It took three rings for the phone to pummel me awake... 5 AM: my daughter, Lauren calling from Migori, Kenya. The uncertain Internet had just swallowed her long letter and she'd only a short time to contact home before returning to a part of Africa which, like the heart of darkness, doesn't appear on my map.

We spoke of her difficulty with the language, the squalor; and I sensed desperation in her voice as she described the parched, impoverished oven called Muhuru Bay where she is stationed for another week. But her voice lifted in excitement when she shared about the Memory Box work she was doing, a project I hadn't heard of.

So later that morning at work I hooked into high speed and Googled "Memory Box". The first link said, "Cherished mementos don't always fit in an album. Here's a simple project that will help you safeguard them."

It described a fun and easy alternative to scrap-booking where joyful tokens of Summer: amusement park tickets, wild flowers and pebbles from the lake, can be stored in a box gaily transformed with fabric glue, red felt, shoelaces and striped ribbon.

But my eyes welled up as they moved to the link below: "Africa: Memory boxes to help say goodbye."

Lauren is one of the volunteers helping dying parents record their life stories in words, pictures, and objects, to be passed to their children after their death. The Memory Box will house treasures that give a child an identity and a sense of belonging.

The Memory Box cannot cure, but at least can address the emotional scars left by bereavement. Those with HIV are called 'positive', and Lauren helps these positive mothers reflect and write to their children. "Our family came from...." "You first walked when you were...." "So and so used to look at you with kind and loving eyes. He likes to tell about the time you...."

In some places the mothers participate in writing workshops to help them texture their histories with sounds, tastes, smells and colours to ensure the story springs out and their voices be heard.

Anything can be put into the boxes. In Uganda there is a program to help positive parents

sort out their wills, plan their funerals, make arrangements for children to be looked after by relatives or friends. Even living wills can become part of the box.

Memory Box work generates a safe and creative context for the very challenging and courageous practical work which positive parents have to face: their wishes and hopes around a future they will not share. Lauren kick-starts this process which will continue after she leaves.

Meanwhile I write beside the air conditioner and can only imagine being the only white woman in a poor village in the land of AIDS, sharing the latrine with a bat.