Byline: PAUL GRONDAHL Staff Writer
ALBANY - With college student loans to repay and other mounting bills, Kelly Desmarais gave a lot of thought to a promotion and $10,000 raise she was offered at the state Health Department.
In the end, though, her heart won out over her head.
Desmarais, 23, turned down the promotion and will leave next week for South Africa to work as an unpaid volunteer comforting young children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.
In a curious coda to her choice, Desmarais has to come up with $10,000 of her own money to cover the cost of airfare, health insurance, room and board for a six-month stint working in the poor black township of Crossroads, South Africa.
'This has been on my heart for the last two years and I've been praying about it a lot,' said Desmarais, who spent a semester in South Africa in 2002 as part of a study abroad program through Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Desmarais will work in 'discipleship' with Beautiful Gate Ministries International, a Christian organization that operates community-based centers in several African countries.
Locally, Desmarais has been assisted by members of her church, Grace Fellowship, a nondenominational evangelical congregation in Latham.
Her last day of work was Monday. Co-workers threw her a party in their office at the Corning Tower.
'Anyone who knows Kelly is not surprised she's doing this,' said Chris Salmon, Desmarais's supervisor and director of the bureau of health media and marketing. 'Kelly is a very caring person who wants to help people. She had a real calling to do this.'
Desmarais's co-workers also donated money and helped her surpass the half-way point of her $10,000 goal. She still has to raise about $5,000 but doesn't need all the money before she leaves.
They presented her with the rotating team spirit trophy that Desmarais, who worked as a project aide on emergency management issues for 18 months, helped establish.
'We'll really miss Kelly,' Salmon said. 'She was such a bright spirit around the office.'
Although her parents and some friends tried to discourage her from putting a promising state career on hold, Desmarais felt drawn to South Africa. She still writes to the families she stayed with two years ago in the black townships outside Cape Town. The South Africans gave her a nickname: Thandiwe . It means 'to be loved.'
'I can recite all the statistics,' Desmarais said Tuesday, as she packed up her few belongings in a Center Square apartment. 'A child is orphaned by AIDS every 14 seconds. The AIDS pandemic has left an estimated 15 million orphans, 80 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.'
Desmarais, who was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and has long been an idealist when it comes to social problems, decided it was time to go to the source of the AIDS pandemic.
'I could keep talking about it or I could try to do something about it myself,' Desmarais said.
There are 40 children in the Beautiful Gate AIDS care center in Crossroads, outside Cape Town. They range in age from 1 month to 7 years and some are infected with HIV.
'I saw such an overwhelming need when I was in South Africa two years ago,' said Desmarais, who previously worked with poor children in Guatemala while a freshman at Trinity College.
Volunteering in South Africa seems like a stretch for an anthropology major.
'My parents are concerned,' she said. 'Some of my friends think I'm a little crazy. I'm at that point where I'm nervous and excited at the same time.'
Desmarais said the time for talk was over.
'I felt I had to take a risk and do this now before I get too comfortable in my life and career,' she said.
Paul Grondahl can be reached at 454-5623 or by e-mail at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.
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STEVE JACOBS/TIMES UNION KELLY DESMARAIS is leaving next weekfor South Africa to work in a center for children orphaned by AIDS. ON A TRIP to South Africa two years ago, Kelly Desmarais stayed with Mama Nozolile. Desmarais continued to write to her after returning to the United States.
