Professor’s gift of time leads to seeing lives transformed
In 1990 Northwest gained an inspiring professor, Dr. Bayo Joachim. Joachim began his interview process with Dr. Bohlken. Dr. Bohlken was a professor that introduced Joachim to the university and persuaded him to stay for at least a year. Joachim was planning to only stay for a year because the size of the town was small and not close to Lawrence, Kansas.
Dr. Bohlken took him under his wings and turned that one year into 29 years.
Joachim’s personal key to success at Northwest was commitment. He claimed the three dimensions of commitment were commitment to God, commitment to people, and commitment to yourself in terms of purpose.
“Working at Northwest has brought me in contact and connection with quite a number of people,” Joachim said. “I am very grateful for that.”
Joachim began his trips in Haiti in 1999. Two weeks after his first trip with Dr. Mike Bellamy, he was haunted by one of the kids’ faces that he met while he was there. Joachim took this as a sign that he needed to continue to go back and help those kids in the orphanage.
A year later Joachim and Dr. Bellamy went back to Haiti but not empty handed. They took about one hundred backpacks with them and gave them to kids at the orphanage. After giving every kid there a backpack Joachim noticed they had some left.
The worker told them that the kids lived in a village over the mountain. The next day Joachim and Dr. Bellamy started their hike to see where those kids lived and to visit with them.
“We started early that morning because it was summer time and it would get very warm,” Joachim said. “It took us two hours and forty-five minutes to hike just one way.”
They got to the top of one mountain and were told they had to go down it and up another one, He got to see what those kids did Monday through Friday to get to school. Joachim and Dr. Bellamy decided they had to do something for these kids. They got a school started in that village so they didn’t have to walk two hours and forty-five minutes each way Monday through Friday.
In December 2009, a group went down to Haiti and came back Jan. 6, 2010. Four days later on Jan. 10, 2010 a huge earthquake hit Haiti and destroyed so many lives.
After the earthquake, Joachim went back to Haiti and started to think about where the kids went after primary school. He was looking around and there was nothing to offer. He thought they would have to bus the kids somewhere else to be able to get that education.
“I was talking to a local teacher and she said that there are so many primary schools around but nothing further,” Joachim said.
Joachim decided to start building a high school in that village, just one room at a time. As a result of the earthquake they had kids from all other different places that ended up in the orphanage. They had up to 44 kids in there and the youngest was about four.
“Now we have a school in that place that runs from kindergarten through thirteenth grade,” Joachim said. “The school is now thriving and helping several people in the area with about 750 kid’s total who attend the school.”
For the kids in the village that they started a school for, after they finished primary school they could come down the mountain and attend high school. Instead of having to walk two hours and forty-five minutes to get to school Monday through Friday the kids have a place to stay during the week and then go home on the weekends to stay with their family.
“Not only do we provide them with the education, those of them that can not go onto a university, we want to make sure that when they leave the orphanage they have a skill to help them function and succeed in Haiti,” Joachim said. “We have kids going to cooking schools, learning how to sew outside of the high school, so those are the main things we work on.”
For the kids in Haiti to be able to go to a university to further their education they had to pass several exams in the system and if they do not pass the exam they do not get to go on and learn a trade.
While Joachim was in the process of working in the orphanage in June 2013 he met the twins that he decided to foster. There was one boy in particular that caught Jomachims attention. This boy was not part of the orphanage but going in and out everyday. Joachim discovered that the boys lived right across the street.
“I went over to his house with him and then I discovered that there were ten kids in the family, one of them was living with their aunt but the other nine were together,” Joachim said. “That was when I found two three month olds. The boy especially was so sickly, if you held his hand he wouldn’t grasp your and his eyes were almost rolled back in his head.”
The second oldest sister was the one taking care of the twins. Joachim took the twins to the hospital and found out the babies were malnourished.
“I asked the oldest sister what she had been feeding them and she said sugar water. Three month old babies were only getting sugar water and of course no mother and they did not know who their dad is,” Joachim said. “I ordered them formula the next day.”
The same boy came into the orphanage to get food for him and for the rest of the family.
“Because of those two, I will continue to keep going back there,” Joachim said.
Joachim continued to go back to Haiti two or three times a year. He enjoyed going back and seeing his twins and the rest of the kids there.
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