Abandoned-Orphaned

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

The Great Divide

After twelve years of civil war (officially ending last year but with some rebel holdouts), combined with severe drought and disease, Burundi’s deteriorating civil and social infrastructures are leaving hundreds of thousands of orphans without hope in a country of great division.

Burundi has a population of just 7.5 million, yet there are 620,000 orphans. Almost 10% of the population is orphaned! Over half of the population (53%) are children and therefore can’t be considered part of the rescue and care mechanism for these children. What’s more, that means that 18% of the country’s children are orphans!

Can you imagine if almost 1 in 5 children in the US were orphans?

If your child is in a kindergarten or Sunday school class of 25 children, what if 5 of her classmates were parentless?

In Burundi, that wouldn’t be the case, though. Instead of being in school, many of these children are victims of the streets or are exploited as domestic slaves, forced to serve in combat or as young ‘wives’ for soldiers, trafficked to richer nations to become the sexual property of others, or shuffled into the growing industry of child sex tourism.

Deep ethnic schisms further spur this activity. People that normally wouldn’t use or deal in the flesh of children, rationalize that the child of the enemy is less-than-human, a ‘cockroach’ to be abused, bought, sold and disposed of. The children become the smallest victims of the ethnic discrimination and severe poverty that define their world.

And they receive their death sentences from AIDS.

The very poor security situation in Burundi also assists the travesties. Violations against children occur with impunity. Sometimes, those entrusted to care for the children are the perpetuators themselves. They don’t fear ramifications and start to view the children as personal property to be used for their own devices.

Although there are pre-existing laws against child prostitution in Burundi, there are no laws on the books against trafficking in persons. Weak laws and weak enforcement bodies mean that hundreds of thousands of orphans are literally sitting ducks in a country full of people itching to find resources for personal pleasure and gain...especially at the expense of the rival ethnic group.

Burma's Little Soldiers

I made two trips into Burma (Myanmar) last year - one to the capital city, Rangoon (Yangon), the principal site for all the current protests, and another into Shan state, just across the border from Thailand in the Golden Triangle zone.

I saw the children jumping into the river to flee to Thailand. I saw the abandoned and orphaned huffing glue on the border bridge between desperation and hope. While in neighboring Thailand, I also saw the kids that had run away from forced service in the Burmese army. Many were now being raised in one of our homes there, a home specifically set up to care for youngsters that had escaped lives as child soldiers and prostitutes.

Once a wealthy and vivacious country, Burma has suffered deeply over four decades of military rule. It is now extremely depressed and is recognized as one of the least-developed nations in the world.

The Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB) reported last September that:

"As the economic situation in Burma continues to deteriorate, the burden on children intensifies. They are put to work begging on the streets, in teashops and other business establishments, and forced into working in economic grey areas (prostitution, drug trafficking/smuggling, domestic servitude, etc.). They are exposed to severe physical and psychological trauma."

And then there are the child soldiers...

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports:

"Throughout Burma (Myanmar), children as young as eleven are being forcibly recruited into Burma's national army, the largest user of child soldiers in the world. Without their parents' knowledge or consent, they are sent to military training camps where they are routinely beaten, and brutally punished if they try to escape. Once deployed, they may be forced to fight and carry out human rights abuses against civilians, including other children."

HRW has estimated that 70,000 or more of Burma’s 350,000 soldiers are children.

Judit Arenas, spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers, recently told CNN:

"While some children are recruited voluntarily for Myanmar's armed forces, others, especially orphans and street children, are vulnerable to what is called ‘forced recruitment.’ Under this scheme, local authorities in Myanmar are required to provide the government with a certain quota of recruits and are fined if they fail. A lot of these children are street children. They won't stand up and complain"

As you watch the events in Burma continue to unfold, please remember these children, children who are now forced to point guns at protestors that seek freedom for their country.

World Orphans Weekly! - Child Soldiers

Dear Friend of the Fatherless,

I have just returned from ten days in Africa. It appears that our accounts of a former child soldier in northern Uganda have received a tremendous amount of online traffic. Thousands of people have been checking in to read them.

You can see what the fuss is all about by using the links below:

A CHILD SOLDIER’S STORY...

Abduction and Programming – Four years of terror is about to begin.

Brutal Acts - "Anybody you want, you may have. Cut or kill the rest."

Catch and Release – Child soldiers risk it all to see sex slaves escape.

Children killing Children – Three year-olds falling at the hands of a ten year-old?

From Captivity to Captivity – Sometimes capture means freedom.

Redemption and Testing – Forgiveness and a cruel twist?

Last Acts and New Beginnings – From making coffins, to preventing them.

OTHER REFLECTIONS FROM AFRICA...

Lifeblood – Blood is spilt here. Blood is infected here.

Outside the Gates – Potent words from a missionary family’s deceased daughter.

Ethiopia Calling – Five million orphans. Five million active church members. A good combination?

Ethiopia Answers? – They used to be somebody’s pride and joy. Now they are beaten and bruised.

Aversion – When is a good time to jump into oncoming traffic?

Tears into Smiles – The HIV prognosis for many orphans is bad. But a simple gift warms their hearts.

Thank you for your heart for these precious children!

Please forward this to those who share your passion for ‘the least of these.’

Until They All Have Homes,
Paul

A Child Soldier’s Story (Last Acts and New Beginnings)

Jeffrey was in the depths of despair. He couldn’t spend another four years or more raping and killing. He couldn’t orphan any more children. He knew that he would have to die instead.

But...

...On the third day he rose again.

Freedom amazingly came just three days later as government troops encountered the militia and quickly routed them. This particular LRA group wasn’t aware of Jeffrey’s past abduction and service. They had therefore pressed him into carrying bulky supplies instead of a weapon. The Ugandan forces, knowing that this forced labor was part of the early indoctrination process, emancipated the young slaves.

Jeffrey enjoyed carpentry, but he now knew that God wanted him to directly engage this evil head on. His second capture was the reality check, the wake-up call, he needed. He could no longer ignore those who were suffering so greatly around him. He enlisted in the Ugandan army to apply his LRA knowledge and training for good, for God.

After all, carpentry meant making coffins. Military service meant preventing them.

Now, ten years later, Jeffrey has completed his service to the country and is employed as a private security officer. In that role he has prevented would-be thieves and trouble-makers from encroaching onto the property of a missionary family in southern Uganda.

Jeffrey lives in a slum, but knows that he is blessed beyond measure. Material things are of little or no consequence any more. He is happily married with two young children – a boy and girl. He is building a family instead of ripping families apart. He is fathering children instead of orphaning them.

(HOME SWEET HOME. Jeffrey and his wife in their small slum abode)

Jeffrey’s devotion to the Lord is great and he is actively involved in his local church. He knows that he is a new creation and that God has forgiven him of his past acts of horror...as a child and against the child.

It took ten years for Jeffrey to tell this story, partly out of fear of retribution and partly out of a desire to keep it bottled up and silenced. Even here, many details have been intentionally left out. One can only take so much grief and gore.

But there are many stories like this, stories that need to be told. Only by exposing the truth can we truly understand and confront the evil.

(Images: Children living in Jeffrey's slum community)

This concludes the Child Soldier series

A Child Soldier's Story (Redemption and Testing)

Quite unexpectedly, Jeffrey was released from prison in Kampala after just three months. Three months in exchange for four years of terror.

While he was serving his sentence, Jeffrey told the establishment what he knew: that support and weapons were flowing in from Sudan; that Kony had a tight grip on thousands of children serving in LRA militias as soldiers or slaves.

Encouraged by Jeffrey’s cooperation, the Ugandan authorities tried to recruit him into the national army. Jeffrey’s constant reply was that he simply wanted to go to school to learn to be a carpenter. Perhaps his continued rejection of military service helped to convince his jailers that he had no further thirst for blood.

Although his family was dead, Jeffrey headed back to the only home he ever knew, Gulu. There, he kept encountering missionaries and evangelists who had flooded into the region to provide love, assistance and counsel. Jeffrey initially rebuffed their advances, but God kept tugging at his deeply-broken heart.

When Jeffrey became a believer, he stayed in Gulu to continue to learn the same trade as his Savior. Now blades were used to shape and create, not tear down and destroy. As Jeffrey worked the wood, he must have looked at those tools in his hands and thought of the weapons he used to hold...and thought of how much he had been forgiven.

One evening, Jeffrey entered into the village of his upbringing, the place where his father, mother and brother were all murdered on separate occasions by LRA troops.

He heard the rustling in the bushes but had no time to react. Besides, he no longer had a weapon to defend himself. As the LRA rebels flooded into the village again, he prepared himself for what was to come.

Jeffrey was once again a captive of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

To be continued...

A Child Soldier's Story (From Captivity to Captivity)

"Jeffrey, your mother has been killed."

"Jeffrey, your father has been killed."

"Jeffrey, your brother has been killed."

Over time, Jeffrey's family in the village was exterminated, person by person, by other squads of LRA rebels. When the last of them, his brother, was slaughtered, he asked his commanders if he could go into the village to see his body. He was escorted there and, upon seeing his younger sibling’s corpse, he fell to ground and exclaimed:

"My home is empty. There is nobody left."

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"I might as well be dead also."

"I am alone in this world. I am an orphan."

Jeffrey knew that he now had nothing to lose by attempting escape. If he died during the flight, it would mean that other lives would be saved, that no more people would have to die by his own hands. He no longer had a family to preserve. He no longer was held captive by the threat of their execution.

He started to plan his breakout.

His chance swiftly came.

During a particularly bitter gunfight with government troops, Jeffrey laid low in the bush and held his fire. He tried to preserve all his ammunition just in case he would have to fight his way out. At some point, he determined that the government forces were getting the upper hand in the battle.

As Jeffrey watched his abducted brethren and their commanders get annihilated, he positioned himself for surrender. After most in his attack group had died, he threw his arms into the air, right in the vicinity of Ugandan soldiers. He knew it was still a great risk. It was just as likely that they would gun him down anyway. But it was certainly a better option than running through the bush with two sets of guns trained at his back.

(SMOKE RISING. Scenes like this represented whole villages aflame in northern Uganda)

Many of these boys are viewed by Uganda as victims. Everybody knows that they were forced to fight under great pressure and after much conditioning to warp their minds, to pervert their sense of right and wrong. However, most of the population also knows that these children can rarely be adequately rehabilitated. They have been turned into killing machines. They have extinguished lives not just from afar, but as bound, naked captives stood right before them trembling, shaking. Such scars last a lifetime. Such scars may never heal.

(SIGN OF THE TIMES. Conflict infects and affects children)

Our Gulu missionary friends say that many of these boys and young men who have escaped from the LRA still end up committing the same wicked deeds. For years, all that these children knew were venomous acts - raping, killing, maiming, pillaging. They were socialized into a cult of destruction and hatred where everyday tasks of butchery became the norm.

Jeffrey’s arms were now in a position of supplication as he completely relinquished his fate to the unknown. It could go either way. He could be killed in cold blood, one less boy to try to punish and emancipate from evil conditioning, one less boy to continue to torment villages. Or he could be incarcerated for a long, long time.

From captivity to captivity, Jeffrey was taken prisoner.

A cold gun and a full cartridge probably saved his life.

(CHAIN GANG. Prisoners work by the street in southern Uganda)

To be continued...

A Child Soldier's Story (Children killing Children)

The death toll in the villages knew no age limitations. The child victims could easily be "two, three, four years old," according to Jeffrey. Jeffrey’s troop included child soldiers as young as ten, but missionaries I spent time with here this week, who serve in Gulu, say that they’ve frequently encountered six and seven year-olds that were forced to kill. It’s not uncommon for them to be told by an eight year-old boy that he has already taken a life.

Children killing children. What evil compels men to force such things?

The same evil that hates all of creation. The same evil that desires to leave a broad wake of orphans and widows as it furiously plows through Africa.

To be continued...

A Child Soldier's Story (Catch and Release)

WARNING: The following account is descriptive and unsettling.

Jeffrey's personal tally after four years of imposed service as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army includes six villagers hacked or beaten to death, "hundreds" of people maimed, and "many, many" Ugandan soldiers killed.

He only admits to taking two ‘wives,’ but there were probably many more village girls that were violated over the years.

Young girls were also brought back to Joseph Kony so he could pick from among them and viciously rape "two or three at a time." Jeffrey explained that, often, the older girls would escape into the bush when they attacked a village. Only the youngest remained to be immediately molested, forced upon by the fighters, or taken into captivity to continually meet the ongoing sexual demands of the troops. The most innocent, the ‘little ones,’ became those who suffered the worst abuse and defilement, perhaps while in a state of shock from seeing their parents or friends fall under the unforgiving blows of a machete.

(EVIL AGGRESSION. A poster in a third grade classroom at one of our Ugandan children's homes warns against child abduction and rape)

Many of the soldiers didn’t want to keep these young girls in bondage. Jeffrey shared that on a couple of occasions he took a girl with him to fetch water and, upon arriving at the water source, told her to run and never look back. Allowing a slave to escape meant that he would have to spend a month in solitary confinement under harsh conditions. It was a worthy sacrifice to him. He imagined his own sister having to be subject to such relentlessly cruel treatment. He hoped that, if she were in similar circumstances, somebody would do the same for her.

To be continued...

A Child Soldier's Story (Brutal Acts)

WARNING: The following account is very descriptive and unsettling.

Kony’s armies of terror bore down hard on villages in northern Uganda with a malevolence that defies understanding. The only explanation is that these men, driven by hatred against God’s creation, who raped the orphan and the widow, who forced boys to conduct horrendous acts against their own people, must be possessed by demons. Kony, himself, makes it clear that he is subject to demonic authority.

Jeffrey's hands were now visibly trembling. He described to me how, after sweeping into a village, Kony’s soldiers ripped off the clothing of all the villagers, both men and women alike. The rags were thrown into a fire to be incinerated. Some people also felt the lick of the flames.

Already in a state of fright and humiliation, the real terror began.

Pre-pubescent girls were selected as ‘wives,’ many as young as eight or ten years old. The LRA commanders told the fighters, "Anybody you want, you may have. Cut or kill the rest." The young soldiers had to molest and rape, otherwise they would be "cut" themselves. No girl was too young to be debased and spoiled. And sometimes even old women were violently raped. It was sport. It was intentional degradation of both the lowly and the revered, the young innocent and the esteemed elder.

(TRAIL OF TEARS. A young Ugandan girl gets an HIV test. Many like her have been raped repeatedly)

The horrific mutilations of these villagers are now widely reported. They have been the subject of numerous press articles and books. To hear it from the mouth of one who was forced to perpetrate such acts, though, gave me cold pause. It added a new dimension of realization and repulsion. The hands quivering before me were the same hands that lacerated these lives and dreams.

Kony’s LRA troops caused male abductees to kill parents and peers. Girls were stolen for sexual bondage. Those left alive in the village were viciously scarred for life. The marauding young soldiers had to cut off limbs, ears, lips or noses. They had to gouge out eyes. They had to castrate. In short, they had to amputate or slash something, anything. If they failed to do so, they would be carved up themselves.

Women’s breasts were cut off so that they couldn’t feed their children. Men were maimed so that they couldn’t provide for their families.

And, in an ultimate act of indignity and barbarism, women were forced to lie down, be violated, and have their genitals deeply pierced to force large padlocks through holes that clamped the whole groin region shut. These locks could only be removed by deeply cutting into the same flesh that they desecrated. They would be sadistically inserted as the seed of their rapists still defiled their bodies...and as the fruit of their wombs were killed, abducted to kill, or carted off as sex slaves.

Victims were disfigured to become unattractive to potential mates and to serve as a reminder of the terror lurking in the bush. Kony wanted to stamp out the next generation while keeping the current generation in a constant state of fear. He relished in embarrassing the Ugandan government with living reminders of its ineffectiveness, living reminders of his control and carnage.

The other living reminders?

Thousands of orphans. Thousands of abducted children who, to this day, are still serving Kony.

To be continued...