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Death is no stranger in places like Kakamega, Kenya. Health care is spotty, people are too poor to afford it, AIDS is rampant, traffic accidents kill scores of people each year. People become inured to the sight of coffins hoisted over pall bearers’ heads.
But when it strikes, death claims more than one

When a father carries a child on his back in Tanzania, there is trouble.
That task is nearly always reserved for women, who use kangas - colorful bolts of fabric - to tie children to their bodies.
But the man walking the gritty path from the village of Mango is accompanied by no one except the diminutive, sickly child clinging to the curvature of his back. Both look road-weary and unstrung.

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EDUCATION IN KENYA

When death takes one

HERBAL MEDICINE

Keeping ancient knowledge alive

Hidden in the names of Ohio canal towns and their festivals, history has a way of creeping into the consciousness during the summertime.
That's when folks in Coshocton break out dulcimers and croon songs penned by old canal captains.
And when Baltimore historian Jim Reed dons a straw hat, stands on the mossy stones of Bibler Lock and relates tales of hard-drinking and hard-living boat hands.

OHIO CANAL SYSTEM

Waterways through time

Their names are but faint inscriptions on a sandstone slab in Bigelow Prairie Cemetery Nature Preserve.
Sisters Katherine and Serena Harrington died a day apart, probably in the same bed, the delirium of malaria erasing their consciousness. They were 12 and 14 when they were buried in the late summer of 1824. Numerous graves had been dug around theirs during the devas-tating "sickly years" in the newly settled Darby Plains.
In death, the sisters still lie side by side, the deep

OHIO PRAIRIE PIONEERS

Living cemetery

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MARLINTON, W.Va. -- Bumping along a crushed-gravel bike path in southeastern West Virginia, a cyclist has ample time to ponder ghosts of a lost era. Gone are the railroad ties and rusty iron rails that once steered belching locomotives through the area's timber towns. Gone are the shrill steam whistles that sent passengers hurrying to gather

GREENBRIER RIVER TRAIL

The Ride Stuff

Since Christopher Columbus walked the stone streets of Genoa, Italy, visitors have experienced a peculiar sensation while exploring the city.
Vertigo.
Genoa -- sister city to Columbus since 1955 -- rises 1,000 feet from its harbor to the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. Tourists negotiate steps and hillsides to reach better vistas or to

GENOA, ITALY

City of explorers’ courage, artists’ vision

HEALTH CARE IN TANZANIA

Hope and staggering odds

Sunday marks the winter solstice, the day the northern hemisphere is tilted furthest from the sun. Late December days are the year’s shortest, when nature appears to be standing still. Yet beneath the ground and in hollows of trees creatures lie, dormant but alive.

A LONG WINTER’S NAP

How critters wait out the cold

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When winter skies are gun-metal gray and the greens have faded to lifeless browns, many people could use an indoor antidote to the outdoor bleakness.
"When you are stuck inside and it's cold and gray out there, it's really wonderful to have colors in your home that make you really happy," said Ann McGuire, an artist

COLOR IT HAPPY

Experimentation eases fear of bold hues

If coffee is your caffeine rush in a paper cup on the way to work, several central Ohio entrepreneurs want to offer an alternative: tea. Up-and-coming tea salons offer a gentler jolt than espresso and cappuccino, in a setting that encourages relaxation. The tea experience, say their customers, is all about restorative health, serenity, rejuvenation.

TEA SALONS

Take a break and relax, owners say

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The town drunk likely earned his nickname by pan-handling small change to buy his next bottle of hooch. Everyone knew Fifty-Cent Freddie was dancing a two-step with death. But something compelled him to go to the herbal healer who lived in the mountains overlooking Bluefield, W.Va. Seeing her grandmother treat Freddie with valerian

he tiny girl wore a brilliant smile and a pink taffeta dress that came from another child’s far-away closet. Esther spun in little circles in the day room at Camp Moses, a children’s home in Arusha, Tanzania, where kids come after being abandoned, totally orphaned or physically abused. The center was one of three built by a Tanzanian preacher’s wife responding to the injustice that poverty metes out to children in her country.

As Esther was twirling, her taffeta rose like a bellflower around her. That’s when I got a good look at her legs. They were bent outward like parentheses, reducing her stature by six inches. I had heard that her jealous stepfather had broken her limbs with his bare hands when she was a toddler. But seeing her deformed legs jarred me. Something inside me broke, too.

So I told Esther’s story on the webpages of Lohada.org, a site which I rebuilt after visiting LOHADA last summer. I wrote about Bryson and Wema, Kelvin and “Mama” Happiness Wambura, whose vision to change children’s lives plays out every day.

In writing their stories, my broken ideal — that children should be loved, protected and never forced to suffer as Esther did — has healed over, much as Esther’s tiny bent legs have.

Writing allows me discoveries that no other profession could — to meet the Esthers, to visit squatter communities in Egypt and mud daub classrooms in Kenya. I have learned the hibernation habits of bats and heard tales of swashbuckling hands aboard Ohio canal boats. I try to put readers where I am, whether huddled around a campfire listening to distant hyenas, or in a monastery kitchen as the monk pulls steaming loaves from the oven.

My work has appeared in the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus Parent, Habitat World and Msafiri magazine. I have traveled throughout Africa chronicling poverty housing for Habitat for Humanity and education of marginalized children for the African Canadian Continuing Education Society. I have worked for the Columbus Dispatch, the Charlotte Observer and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. My experience includes writing, design, copy editing and script writing for video production. I am currently writing a biographical fiction about the venturous life of my grandfather.

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Spying kale half-eaten by aphids and caterpillars in the garden at his preschool, 3-year-old Ryland Turner had but one thought: It must be pretty scrumptious. Ryland and his peers at the Early Childhood Learning Community were pulling garden duty, stripping leaves that insects had reduced to leftovers.

TATOR TUTORS

Back-to-basics nutrition for children

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Nightly specials just don't cut it anymore, and two-for-one deals are ho-hum. In an industry hammered by the recession, restaurants have been compelled to get savvy about wooing customers. These days, dining establishments pamper their patrons with wine tastings or live jazz;

DINING DEALS

From tickets to Tweets, come-ons abound

The painted cream and yellow stripes in my daughter's room are precisely 12 3/8 inches wide. All except the twelfth one: It's 12 9/16 inches. My husband used to point out the flaw when he showed off our firstborn's nursery: "That's the stripe that almost caused a divorce."

NURSERIES THAT LAST

Parents tell where they went too far

The 1940s modeling portrait hung in the basement, yellowed and rotting at the edges. But the teenage girl depicted in the photo remained perennially young. Joan Rosenblum liked seeing herself that way when she descended the stairs of her Columbus home. She always knew, though, that her youthful portrait would be thrown away someday.

ASSISTED MOVING

Trained agents help seniors ease out of home

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