Teen taking AIDS crusade to Africa

Sioux Falls activist leaves this week for Kenya, then plans health-care career

JILL CALLISON
jcalliso@argusleader.com

June 14, 2005, 2:55 am

Cait Quinlivan has the courage to say goodbye. Only 18 years old, she already has seen death take her father, her maternal grandparents, an uncle and the man she considered a mentor. But rather than harden her heart, Cait plunged into volunteer work in an area where more losses are likely to occur - with people living with HIV/AIDS. This week, the Sioux Falls woman takes her AIDS activism from a local to a global scale. She leaves Wednesday for 11 days of AIDS education among Kenyan children. "I just want to be impacted by it," Cait says. "I'm hoping it's just the beginning for the long road ahead." That "long road" includes a future working to combat HIV/AIDS. Cait leaves this fall for Reed College in Portland, Ore., and plans a career in health-care administration. Her mother, Pat Quinlivan, had cautioned her daughter that the volunteer work Cait had chosen would hold heartbreak as she saw others struggle with AIDS and die from the disease. Quinlivan cautioned her daughter - but did not discourage her. "I said, 'You know you're going to go through this and you're going to hurt,' " Quinlivan says. " 'It takes some pretty big courage to give love and accept love, and it will be with you all your life, but that person will leave you.' " The 2005 Lincoln High School graduate began volunteering at the Berakhah House, which houses men and women living with AIDS, as a seventh-grader. Her grandfather, Merlin Dodge, galvanized by the AIDS death of his son, Andy, had helped found Berakhah House. The Quinlivan family on Thanksgiving would prepare the meal for Berakhah's residents. Cait became a regular visitor, doing whatever she could to help the residents, visiting even after the Quinlivans moved to Tracy, Minn. Tom Quinlivan became the hospital administrator there. The family, which also includes Cait's brother, Mike, now 24, settled on a lakeside property. Tom Quinlivan's death from a heart attack rocked his family as Cait was preparing to start seventh grade. Pat Quinlivan moved her family back to Sioux Falls in December 1999. For mother and daughter, Berakhah House became a place of refuge.
"Everybody there is sort of like a family member," Cait says. "When we first moved back, it was really a pretty safe place for my mom and me." Cait began spending more of her free time there, baking for the residents, doing cleaning chores and, most importantly, visiting with the residents. It was there she met Willie Bettelyoun, the man who became her mentor. He encouraged her volunteer efforts, which expanded to organizing youth teams for the annual AIDS walk and serving as the youth representative on the State Planning Group for HIV and AIDS. Curt Kraft met Cait through the state group. "She's not reserved at all," says Kraft, who lives at the Berakhah House. "If she has an opinion, and they're usually well-founded opinions, her input is generally well accepted." Cait met Bettelyoun in eighth grade; that's when her interest in AIDS issues became a passion, Pat Quinlivan says. Bettelyoun, who died in 2003, functioned almost in the role of an uncle, she says. He encouraged her, Cait says, letting her know she could make a difference and offering support during times of frustration. Cait became a resource for her classmates. Five years later, her soft voice heats up when she recalls some of the ignorance she had encountered. "I was teaching people more in my middle school health classes than the teacher even knew, and that was pretty upsetting to me, upsetting and disheartening and unbelievable, too, at the same time," she says.

Going to Kenya

Cait originally considered moving to Portland or Seattle earlier this summer to work with an AIDS organization there. But while she was researching information on the Internet, she came across United Planet, which promotes cultural exchange through volunteer programs in about 50 countries. This year, 300 volunteers will contribute their time - from a week to a year - helping with education, health-care and environmental programs while experiencing another culture and life, says executive director Dave Santulli. Cait will be among United Planet's youngest volunteers this year, he says. "In terms of her commitment and her preparation, she is an outstanding example and quite unique," Santulli says. Cait will volunteer at Maasai Education Discovery, a nonprofit center in Narok, Kenya, that works with young girls. When she leaves Wednesday, she'll be armed with Peace Corps educational materials on HIV and AIDS. In Narok, she will spend 11 days - educating three two-hour sessions a day - teaching girls younger than herself how to protect themselves. Because of Cait's preparation work, she will leave behind educational materials that can be used by others as well, Santulli says. "The local community can continue to work with it and use it, so it's very special and appreciated," he says. One of the lessons Cait will teach is that women especially are vulnerable to HIV infection. Brent Christensen, who met Cait through the Berakhah House, says Cait will be able to get that message across. "With the epidemic right now primarily growing among women and young women, she's a perfect peer to put that message forward," Christensen says.
"You can't ignore someone when they speak with such incredible passion as she does."

Addressing deep need

According to a United Nations study of global AIDS, the annual number of AIDS deaths continues to rise steeply in Kenya. It has doubled during the past six years to about 150,000 deaths per year in a country with a population of 34 million. New infections are reported at 80,000 a year, with the majority occurring among women ages 15 to 24 and men younger than 30. HIV infection among adults in urban areas is 1 percent, almost twice as high as in rural areas. Pat Quinlivan thinks the trip to Kenya will be a wake-up call for her daughter. "She's taken a teaspoon into the ocean," Quinlivan says. "We think it's bad here, but the numbers are horrible there. And there's a cultural bias against girls' role in society." Cait knows her trip to Kenya will be an eye-opener. But she's so determined to go that while she raised funds for her trip until the pressure of her senior year interrupted efforts, she's willing to dig into her own savings to pay for it. "It will be a shock to me, it will be," she says. "Hopefully, it will be my encouragement to continue (in AIDS work). I just hope I have started to make my footprint."