by Jessica Yu
Perhaps he could be considered lucky, in that he had not been abducted for child sacrifice. Every year dozens of children across the country were killed or mutilated by witch doctors who convinced wealthy clients that the body parts of a child could be used to bring wealth, cure impotence, even win an election. “He could have been picked by a kidnapper who changed his mind along the way,” Gladys speculated.
“Do you know if the boy was circumcised?” Mike asked. It was an astute question. Witch doctors insisted that sacrifice victims be unscarred, their flesh pure. Some fearful parents preemptively pierced the ears of their baby daughters to advertise their “impurity,” but a boy’s circumcision might be discovered only after the fact of the kidnapping.
“That might be,” said Gladys. “And then he was considered damaged goods and dumped.”
Whatever the reason, the lost boy had languished in Amahoro, a dingy facility in Kampala that was more holding pen than home, for two years. It was only after the fifth listing in “Lost and Abandoned” that Gladys received a call from the police telling her that Mukisa’s parents had shown up. His father, a policeman in northern Uganda, explained that their son had disappeared from a baby class and that they had been searching for him ever since.
On the heels of this good news came the dismaying discovery that Amahoro had given Mukisa away to an American couple. The outraged parents demanded the return of their child, but the adoption had been executed through the courts. In the eyes of the law, their son now belonged to the American couple. They had missed the chance to reclaim him by two months.
“That Mukisa surely is lucky,” some would say. “He lives in America now.” But Gladys felt sick for the boy who would never know the culture or the family into which he had been born, and for the parents who would feel his loss for the rest of their lives.
The situation of Susan Nabugwere’s three children was different, of course, as their parents were dead. But concern over foreign adoption had settled into Gladys’s stomach. One might soothingly insist that an adopted child belonged to two countries, but the reality was different. When oceans separated old and new homes, the connection quickly frayed. Once broken, where would the tug be stronger? Did anyone really believe that poor Uganda could pull as hard as rich America?
GETTING OUT OF the car at Young Hearts Orphanage, Gladys surveyed the area with cautious approval. The grounds were flat and expansive, with several large red-brick buildings, their green roofs complimenting the stretches of grass below. There were no kids on the battered wooden gym, but a few were climbing on piles of concrete pipe. On one side stood a long new dormitory-like structure lacking only a roof. Young Hearts, it seemed, was a place with some means.
An unfamiliar children’s home presented important questions. Were the children well treated or neglected? Was the management caring or mercenary? The signs were usually obvious, but sometimes they were only scents in the wind.
First she needed to see her kids, these three children of the deceased Susan Nabugwere. They came to her shyly, led by a matron. Alex, the boy, did not meet her gaze, but Annet and Mercy grinned happily in recognition. Gladys greeted each in Luganda with a smile and a touch, then stepped back an admiring distance.
“Eh! They seem good,” she remarked to the matron in English. She petted little Mercy’s head. “This one, she used to look so miserable!”
The children looked a bit bigger and less malnourished, although their stomachs still protruded slightly from their slim frames. They stood together, Alex wearing a pair of pink plastic slippers, the girls barefoot. The older one, Annet, had a runny nose. Mercy plucked at strands of grass with her toes, trying to keep still as the adults chatted away.
Gladys had made little of the siblings’ closeness when she met them. The trio had huddled silently in the corner of the widow’s tiny house while Gladys interviewed the mother, her coughs slapping sharply at the unfinished brick walls. Their clinginess made sense then: they were in a stranger’s home, and their last parent was dying. But one year later they still moved as one, not three.
“So what can you tell me about these children? What is their condition? Are they getting used to the place?”
The matron, a young woman in a frilly blue blouse, carried a cell phone in one hand and a stick in the other. She pointed at the children with the stick. “When they first came, they were not social. They only stayed with each other. Now, after a couple of months, the girls have made some friends here.”
“Ah, they feared to join. Why do you think they were like that?”
“Maybe because they were strangers.”
“Hm. Do you have children?”
A shake of the head.
“Okay. But have you noted that when you move with a child somewhere—I’ll give you a simple example. You take a child to a party. By the time you think of looking for him, he’ll be over there, playing with other children. How come these ones were not mingling with the other children?”
The matron looked puzzled, as though the question had not occurred to her. Gladys prompted: “Could we say that they were still traumatized? By the death of their mother?”
“Maybe it was the death of the parents,” the young woman said, then added brightly, “but right now they think that Pastor Fred is their father. And they are so comfortable with that. And if they see his wife coming, they say, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’”
Alex, glaring, stood to one side, arms folded across his chest, in apparent defiance of this cheerful assessment. Gladys pulled out her notebook, fixing her eyes on the matron. “What’s your name?”
“Wakisa Joan.”
“Wakisa means ‘kind.’ Are you kind? Are you really someone kind?”
The weight of the reporter’s gaze squeezed a nervous laugh out of the young woman, who poked the ground with her stick.
“Are you kind?”
“I am kind!”
The pen hovered. “And your telephone number?”
PERHAPS IN RESPONSE to Gladys’s scrutiny, Wakisa Joan proved solicitous and efficient, leading Gladys, Esther, and Mike to the office and displaying the children’s files in a neat pile on the desk. She appeared relieved when a dark-blue SUV pulled up at the open door.
Pastor Fred emerged from the driver’s side, a knot of keys in one hand and a smartphone in the other. He was large in the way of a man who is not born to be thin, a baobab tree among the acacias. Everything about him was thick and rounded: round belly, cheeks, chin, and jowls, a Ugandan Buddha.
“Call me Freddy,” he informed his visitors.
Unlike many first encounters in Gladys’s daily life, this was one in which the parties shared a hope of cooperation. In the office, Gladys and Freddy seemed physically matched, each providing ballast for her or his side of the office. They exchanged brief pleasantries, Freddy apologizing for his lateness.
It had been a tiring week, he reported. They had just taken in a three-day-old girl who had been dumped into a pit latrine. A young man, hearing crying below, had run from the toilet and summoned the police. “The police got the baby out of the pit and poured water over her to remove the poop,” Freddy recounted. “They didn’t clean her properly. It was drizzling, and they just wrapped her in clothes.”
“What was the condition of the baby at that time?” asked Gladys, scribbling quickly.
“She had the eyes closed, she was not crying, but the maggots were coming out of the ears and the nose.”
Gladys emitted a high-pitched squeal of horror, like air escaping a stomped-on football. Two toddlers standing in the doorway looked up at the noise, one swiveling her head so quickly she almost fell over.
“Big maggots—you could just see them coming. So we cleaned her with disinfectant, bathed her, and gave her a tetanus injection. That night we didn’t have milk, only glucose and water. The whole night she was here, crying.”
“Because she was hungry.”
“She was hungry, and also the maggots were coming out of her ears.”
&nbs
p; “What do you mean! They kept on coming?”
“Yes, the whole night. And out of her nose, falling on her neck. They were irritating her.”
“Oooh!” Gladys covered her eyes with a hand.
They discussed the impending police investigation, and how an article in Gladys’s paper might prompt someone to come forward with information on the child’s abandonment.
“What name have you given the baby?”
“Charity.”
“Charity . . . Why Charity?”
“She has been shown much charity in being retrieved from that pit. God has been so charitable.”
GLADYS WAS EAGER for the briefing on Susan Nabugwere’s children. Were they healthy? Wakisa Joan assured her that they had been declared healthy. They were still catching up in school but were faring well. Alex, now ten, was proving especially bright.
“And plans for these three?” Gladys asked. “As the parents are now dead.”
Freddy thumbed through a file. “What of the old woman—their grandy?”
Gladys explained that Nabukonde, the witch doctor’s widow who had taken in the family, was not actually kin. “These kids don’t have any relatives around.” She paused before adding, “I was told the children think of you as their father. But you don’t keep boys in this home.”
Freddy nodded. The girls could stay; their brother was another matter. He had asked Nabukonde if she could keep Alex, but the old woman declined. “So I said to her, ‘What about if we get somebody who can adopt the boy, take him to America, provide an education? Maybe in the future, you never know, he can come back and help his sisters.’”
Young Hearts was serious about adoption, Freddy maintained. “We are not like other homes.” They had placed three children in America so far. In addition to making regular phone calls, Pastor Fred visited them every year.
“Who pays?” Gladys asked bluntly. “Who pays for those visits to America?”
“I pay!” Freddy responded, then amended: “The home pays. So we monitor them. And we give the children to a Christian family. We don’t just want to give them to people who are drug addicts, who go to disco and dance.”
“So strictly it must be Christian.”
“Yes.”
The picture was coming into focus. Most likely evangelicals abroad were supporting Young Hearts, assisting with funding for things such as the new construction outside. It was the only way a home like this could have such resources.
“Alex is growing up,” Freddy was saying. “In Africa we need to give boys land, we need to see that at least they have some place to be, at least they get a job. With the girls, it’s okay. They can get husbands, they can find somewhere to live.” He leaned forward in his chair and rested his chin on thumb and forefinger, eyes on Gladys. “But what about Alex’s future? I have been waiting on you to tell me your heart.”
“Um . . . what is your . . . how many classes do you have here?” she began, fumbling. She was grateful to this man for taking care of the children, but she was determined to speak firmly. “Your school goes up to P Seven. That’s very good. You can accommodate Alex up to P Seven. Then, God willing, if I’m still alive, we will again discuss. I don’t want to separate this family. They don’t have any relatives. I don’t want someone to keep on telling the girls, ‘You remember your brother? He’s in America. Maybe when you grow up you’ll see him.’ No!” She screwed up her face and spat out the word, as if she had tasted something bitter. “I’m not ready for that. I’m sure by the time he is in P Seven I will have come up with a solution.”
Freddy pursed his lips and nodded, more in resignation than agreement.
“The moment you feel you can’t handle these children, please let me know,” Gladys added appeasingly. “Let me take them and maybe we will get some other place.”
OUTSIDE, GLADYS SNAPPED pictures of baby Charity, saved from the latrine. She was a tiny, still creature whose medicine-encrusted eyes had still not opened. This was worrisome—three days on earth, and no glimpse of the world? Given what this newborn had experienced in her short life, one could not blame her for being afraid to look.
The veranda was crowded with babies. At one point Gladys nearly stepped on a two-year-old who had been abandoned by her prostitute mother. How would that be, to survive such cruel treatment, only to be trampled by a reporter?
From behind the office, Joan emerged, leading Susan Nabugwere’s children to stand for Gladys’s camera. Annet and Mercy clearly enjoyed the special attention. Their cheeks, as round as passionfruits, rose high on their faces. Only their brother still wore his mask of a frown.
“Alex is a bit reserved,” Gladys commented to Freddy. “Why do you think that is so?”
“I don’t know why he’s reserved, but he’s a clean boy. A very clean boy.”
Freddy beckoned the kids to join him in front of his SUV. The girls beamed, safe in the generous shade of their protector. Freddy hoisted Mercy up in one arm and rested the other on Annet’s shoulders.
“Girls, keep looking at me. Yes, please!” Gladys sang. “Alex, get closer.”
The boy remained a half step to the side, chest thrust forward, his slight body flexed like a bow.
“I can’t understand this one,” Gladys mumbled. “He doesn’t have a smile. The girls, they have beautiful smiles. Are you hungry, Alex?”
“He doesn’t know how to smile.” Freddy shrugged.
Gladys quickly scrolled through the pictures she had taken. She still needed a happy one. When her readers responded to a story, it was important to give them the next chapter. Susan Nabugwere’s children’s lives were not perfect, but for the moment they had a safe home here, and that was something worth reporting.
“Now I want to take a nice photo,” she announced.
The boy looked at the camera, his manner less defiant than bemused, as though he did not comprehend the language being spoken. Off to the side, Mike observed the standoff, the boy’s small, hard frown mirrored on his own lean, lined face.
Gladys coaxed, “Please put your arm around your sister. I need your smile.” Mechanically the boy draped an arm around Annet.
“Smile like your sisters, Alex,” prompted Joan. “Cheese!”
“Okay,” Gladys called out, her camera clicking. “This is now the family. Alex, be happy. You are next to the father.”
Alex smiled the grimace of one being blinded by sunlight.
IT WAS GETTING LATE, but Gladys was set on visiting Nabukonde, the witch doctor’s widow in Susan’s hometown of Njeru who had taken in the family. It was not so far away.
“This thing of smiling . . .” Mike began, turning onto the main road. “I understand what that boy is going through. My father died when I was in my thirteenth year.”
“Ee-ehh!”
“I was so injured, it took me a while to really put a smile on my face.”
“Ah,” Gladys said sympathetically.
Alex was injured—that was the correct word for it. Like a patient, he needed time to heal. The precariousness of his situation worried her. What if Freddy decided that the boy could not stay at Young Hearts through P7 after all? She needed to have a plan ready.
Nabukonde was central to that plan. The witch doctor’s widow, now a born-again, had selflessly housed Susan’s family for many months. The children were no longer in her home, but surely she still felt some connection to them. If worse came to worst, perhaps Gladys could shift the three back into Nabukonde’s home and raise money for them to attend a different school.
As they drove, Mike, Gladys, and Esther agreed that Freddy was doing good work at Young Hearts Orphanage, but they questioned his rationale for suggesting that Alex be given to another family.
“You tell me just because of the African way of doing things, a boy has to get someone, a parent, to leave him land?” Gladys snorted. “Who told you Kalibbala’s children got land from their father? Oh my God. Hee-hee-hee!” Her laughter pierced the roof of the car.
“‘The girls
can just get married,’” Mike quoted. He had a college-educated daughter living on her own in England. “That to me was nonsensical.”
“These days men are looking for women who have something,” Esther put in.
“Ee-yeh, women who work!” said Gladys. “What he’s telling us is old theory: ‘Marry a man who is well-off so that you will be well-off.’ No way. It can’t work today.”
Arriving at the town, Gladys, Esther, and Mike walked up the dirt path to Nabukonde’s home, only to find her door locked.
“Perhaps we can call her,” Esther suggested. There were several handwritten phone numbers on the door of the house, but the digits were smeared. Esther and Gladys pulled out their mobiles and guessed at the numbers, their efforts leading only to recorded error messages.
Gladys clucked in disappointment and glanced around. Across the path was a larger brick house with a cluster of five children staring from its doorway. Nearby a skinny calf nipped at the rope tied to its leg.
“How are you people?” Gladys called out. “Where is the lady of this home?”
“She went to the tailor. We don’t know where.”
Mike was looking at his watch. The way back to Kampala was long, and Gladys knew he preferred not to drive long distances when it was dark. But they had come all this way. It wouldn’t hurt to give Nabukonde a few minutes to appear.
Gladys used the time to explain why the old woman deserved special consideration. “As you saw as we were driving, there are many big houses in this area. So I was humbled to find it is only this poor old woman who would give this family accommodation.” She gestured at the tiny, unplastered, loose-brick box of a house. “Nabukonde has only two small rooms in there. They were all sleeping on the floor. She really struggled, you know—it was not easy to feed everyone. I was really humbled.
“Nabukonde even took the trouble to take the mother to hospital, but Susan ran away from there after two days. You know what she told the old woman? ‘I want to stay close to my children. My children don’t know anyone here. I have to keep close to them.’ Within a week she was dead.”