A Small Act

Humphrey Oguda, 1967-2011

This is Humphrey.

It wasn't like him to be on this side of the camera, but his close friend Stuart, who was my partner from 2003 to 2008, is also a camera guy.

Stuart snapped this photo quick on the stoop of our house, just before he and Humphrey set forth on one of their UrbanEx journeys around DC.

The two met years before in Manhattan. Humphrey was a recent grad of Bowdoin College slinging music at Tower Records (remember those?). Stuart was a young lion on Wall Street. Their friendship spanned more than 10 years.

I only got to hang out with Humphrey a handful of times, but his was a great and radiant presence.

His death was brief and senseless: taken with a fever while visiting friends, he died of flu symptoms in the blink of a shutter, three days before his birthday last year.


His life was brief too, but rich and full. He had dozens of friends and wide interests from economics to politics to wine to photography.

Yet when I went looking for Humphrey's web site today, only a year after his death, I found the domain resold to another photographer. Now there are only a few remaining signal fires burning for him on the Internet: a cogent comment on Kenya's bloody rivalries here, a loving tribute from his family here.

As his online footprints disappear, I am looking for a new way to keep Humphrey in my life.

A few weeks ago--before last year's loss of Humphrey had yet resurfaced--I purchased and watched A Small Act, a film by Jennifer Arnold about the work of the Hilde Back Education Fund. The founder of the fund is Chris Mburu, a Kenyan man who benefitted from a foreign benefactor's contributions to his education and went on to become a human rights lawyer for the United Nations. Made with great care, the film tells a profound story simply. It is as much a film about beauty's persistence and the importance of human connection as it is about education and progress.

The Fund's international partner is the Creative Visions Foundation, an organization that would very much appeal to Humphrey's sense of how simply by seeing the world around us, we can do our part to enliven and heal it.

We have such small gestures to offer. We have to do what we can, holding up our little palmfuls of hope and trust in the memory of people who have touched our lives, made them better, worked in some small way to enlighten our corner of the world. Humphrey was such a person for me.

I have devoted $44 per month--just shy of the full $55 monthly contribution suggested--to help defray the Hilde Back Education Fund's costs for sending bright, capable kids to high school and onward. I chose the figure because I need to get used to such a (for me) sizable monthly donation, and because Humphrey missed his 44th birthday. I feel confident that before 11 years pass--well before that--I can afford to do more.

Please stop and donate to the Creative Visions Foundation, or the Hilde Back Education Fund, or any cause that means a lot to you. Such a small act, and such a profound difference it can make.