There is something Dan Marazon, D.O., associate professor of family medicine, finds charming about Benson Bonyo, D.O. (’98), his former student who founded the Student Health And Rural Experience Kenya program. The charming trademark? “Within five minutes of meeting you,” Marazon says, “He addresses you as ‘my friend.’”

     Bonyo, a native of Kenya, has made many friends. “I don’t want enemies. I’ve got no time for that,” he says. “Life is too short, and the world is too small.”

     Marazon, medical director of UOMC, says it is not as simple as that. “He is able to project a deeper friendship right off. There’s something about his body language, or if you believe in auras, there’s something about his aura that when he says you are my friend — and he says this 100, 200 times a day — each one of those people can say, ‘Bonyo is my friend,’” Marazon says.

     The Bonyo story is the kind movies are made of. The script: an East African child is born amid the poorest of living conditions. Years later as a young boy, he watches helplessly as his baby sister dies before her first birthday — an all too common occurrence in his village, where the infant mortality rate can reach 60 percent. She dies from dehydration because no medical care is readily available where his family lives. The tragedy of his sister’s death inspires him to pursue the medical profession, and he vows to help reduce the plight that led to his sister’s death.

     But Bonyo’s own story is even better than a movie script. Movies end; audiences leave the theater. Bonyo’s desire to make a positive impact on the lives of his countrymen, though, has been constant since he began his medical career at OU-COM.

      The most notable example of Bonyo’s commitment to his homeland and to osteopathic medicine has been the SHARE Kenya program. SHARE Kenya began in 1995, when, as a joke, Bonyo suggested to classmates that they should spend a portion of their winter holidays as volunteers at a clinic in rural Ahero, seven miles from Bonyo’s birthplace of Wangaya in southwestern Kenya. His classmates took Bonyo seriously. That first trip, a contingent of 28 went to Kenya.

     The project that started as a joke became a yearly winter break ritual by 1997. That year, 31 health-care professionals made the trip, and OU-COM’s Tropical Disease Institute got involved, tracking and researching the impact of sickle cell anemia and the effects of smoking on Kenya’s residents. This last winter, SHARE Kenya had its most successful trip yet in terms of sheer numbers of patients treated. Through the help of private donations, SHARE Kenya was able to purchase a reliable four-wheel drive vehicle and utilize cellular phones to become more mobile and accessible than ever before. As a result, the group was able to visit more clinics and treat more people than it had in the past years, an average of 500 people per day for the three weeks they were there.

     But Bonyo strives for more than just being able to treat a few thousand people over a short span of time. He wants his impact to continue in Kenya year round. Bonyo’s goal now is to build a hospital near the Ahero Clinic, upon land he purchased 10 years ago. “I didn’t know at the time why I bought it. One of the priests in the area was a family friend. I was home one holiday, and we were talking and he says there’s a piece of land by the church there,” Bonyo says. “The owner is selling it. It is a big piece of land. If I were you, I’d buy it. You may find some use for it.”

     In Bonyo’s mind’s eye, the hospital already is there.

     “I do see it happening. The question is if we build it, who is going to run it when we are not there? The Peace Corp is an option,” Bonyo says. “The Peace Corps could possibly run it. And where we want to build it, there is an existing clinic as part of a church that we will use when SHARE Kenya is there.”

     If Bonyo can summon even a bit of the resourcefulness that first brought him to America, finding the funding for construction of a hospital shouldn’t be too daunting a task. “If he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it,” Marazon says. “And he’s done so many amazing things already that you say, ‘if he’s done that, he certainly can do this.’”

     When Bonyo was a teen attending a Catholic boarding school in Kenya, his teachers encouraged him to apply to colleges in the United States. “If you talk to people from Third World countries, something about America is unique compared to other countries,” Bonyo says. “There is a feeling that America is a place where anybody can fit, anybody can survive.” Upon receiving Bonyo’s application, a community college in Dallas, Texas, offered him a scholarship. “No way I could turn that down,” he says. At that point all Bonyo needed to do was raise the funds to pay his way to the States. In a manner that would become typical for him, Bonyo acquired the $800 airfare by bicycling from village to village asking people for donations, scholarship letter in hand.

     Bonyo moved on to the University of Texas-Arlington and took the MCAT exam while he was there. After taking the exam, he chose to have his scores sent to OU-COM. “I had never even heard of Ohio, believe it or not,” Bonyo says. “I got this note from Ohio University about a (six-week) summer scholars program. So I started calling Pat Gyi, director of equity programs. It sounded good.” Bonyo then committed to OU-COM after attending the program. “I was really impressed with the school and the personnel and how friendly the people were,” he says.

     Bonyo, not surprisingly, made friends fast. He met Marazon in a Grosvenor hallway his first day in Athens, when Marazon was on his way to give sports medicine physicals. Bonyo immediately offered to help.

     His desire to help was felt deeply as a resident at Akron City Hospital as well. When Bonyo completed his residency last year, the hospital created a humanitarian award with Bonyo as its first recipient.

     Through his education at OU-COM and his experiences in Kenya, Bonyo is committed to the concept of family medicine. “I wanted to do something where I could help everybody,” he says. “I don’t want somebody to come to me and I tell them, ‘I can’t help you.’ Given where I come from, I really had to do that.”

     Bonyo has been married for nine years to his wife, Sharon. The couple have three children: Breana, 8; Leonida, 5; and Isaiah, 2. Bonyo spends most of his days as a partner at Internal Medicine Specialists Inc., a family practice clinic in Akron. And if any of his patients are admitted to one of the four hospitals in the area where Bonyo has privileges, he must attend to his rounds either before or after his work at the clinic. So his schedule does not allow for much free time. “I was fortunate I got married when I was still in medical school. My wife got used to a hectic schedule,” Bonyo says. “She’s very understanding, and whatever free time I get I try to spend with the family. It’s true I don’t spend as much time as I would like to, but that goes with the profession. My wife has been extremely helpful.”

     The Bonyos have just bought a house in Akron, and the family has no plans to move to Kenya because he can earn more money in the United States to further his noble cause. “Before I became a doctor, I realized the only way I can help my people is by doing what I am doing now,” Bonyo says. “Right now if I had to settle there, it would be difficult to accomplish what I can from here. Because life in Kenya can be very hard on you.” But each year his efforts, and those of others, make life a little bit easier and healthier for his countrymen.