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Inspiring Stories
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 Inspiring Stories
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For the past 12 years Robert Shea has been a part of the Sunburst Community. As a client, and father of an HIV positive teen, Robert has inspired us all by helping as a volunteer counselor at Camp Sunburst, serving as a peer mentor working with other parents in our parent program and now as the co-founder of a new summer camp program in South Africa.
The following article is Robert’s inspiring story.
We send Robert and his wife Jawaya in Cape Town our blessings and congratulations on the realization of their joint vision to create a family summer camp for HIV/AIDS children in South Africa.
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© 2006
Marin Independent Journal. Reprinted by permission,
Feb. 13, 2006
by Jim Staats
Eight years ago, Robert Shea of San Rafael learned he had HIV. But instead of feeling sorry for himself, he sprung into action.
Shea, 44, a former tree service operator whose young son also has HIV, began working in a Sonoma County camp for low-income children with AIDS and HIV; he started studying toward a psychology degree and began counseling AIDS-infected teens.
He met his wife, a South African AIDS worker, at an international AIDS youth conference, and together they established two weeklong residential camps for AIDS-infected youth in South Africa in which American youth infected with AIDS go there to help.
To date, three stateside patients have made the trip. But the couple have grand plans.
“The disease is pretty much in control in our state, but it’s rampant and out of control over in Africa,” Shea said. “If we can bring even one-tenth of the support we receive here over to Africa.”
Founded a year ago by Shea and his wife, Jawaya Small, 45, a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, their organization, Fertile Ground, has established camps outside Cape Town.
The camps are part summer camp fun and part counseling sessions aimed at bolstering leadership skills, nutrition awareness, healthy behaviors and more. A key ingredient is the interaction of the South African youth with their peers — HIV-positive youth from Northern California.
With a little more than 10 percent of the world’s population, sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 60 percent of all people living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, a United Nations program on HIV/AIDS.
“Between 5,000 and 15,000 people a week die there specifically from AIDS,” Shea said. “They are running out of burial room.”
The South African camps offer weeklong retreats for youth, infected themselves or whose parents are infected, to learn crafts and safety measures, share experiences and witness firsthand survival success personified by their afflicted American counterparts.
One such living example is Shea’s 16-year-old son, Robert Jr., who was born with the disease and attended the first camp last July with his father. Both father and son contracted the disease from Shea’s former wife.
Robert Jr. said he was surprised his father was able to establish the camps.
“When my dad first thought of it, I thought it was a really good idea. But I wasn’t thinking he’d actually be able to put this together, but it was amazing to be there,” Robert said.
He said the memory of driving through townships with people sick with AIDS just lying on the street because they couldn't control the disease made him want to break down in tears.
Another camp attendee, Redding native Augie Loya, 17, said the experience made him feel fortunate even though he, too, has lived with the disease since birth.
“I thought I had it pretty bad with what I've gone through,” he said. “But seeing what they deal with every day, not just with the disease but everything, I came home to feel very spoiled almost.”
Both participants described the program, facilitated by doctors, psychiatrists and counselors, as a learning experience and fun exchange of culture and hope.
Many South African attendees had never left their township for anything other than a doctor visit, so simple life lessons, such as water safety at the beach, pole fishing and cooking are also taught at the camp.
“We teach girls the safety about walking in pairs because often they get raped on the way to an outhouse,” Shea said. “That's one method AIDS is sometimes transferred.”
The Fertile Ground camps are modeled after the Sunburst Projects of Rohnert Park, where Shea was a patient, mentor and camp counselor for seven years.
A close affinity with kids at the camp led Shea to enter the psychology program at College of Marin four years ago to better offer therapeutic assistance.
“I have the disease, and they can identify with me,” said Shea, now a full-time student at College of Marin. “But as much as they need me, I need those camps to survive. They are my own torch.”
Geri Brooks, executive director of Sunburst Projects, which has overseen Camp Sunburst for low-income families affected by HIV/AIDS since 1988, said she has known Shea for seven years.
“I think a lot of his inspiration came from having a son of his own and looking at the struggles his son and he as a parent go through,” she said. “Seeing the good work done at our camp and wanting to create something like that for teens in Africa is a continuation of what he's been given and what he wants to give back.”
Shea met his wife two-and-a-half years ago at a Washington, D.C., conference on working with teens infected with HIV since birth. He credits her strength in nurturing 12 boys with learning disabilities living in Cape Town to become youth counselors as a blueprint for their program.
Jawaya, executive director of the organization, remains in her home country to complete her master’s program for district health managers with plans to earn her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley. The couple remain apart to maintain two office locations, but they have a dream to open a Bay Area camp when she moves stateside.
She described via e-mail how the camps help integrate HIV as a fact of life into a daily routine, including taking medication.
“Being positive translates into being positive about your health and goals in life,” she said.
Shea is hoping to raise $20,000 to send 10 more American youths with AIDS to South Africa and then “take them out for a safari as a reward for going out there.”
All funding has been out-of-pocket supplemented by small donations.
For information, visit the Fertile Ground Web site at www.ourfertileground.org or call 454-8544.
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