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Travels with Floyd and Kathy

Destination: Tanzania


Do you draw inspiration from a good story about down-to-earth people who make the world a better place? Then you’ll enjoy meeting our founders, Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton. They are a charming, unassuming couple from rural Iowa who, in their retirement, created such positive impact that two U.S. Presidents – Obama and George H.W. Bush – invited them to the White House for a special ceremony to honor them. Want to know how that happened?

To begin, let’s travel to Tanzania with them to discover the origin of The Outreach Program. Our first journey to Africa takes place 15 years ago in 2003 when they made their first trip.

The Back Story

Floyd and Kathy started the first plastics recycling plant in America and, after years of success in business, decided to retire. Even though they were landlocked Iowans, they loved to sail. In fact, they joined others in 1992 on the Columbus 500 from Spain to Antigua in celebration of his voyage of 1492. They intended to sail the world in their retirement.

However, a friend of theirs – a doctor – invited them to Tanzania, East Africa, to help him convert a leprosy hospital into an AIDS hospice.

“Our friend asked if we would go to Tanzania so Floyd could be construction foreman initiating a 5-year plan to renovate an old Leprosy hospital out in the bush,” Kathy says. “He told us there was no running water, no electricity and we’d have to take everything we’d need to eat for the 6 months we’d be there. There was an old missionary house we could stay in that had concrete floors. Grain had been stored in it but they would clean it out for us.”

Destination: Nkungi, Tanzania, East Africa

Their destination was the village of Nkungi (N-koon-gee), a remote village that began as a leper colony. Since leprosy was so contagious, those afflicted with the disease were removed to remote locations and Nkungi was such a place out in the Africa bush. In time, family members of the lepers moved near the leprosy hospital so they could feed loved ones who were patients. Nkungi, like many hospitals in developing countries, do not provide food for patients so someone else must provide. Over time, Nkungi grew into a village with several hundred people.

When the AIDS epidemic came with a fury no one expected, there was a need to convert the leprosy hospital into an AIDS hospice. Enter Floyd and Kathy.

Floyd has considerable experience in construction and, in the earlier part of his career, built numerous residential and commercial buildings with the finest equipment and material.

Floyd’s bucket

“I was told there would be a container of building supplies and equipment that would meet me there,” Floyd says. “But it’s a good thing I took my own tool belt because that container never arrived. All they had was a cheap hammer that the head kept flying off of and a lousy screwdriver with a broken handle. I could fit all of my tools in a plastic bucket.” 

While in Nkungi, they lived in a little house near the hospital. As is typical in tropical climates with open houses, sometimes you share your abode with unwanted guests like the night Kathy awakened to an awful clicking racket coming from the next room. She arose, grabbed a flashlight and went to inspect the origin of the noise. There were massive beetle-like insects covering the walls of the room. They were so numerous there was no way she could kill them all so she went back to bed and the sound of the clicking. The insects were gone by morning.

After a few months in Nkungi, they returned home to the U.S. They had made friends in Tanzania and after a few months home, decided to return. Only this time, they would encounter something they had never seen before: children dying because of hunger.

What they did next changed forever the course of their life and has led them to providing more than 420 million meals for the hungry.

Up next: Trading Food for Baskets

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