My friend Marlan

Marlan outside of the Beme Office

Marlan is the UPS driver who has been delivering packages to my office for as long as I’ve been working there. Over the years he’s become a dear friend to me and a lot of the people I work with. He’s a regular on Casey’s vlogs and one of the most popular users on Beme. He’s also truly one of the nicest guys I know. He just genuinely cares about other people and he never fails to put a smile on your face.

When we moved into the Beme office around this time last year, we gave Marlan full access to our snack selection. So, every once in while when he drops off a package, he’ll stop by and grab a piece of fruit or a water or something and we’ll take a couple minutes to chat. The other day we got to talking about St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the small Caribbean country where he’s originally from, and he said something to me that I won’t soon forget. He told me a story of when he most recently spent a week in St. Vincent visiting his sister and some other friends and family. He talked about how naturally beautiful the island is but also how full of problems it is. He told me about the lack of access people had to healthy food and how poor the healthcare system is. He explained how a small container of strawberries could cost $20 or more. He showed me the photograph of a man who had flown to New York to be treated for his illness in a hospital here, because they couldn’t perform the operation he needed in any of the hospitals in St. Vincent. This man was only able to afford the trip because he was a successful lawyer, but the average person in St. Vincent would have no hope of affording a potentially life saving trip.

What really struck me about our conversation was how happy and grateful Marlan was to be living in the States. It was a nice reminder that in this time of political tensions and vitriol that we still live in the greatest country on earth. Nowhere else is there so much freedom and opportunity. Sometimes I think we forget that while getting frustrated about politics and elections.

Marlan’s sister Merlex still lives in St. Vincent. She’s also suffering from Kidney disease and diabetes. Like most folks in St. Vincent, she doesn’t have proper health insurance that she can depend on. She also has no hope of a transplant because they don’t even perform Kidney transplants on the island of St. Vincent. If she wanted to come to the States for treatment she wouldn’t be able to get the visa necessary to enter the country. Right now she’s stuck paying for dialysis treatment out of pocket, and she’s dependent on the help of Marlan and her other siblings.

While this is a significant financial burden for Marlan it’s clearly an emotional one as well. He wants a better solution not only for his sister but for other people in St. Vincent suffering from the same condition. We talked a lot about what could be done to help these people who have little hope of getting improved care. We decided to set up a small fundraiser to help out Merlex and others. All of the money is going to help pay for dialysis treatment but hopefully we can get the campaign to grow beyond paying for basic care to work toward better healthcare solutions for people suffering from organ failure in St. Vincent.

I wanted to help Marlan out with this fundraising effort because I believe in his optimism and strong character. I don’t know a lot of people who are as gracious and kind as Marlan is and I truly believe he’s going to use this campaign not only to help his sister but a lot of other people too.

If you want to learn more about Marlan and Merlex check out the fundraiser page here.