Better or Worse or the Same When I Do This?

If you grew up in Eveleth, MN you probably went to the same optometrist that most of us did. In fact, I still go to see him even though I haven't officially lived in Eveleth for over a decade. During every appointment as he checks different lenses, he always repeats, "is it better or worse or the same when I do this? How about this?" As I was trying to sum up how I feel about yesterday, I find myself asking if things are better, worse, or just the same as we visited the former house mother and most of the children that used to stay at Little Angels since the time we started getting involved.

I actually started writing 3 or 4 times yesterday and found myself too frustrated to even finish anything so I decided to sleep, run, and think about my feelings before I put them in writing. I often find myself saying that I shouldn't have even asked questions about what really goes on at orphanages because the more questions you ask, the more you reveal things that aren't going well. We went through a similar experience with Need for All in 2007-2010. It was really rough with lots of tears and shouting but now, as you can see, the Woolies are at Watoto and are thriving. It might be different than where they started but they are in the best place possible, so I need to remember that there is a hope for things to be better, but I have a hard having faith that it will happen sometimes.

Judith, one of the boys, and Judith's son outside of her restaurant. Because the other kids stay in large children's homes, we weren't really allowed to take pictures when we visited.

So, there are lots of posts, especially towards the end of my last trip here in 2012 talking about Little Angels and the man who was in charge. I will refer to him as "M" for now but I am sure I have used his real name in previous posts. We started out just providing medicine kits for the orphanage and minimally being involved but when my mom visited the first time we realized that they needed a lot of things. Since we weren't allowed to talk with the house mother, Judith, because "M" doesn't like donors to hear any truth about what really goes on, we didn't realize how bad things actually were. After a couple of years we realized that things never looked better at the house itself and the kids never had the things they needed. When "M" showed up at the gate to meet us, he always had a brand new very expensive car, very nice clothes, and last year we met his extremely well dressed children. He claims that he treats the orphanage kids just the same as his own, but when you put them side by side, you can see his children with brand new clothes and shoes, with healthy body fat and clean teeth while the Little Angel kids had holes in their clothes, no shoes, and lots with rotting teeth.

Because there is so much to say and there is probably reference to it in previous posts, I will just list a few things we found out about last year during our visit:

• "M" locks all the food in a closet and measures out exactly enough for an individual meal. Sometimes he doesn't come back and the kids only got a meal per day or sometimes less
• He hasn't paid the landlord in 2 years, therefore, she refused to fix anything that went wrong including broken glass, locks that don't work, the outside wall completely falling in, and the latrine falling in
• When the latrine finally fell in and wasn't fixed, the solution was to tell the children to go outside and dig holes so they could go to the bathroom in the yard. Nothing like camping-style toilets in the middle of the city, right?
• Judith hadn't been paid in over 1 year
• One of the older girls ran away and locked herself in a sponsors room who later found a letter she had written to "M" asking why he was abusing her - the nature of the letter assumed it was sexual abuse, but the details are still a little unclear
• When donors tried to pay school fees directly to the schools, "M" went to the school and told them nobody was allowed to give them money and he needed to be paid cash directly, so then then kids just didn't get any school fees paid and were often chased away from the schools

The front of the house. It keeps looking more and more run down, but inside is actually better than you would expect. In fact, Judith said on the inside it is a really nice house.

Garbage pit in the foreground and way in the back you can see a little dirt mound that used to be the latrine. It wasn't much to start out with and now is nothing.

The fallen fence. It used to be a brick wall, but has been this way for at least 3 years. We almost fixed it two years ago, but then realized it was supposed to be the landlady's job - and led us to discover that "M" hadn't paid the rent in months at that time.

Okay, I think I could at least double the length of the list, but it will just get to be monotonous after a while. We visited Judith, who explained more of what was going on now and took us to visit some of the children. "M" called the police to take Judith away from the home but she explained that she hadn't been paid in year and he was ordered to give her the money in a lump sum, which he did. She used the money to pay for a small space that she now has made a restaurant but also sleeps in a space behind. The walls around her bed surround it so that the only way to enter is by stepping on the bed. All of her clothes and belonging are hanging on hooks and a shelf above it. The outdoor kitchen is actually pretty spacious and she cooks amazing food! (Although it's always way too much to eat, but I try to eat everything on my plate to not be rude - and then I feel sick the rest of the day!)

Very good Ugandan food

So when I try to sum up all of the information that was given to me yesterday (this was after over 5 hours of discussions with Judith and the people that take care of the kids at their current homes) I can summarize most of what I have learned into three categories.

Better:

• Judith has her own business and she is able to make an income for the work she does. (each plate of food is about 3,000 shillings = $1.20)
• The kids don't stay far from Judith and they can come and visit her fairly often
• 5 of the girls stay with a monastery school and they have a real school and they don't have to worry about school fees
• 3 boys stay at the sister home of the monastery and school fees are paid
• 1 girl stays with a female sponsor by herself and does not have to be around "M" to take his abuse
• The nuns and workers at the sisters' home know about "M" and have been working to protect the children from him. He is not supposed to have contact with any of the children by police order
• 2 older boys stay in Rubaga and understand the "M" was using them for money so they refuse to see him and are being taken care of very well at the home they stay at.
• The police have opened a case against "M" with some evidence being gathered and he seems to stay away from some of the kids (more on that later)

Worse:

• 1 of the boys is staying at "M"'s house. He has told Judith that he has to work and do chores all day. If he doesn't, they sometimes don't give him food. "M" is collecting school fees for this boy, but he has not been able to go to school because the fees have not been paid. In my head, this little guy has a modern Cinderella story going on.
• 3 of the older children are staying in "M"'s home village far away from the other kids
• The children miss being in a home together. Although the house wasn't much to look at (and has gotten worse), it was still the place they called home
• "M" took everything that we had given last time and everything the kids had before and either sold or kept them for himself. This included selling the beds for scrap metal, selling the mattress, bedsheets and brand new blankets are nowhere to be found, the kids didn't have any clothes, all their backpacks are gone, and none of them have shoes. He claimed he would bring the things the day after her dropped some of the children at one of the homes and then he never followed through. He even tried to take apart cupboards and shelves that were owned by the landlady and sell them himself.

The Same:

• "M" has been collecting money from sponsors. Some of the younger boys still consider him Uncle "M" and he will drive up in his car on the way home from school and pick them up. He takes their pictures and then distributes them to collect money to support them - which they never see.
• The lawyers and police officers have supposedly been given money by "M". The assumption is he uses at least some of the money he was collecting from sponsors to pay them.
• The young kids still like "M" and call him Uncle or Daddy, which makes me a little sick when I think about the possibility of what he might have been doing to one of the girls
• "M" is still considered a fairly prominent business man and is "a very cunning man", according to Judith, so he gets away with a lot. The only thing that give me a little peace is knowing that he is going to have to answer some day to God about what he has done. I am pretty sure we are called to help the widows and orphans and not to abuse and take advantage of them, but maybe he read that part of the Bible incorrectly?

Fron

Okay, so that's my story for the day as far as I am able to tell. In my head I am still summarizing everything I heard and every time I think about "M", I find myself clenching my teeth and start seeing a lot of red. If I am talking about him I eventually bring myself to shouting at any poor soul that is within earshot, whether it is my mom, friends, or our cab driver, Joseph. I need to know that I can only do what I am able and that I should have faith that God is slowly working and intervening in the situation. The Sister that I talked to yesterday told me that she sometimes sees "M" at Catholic Mass and she has a hard time not confronting him. She also told me she heard one of the boys praying one morning and he said "God, please help the people who are using orphans to get money to know that what they are doing is wrong and make them stop. People just like Uncle "M"" 

As I was walking through the house and remember all the times we had parties are were hanging out with the kids singing songs and laughing, I saw one painting that stood out. I don't know if I have the capacity to do what it says, but I think I will try to forgive "M", but I am pretty sure I won't be able to forget everything that he has done.