fund-raising on the part of the Lwala Community Alliance.
The nonprofit hopes to raise enough money to build a new facility to house an HIV-AIDS treatment and education program, as well as a much-needed maternity ward. So far, the nurses have delivered 31 infants in the clinic's kitchen.
"What's special about Lwala, and what I hope the film gets across" Wickre said, "is that this is a story out of Africa that is about local people taking ownership and bringing together their own community to solve the problems they face. While most development efforts you hear about are people coming from outside to try to solve other people's problems, this is the community really going for it and responding to it, and that's what I think is so powerful about Milton and Fred's story and the Lwala story."
Milton and Fred began their work on the clinic as a memorial to their parents, but it has become much more. The clinic is something they have done for their community, and with their community.
As Milton explains in the trailer for the film, "In Lwala village, you really don't belong to your parents; you belong to everybody."
"Sons of Lwala: Here, You Belong to Everybody" plays in Spaulding Auditorium at 7:30 p.m., this Saturday, October 25.
The Ochieng brothers will introduce the film and answer questions from the audience afterward. Proceeds will benefit the Lwala Community Health Clinic.
