A Humbling and Beautiful Moment
Every so often out here you get to partake in a very special day and all you can feel is grateful.
While the peace negotiations were going on, a young girl was handed over by Kony to be brought back to Uganda. This girl, Lynn, was suffering from Cerebral Palsy and after spending time with GUSCO she was sent to live in a orphanage where she could be properly cared for. Since then she has made great improvements and is a very happy little girl constantly smiling. Unfortunately there was little to no information about her family and as a result she lives in the orphanage.
Recently, a young 2 yr old boy came back from captivity. He is an amazingly happy and independent unaccompanied minor who returned before christmas. For the website, I have given him the name Bruce Wayne or Bruce for short because I believe he will be strong and courageous like Batman . Bruce was reunited with a village Chief by GUSCO so that he could be taken to the paternal family as requested in a letter sent by the boy’s father. This was atypical because normally children are reunited with their maternal side. When Bruce was reunited, the Chief mentioned that Bruce had a sister who had returned previously that was staying in a nearby orphanage. As it turned out this sister was Lynn, the girl with Cerebral Palsy. I went to investigate and promised to keep the orphanage updated on progress we made tracing the maternal family.
On Tuesday, with help from EKU, the paternal grandmother was able to go and visit Lynn for the first time ever. Believe it or not, they even resemble eachother! The grandmother knew her child right away and was extremely happy to be reunited with her. The orphanage was really happy because finally they knew at least half the family of Lynn and would be able to make contact with the family and possibly arrange visits.
EKU has been planning to conduct family tracing for the maternal family of Bruce and though we knew the two shared a father we were unsure if they shared the same mother. Half siblings are common in captivity.
As fate would have it, EKU is helping provide medical care to a Child Mother that returned from captivity last year. The Child Mother, suffered a wound while in captivity and this wound recently opened causing her leg to swell and making her unable to walk. Through the medical partnerships that we have developed and with financial assistance from EKU, this Child Mother was able to be admitted to a local hospital and will undergo skin grafting next week to repair the wound. The wound was quite severe and so they have been cleaning it daily in hopes that it would be come clean enough to undergo the operation.
Knowing that she had returned previously and had been rescued from the same place as Bruce, I decided to go and ask her whether she knew Bruce and whether Lynn and him shared the same mother. She knew Bruce and what followed was a difficult if not funny conversation in broken acholi while I tried to describe the girl and cerebral palsy. Nonetheless it worked and it came out that Bruce’s mother was in fact Lynn’s mother! I then called the orphanage and had her talk to the orphanage to ensure my translation had been correct and tomorrow I will have the social worker from the orphanage meet the woman so that we can get all the information she has. This means that when EKU does the maternal family tracing we will be able to reunite not only one child with their family but two!!!