After accepting a managerial post in AVSC's Nairobi office, Keith Edwards wondered, "What am I doing? I don't know the culture. I've lived in New Jersey most of my life!"

And once in Kenya, Edwards did experience culture shock. The everyday struggle-for health, food, a decent wage-was like nothing he'd witnessed before. When his normal strategies for making friends and doing business didn't immediately translate, he wondered if he'd ever fit in.

So if you had told Edwards that he would be named an honorary Maasai elder before returning to the New York office two years later, he probably wouldn't have believed you.

A turning point for Edwards came the day that 24-year-old Sammy Oinyiaku walked into the Nairobi office and asked if AVSC could subsidize an HIV/AIDS workshop for his Maasai village.

Oinyiaku had recently formed the Maasai AIDS Prevention Network (MAPNet) to help address traditional customs that place the Maasai at risk for the disease. Oinyiaku explained that while any Maasai man who balks at sharing his wife is "considered mean and ostracized," this and other practices, like female genital cutting, expose the Maasai to a greater risk of HIV infection.

AVSC had no money available at that time for this grassroots organization‹but Edwards did. He decided right then to fund the workshop out of his own pocket. "I know it sounds hokey," says Edwards, "but if you believe in AVSC's work, you can't always wait for the funding."

Over the next weeks, Edwards helped Oinyiaku plan a workshop to explain how certain cultural practices help spread HIV infection and to discuss how the Maasai can lower their risks.

The day of the workshop, Edwards hired a car to Oinyiaku's village. "I took it for granted that he lived in a nearby village," Edwards says, shaking his head, remembering Oinyiaku's repeated trips to Nairobi. After a dusty, four-hour ride, Edwards reached a circle of mud huts ringed by thorn bushes.

Attending the workshop was an emotional experience. Edwards was particularly moved by a session where participants discussed how to tend to the sick and dying. "It was not the clinical session we would see in the United States," he says, "but focused more on issues of compassion."

The biggest surprise came when the paramount chief-the oldest, most respected leader of the district-presented Edwards with a walking stick, a symbol of his status as an elder in the Maasai community, an honor rarely given outsiders.

The chief then promised he would personally address the practices that encouraged the spread of the infection. "To me," says Edwards, "that statement alone was proof that the group was making headway."

Now that Edwards and his walking stick are back home in New Jersey, he continues to support MAPNet's work. And these days when he thinks of Kenya, he feels like he belongs.

Jane Smith is an editor and writer for AVSC