Mission Trips Leave Lasting Impact on Montevallo Alumni

July 1, 2025

Back in 2011, Montevallo graduate Patsy Holliman Auiler ’65 gained a new purpose in life after traveling with some other family members to a safari camp in the Masai Mara area of Kenya, East Africa. 

That first trip led to Patsy’s beginning an effort to raise money for villagers that she got to know there, villagers who lived in five-foot high, one-room huts made of mud and straw, villagers who wanted a better life for their children. These parents scrimped and saved to send their children to the local school, a boarding school. The  school, Patsy soon learned, had many needs. 

That initial trip to Kenya, the first of three, not only changed Patsy’s life, but it also led to many improvements in the daily lives of hundreds of Masai villagers that she came to know. 

Patsy has enjoyed a busy life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, Jim, often by helping with local charities and political campaigns. Jim and Patsy have two daughters. Carol lives in a town near them, and Ann lives in New York City. 

Jim and Patsy had not considered travel to Africa, but had enjoyed road trips around the United States and Canada. They had also taken several trips to Europe, especially after Jim retired from Ford.

What changed their mind about travel to Africa? Their niece Tricia Corbett ’79, M.Ed. ’82, M.Ed. ’89, Ed.S. ’97, a Montevallo graduate and a school principal in Shelby County at the time, had led several trips with friends and fellow educators to a safari camp in Kenya, Kichwa Tembo, a photo safari camp in the Masai Mara area. The camp is known not only for its game drives, but also for introducing camp guests to the Masai people, who live near the camp. 

Tricia said that a small advertisement for Kichwa Tembo in The Birmingham News had spurred her on to organize a first trip there with some fellow educators. On one of Tricia’s subsequent trips there, Patsy’s niece Jeanetta Corbett Keller ’75, another Montevallo alumna and former Montevallo trustee, and Jeanetta’s husband, Bill, a former staff member in public relations at UM, had joined her and her friends, and the two Kellers and Tricia convinced the Auilers to take the next trip that Tricia organized.

On their first trip to Kenya with Tricia, Patsy and Jim were joined by Patsy’s sister, Ellen Holliman Corbett of Hoover, a former administrative staff member at UM, niece Jan Corbett ’79 of Montevallo, another Montevallo alumna, and the Kellers. 

They first flew to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, where whey stayed overnight before flying the next morning on to the safari camp on two single-engine planes.

When their planes landed on the dirt strip near the camp, they got their first glimpse of lively Masai hospitality. Local women, all dressed in colorful tribal clothing and beaded jewelry, lined up and sang songs to welcome them. The lead women introduced themselves, and those first introductions led to friendships that Patsy still holds dear, she says.

Next, they rode in open Land Cruisers from the airstrip to the camp, where staff members in khaki uniforms sang more songs to welcome them. 

They spent the first day and a half there on driving tours into the Masai Mara Reserve, next to the camp, to see animals they’d seen only in zoos. They rode in those open Land Cruisers, and the drivers were also knowledgeable guides that they came to know and respect.

By the second day, they visited the local village and its school. They met the village chief and his son, and they met school teachers and the school’s head master. At the school, they were even invited to help teach some classes. The school, Patsy learned, needed much. The most important need was clean water. 

Children at the high school, all dressed in uniforms, came out to sing and dance for them, and later Patsy, Ellen, Tricia, Jeanetta and Jan played and sang with the younger children.That came naturally to Patsy, because she had taught music in public schools in Ann Arbor and had also taught at a local co-op nursery school. As Patsy put it, that’s when she began to feel an attachment to the children there in the Masai Mara.

One afternoon, they visited a market that the village women set up to sell their beadwork and other crafts. Camp guests had been their only customers, and Patsy saw that they needed help marketing their handicrafts.

Back home, deeply touched by the trip, Patsy wanted to find a way to sell the handicrafts and earn money for the village women and to send other donations to the village to, among other things, buy water tanks to hold rainwater, her first priority. The school and village needed clean water, and a project to dig a well had failed. That first steel tank and later 10 more tanks provided the village’s first clean water. 

After that first project, she and Jim organized a charitable organization to receive income from the sale of the tribal handicrafts, to receive tax-deductible donations and to oversee the expenditures: Help For African Communities (HFAC).

Patsy worked with the school’s head master and with a respected  local leader, a young woman from the nearby town center. The local contacts would ship the handicrafts to her, and they would also spend the money she sent them on needed projects. Those two key local contacts also helped suggest other opportunities for the HFAC money to help the village and school. 

Back in Ann Arbor and in Venice, Florida, where Patsy and Jim spend the winter months, Patsy sold the handicrafts at parties, inviting friends and neighbors. When word spread, friends also began to send donations after Patsy expanded the goals of the new organization.

To help maintain contact, Patsy flew back to visit her friends in Kenya two more times.

After buying the water tanks, money she raised went to increased Masai self-sufficiency, with ideas developed with the local leaders. HFAC improved the quality of life there with better nutrition, increased access to health care, improved educational opportunities, better employment options and finding new ways to increase individual income. All of the funds raised have gone to meet those goals. 

Patsy’s organization has now bought 11 of the tanks, with donations from family and from friends, including those friends in The Same Sweet Girls. That’s a group of Montevallo alumnae from the classes of 1965 and 1966 who have met each year, usually in Gulf Shores. Stories about their long-time friendships that began in their college years, have appeared in Parade magazine and Coastal Living magazine. 

Names of key donors are on the steel tanks. 

HFAC has also paid for meals for children at the school, paid tuition for children whose parents cannot pay the tuition, and the charity also paid tuition for orphans and for children of widows. 

In addition, they’ve paid tuition for three Masai women to go to college or trade school: one to nursing school, one to get a degree as a teacher and another to learn tailoring skills. The new tailor is now making uniforms for the students at local schools and makes other clothing for the school and village. 

In a recent development, Patsy’s organization paid for new solar panels that have helped supplement the intermittent electricity supplied to the town center.

The school there is a boarding school, mainly because of safety. It’s unsafe for the children to walk each day to and from classes because of the danger of attacks from lions, leopards and other predatory animals. Students sleep on the floor.

At the school, Patsy’s organization has also bought classroom desks and paid for construction of two latrines for girls, and one for boys.

In addition, they sent five computers, one printer, and nine smart phones  to the school. By cell phone, Patsy stays in touch with the head master and the local leaders overseeing the expenditures. 

They’ve even supported an adult literacy program in English for the local Masai. Kenya is a former British colony and protectorate, and English is one of two official languages there, along with Swahili. English is the language of education, business, government and media.

Goats, yes goats. The fund has provided a goat to each of the 63 families there. They can raise the goats to sell, and they use the new income to buy one or more goats.  In addition, Patsy’s organization helped 14 Masai widows each buy a cow. The women helped pay for half the cost by selling their jewelry and other crafts. Owning a cow brings new income to the widows and helps them maintain their status within the village.

Two other projects helped improve the villagers’ nutrition. HFAC bought an electric grinder at the school to grind corn, an important part of their diet, and HFAC helped start a community garden that provides fresh vegetables. Villagers pay a small fee to the school to grind their corn. 

Her organization also provided money to build an open-air chapel in the nearby town center, a chapel that is also used for community meetings

Patsy, herself, grew up on a farm near Fayette, Alabama, and after graduating from high school there, she attended Montevallo, back when it was known as Alabama College.

Truly, Montevallo graduate Patsy Holliman Auiler has made a positive difference in the lives of so many people in the Masai Mara area of Kenya, and it all started after her first trip to Kichwa Tembo safari camp in 2011.

To make a donation to HFAC send a check to this address: 

Help for African Communities 

1332 Wolverhampton Lane 

Ann Arbor, MI 48105.

Article contributed by Bill Keller.