Latest news with #orphanage
SBS Australia
a day ago
- General
- SBS Australia
I survived 10 years alone in an Australian rainforest. I didn't want to be found
What happens when someone vanishes and what questions do they leave behind? Insight explores why some might choose to go missing, while also asking what it's like for those left wondering — families, friends, police. Watch Insight episode Gone Missing on SBS On Demand . There were a series of unfortunate events that led to me living on a lava rock in a rainforest when I was a middle-aged man. Even before I'd formed my first memories, I'd already developed an innate awareness around my own safety. My father was the most dangerous person in my life. When I was 10 years old in 1965, my mother took me and four of my siblings to visit our aunty. Where we actually ended up that day was an orphanage. It was a cruel trick; one that led me to mistrust the world , and everyone in it, from that point on. I hated society, and from what I could tell, society hated me. Acting out and contempt for the world saw me in and out of juvenile detention centres until I was 19 years old. Then, that was that. I was apparently fit to be released into society. Having spent most of my life locked up until then, I knew very little about the world I'd just been let loose in. I couldn't read or write that well; a combination of lack of skills and an unsavoury attitude meant that I was great for the labouring jobs nobody else wanted. I also had developed an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and drugs. Anything to kill the pain. Anything to forget. There is a lot more to my story, but I was mostly homeless throughout my 20s, and all my 30s and 40s. Making a home of the rainforest When I finally wandered into the Goonengerry National Park near Mullumbimby, northern NSW at age 35, something struck me. For the first time, I felt at peace. Not knowing what home felt like, I questioned if this was it. I decided to stay the night, then another. Before I knew it, I was working out how to live in a rainforest. Gregory aged 25, a decade before he entered the rainforest. Source: Supplied I made my camp on a lava rock where I always kept a roaring fire; I did not have shelter nor swag, and I slept on ferns. "What did you eat up there?" is a question I've often been asked. The answer: anything I could catch. I ate bats that I shot from trees with slingshots fashioned from a T-shirt. I ate worms. Food was scarce. 'Those aliens were real to me' Finally, after eating all the critters around my camp, it had become apparent that if I wanted to stay on the mountain, I needed to find something to trade with the townsfolk nearby. I grew a small crop of marijuana, made wood carvings and collected the skins of lizards and snakes. It was a three-day walk from the mountain to the closest town. I only ventured near people when I absolutely had to. Sometimes it would be six months between trips. People were quite aware that there was a highly questionable, wild-looking man living somewhere up in the mountain. Nobody found my camp. On the trips to town, I'd also buy tea, tobacco, rolling papers, powdered milk, rice and other basics. But over time, general malnutrition and the ravaging effects of drugs and alcohol had taken their toll. Gregory during the decade he spent living in the rainforest. Source: Supplied By the end of 1999, I was 42kg and dying. I became resigned to the idea of dying on that mountain until one evening, a couple of thin white aliens joined me by my campfire. They convinced me to leave my mountain home. The idea that I debated my next move with a couple of aliens is usually met with mixed reactions from others. In simple terms — actual or a figment of my mind — those aliens were real to me. I owe them my life. Returning to society By the time I decided to return, I had not seen my family in more than 10 years. Apparently, I was considered missing. After removing all traces of my existence from the mountain, I left the forest at age 45. On the day I left, I was hit by a car. This was possibly a blessing as I entered the hospital system — albeit as an unidentified middle-aged man who didn't know who he was. I was treated for my illnesses, and I slowly began to remember. A few months later, I experienced an epiphany that made me turn away from drugs and alcohol. Now with a clear mind and a new attitude to life, was it possible that society might let me back in? Something very special happened over the next few years. I had decided that if I was going to live in society, I'd need to learn the rules. So began my education journey. I went to TAFE, where I learned foundational skills needed for further training. At 48, I decided to study sociology at university in Queensland. Becoming an academic I studied in my makeshift camp in the sand dunes of Surfers Paradise. Many of my essay drafts were handwritten on the beach by candlelight. Halfway through my undergrad degree, I moved to Coffs Harbour. It was my first time renting a place since my late 20s. I finished my degree with first class honours and went on to my PhD — becoming Dr Gregory P. Smith and an academic lecturer in 2016. I had found somewhere to belong with people who understood. Through education and writing about my time at the orphanage, I found my tribe. I had found somewhere to belong with people who understood what these large and enduring emotions all were about. I'd since learned that upwards of 500,000 children, like me, were placed in out-of-home care, particularly during the period between 1920 and 1970. This group is now known as the Forgotten Australians. In the past decade, I've received a lot of media attention about my rough entry into education. A documentary about my life caught the interest of a lifestyle magazine in 2019. I became best friends and then romantic partners with the journalist, Catherine, who had been sent to write my story. I moved in with her and her two young sons the next year, and in 2022, we welcomed our son William — completing our little blended family. 'It was not my fault' It's been 26 years since I left my forest home, and I have had lots of time to consider what it all meant. It was in the forest that I learned to see my parents, not as my tormentors, but as people who knew no better due to their own traumatic childhoods. I learned to forgive them and see them from a different perspective. I also learned not to hate myself for the things that had happened to me; it was not my fault. But the most valuable thing that the forest taught me was that I was now responsible for making the necessary changes to myself for a better tomorrow. It wasn't by magic or science; it was simply by doing what needed to be done each day. Gregory and his partner Catherine Player have been together since 2019. Source: Supplied Now, as a 70-year-old man with arthritis in most joints, it all feels like a blur. I have written two books about my life and survival, and I've received an Order of Australia medal for my charity work in the homelessness sector. I am still filled with energy and continue to thrive on all the work I do as co-leader of my family, senior lecturer at Southern Cross University, co-chair of The End Street Sleeping Collaboration and in the homelessness sector at large — generally as an adviser to government bodies and non-government organisations. This month, Catherine and I have just registered a charity, Home Address Australia Ltd, which seeks to professionalise the voice of lived experience in the homelessness sector. Ultimately, if our work can save just one person from the shame and pain that I felt as a person experiencing homelessness, my discomfort in asking for help will all be worth it. To report a missing person, visit If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 000. If you or someone you know is experiencing family violence, phone 1800 RESPECT. For counselling, advice and support for men who have anger, relationship or parenting issues, call the Men's Referral Service on 1300 766 491. For addiction support, contact National Alcohol & Other Drug Hotline (1800 250 015). For crisis and mental health support, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), SANE Australia (1800 187 263) or 13Yarn (139 276), a 24/7 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders crisis support line.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Why Evangelicals Turned Their Back on PEPFAR
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. I n 2006, Ambassador Mark Dybul, then the United States global AIDS coordinator, visited an orphanage run by the Daughters of Charity in Ethiopia. It was a sanctuary for more than 400 HIV-positive babies and young children found in garbage heaps, abandoned on the roadside, or left at the orphanage door. As Dybul and Michael Gerson, then a senior policy adviser to President George W. Bush, walked through the massive campus, they came to the dining hall, where they saw a mural of Jesus surrounded by a group of children. The sisters told them that the mural featured portraits of children who had died of HIV at the orphanage, and that the children came there to talk to and play with their friends on the wall. The epidemic was hardly confined to Ethiopia. It was ravaging sub-Saharan Africa. Two-thirds of the 40 million people in the world infected with HIV lived in that region. More than 12 million children had been orphaned by AIDS. 'We really are in a national crisis,' the president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, said in 2000. 'We are threatened with extinction. People are dying in chillingly high numbers. We are losing the best of young people. It is a crisis of the first magnitude.' In parts of Botswana, 75 percent of pregnant women had HIV. Most diseases kill the very old and the very young, 'but this disease was killing the most productive and reproductive parts of society,' Dybul recalled in 2018. 'So not only were many households run by orphans, but entire villages were run by orphans, because everyone else was dead.' Then came PEPFAR. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, first authorized by Bush in 2003, was the largest commitment made by any nation to address a single disease. It was, the president said, 'a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa.' PEPFAR, which received strong bipartisan support, is credited with saving 26 million lives and enabling almost 8 million babies to be born without HIV. It transformed the landscape of the HIV epidemic and helped stabilize the African continent. Not only is PEPFAR the single most successful policy to date in U.S.-Africa relations; it is ' also one of the most successful foreign policy programs in U.S. history,' as Belinda Archibong, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote last year. During his 2006 trip to Ethiopia, Dybul visited a rural village near Axum. 'At dawn, with the mist over the town, it looked as it might have centuries ago,' Dybul told me. 'Local farmers winding through the streets with donkey-drawn wagons, the spires of the churches peeking through the haze, bells ringing to call all to prayers and the market. At a visit to the local clinic, the director—who was also a town elder and leader in the community—kept referring to PEPFAR. I asked him what PEPFAR means. His answer knocked me over. 'PEPFAR means the American people care about us.'' John Robert Engole arrived at a clinic run by Reach Out Mbuya, a faith-based NGO, in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda, in 2004. He was very weak, having contracted severe tuberculosis, and his immune system was collapsing. He was suffering from late-stage HIV. But as Esther Nakkazi wrote in Harvard Public Health, Engole became the first person treated as a result of PEPFAR. 'The dying stopped after PEPFAR,' Margrethe Juncker, a Danish doctor who cared for urban slum dwellers living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda and who treated Engole, told Nakkazi. She called the program a 'miracle.' Then came Donald Trump. On the first day of his second term, Trump issued Executive Order 14169, calling for a 90-day pause on all foreign-development and assistance programs pending further review. A subsequent stop-work order froze payments and work already under way, hobbling programs worldwide. The administration dissolved USAID, the main U.S. organization that provides humanitarian aid and the primary implementing agency for PEPFAR. The stop-work order initially froze all PEPFAR programming and services, halting work in the field, including the provision of antiretroviral therapy. And although PEPFAR—which accounts for 0.08 percent of the federal budget and has been consistently judged to be a highly effective and accountable program—received a limited waiver in February allowing it to continue 'life-saving HIV services,' the actual implementation of that waiver has been delayed, fragmented, and chaotic. Supply chains have been disrupted; so have diagnostic and treatment services. There have been mass layoffs of staff. Clinics have been shut down. 'The result was unprecedented operational chaos, funding lapses, the collapse of implementation partnerships, and, in many cases, clinic closures,' according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Those on the ground report widespread disruption of HIV services and devastating consequences for PEPFAR beneficiaries; the infrastructure that took years to build has been decimated. That will remain true even if the Trump administration were to reactivate PEPFAR tomorrow. More than 75,000 adults and children are now estimated to have died because of the effective shutdown of PEPFAR that began less than six months ago. Another adult life is being lost every three minutes; a child dies every 31 minutes. Ending PEPFAR could result in as many as 11 million additional new HIV infections and nearly 3 million additional AIDS-related deaths by the end of the decade. O nce PEPFAR was announced, a number of evangelical groups and individuals played an important role in supporting it. They understood their faith to call them to care for the sick and the poor, to advocate for the oppressed, and to demonstrate their commitment to the sanctity of life. But as this human catastrophe unfolds, few American evangelical pastors, churches, denominations, or para-church organizations have spoken out against the destruction of PEPFAR. Nor, from what I can tell, do they seem inclined to do so. Why have so many evangelicals remained silent? Is it mostly explained by ignorance or indifference? Compassion fatigue? Or perhaps fealty to Trump? Is the silence among ministers explained by fear of upsetting congregants? A desire to keep their ministry separate from politics? Other ministry commitments? I put these questions to more than two dozen individuals, mostly pastors, past and present, some of whom were willing to speak on the record and others who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. The story they tell is a complicated one. [Peter Wehner: The evangelical church is breaking apart] Several said that most Christians, and most pastors, simply aren't aware of PEPFAR. 'It's done extraordinary good, and yet it's virtually invisible to most,' James Forsyth, of Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, told me. 'That's a huge part of the problem. Think about walking along the pew in the average congregation, or down the street in the average town: My bet is that the vast majority of people couldn't tell you what PEPFAR is, what it's achieved, that it's under threat, or why that matters.' Chris Davis, of Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and a strong supporter of PEPFAR, told me that for many, the issue seems distant. 'Very few evangelicals have walked down Coffin Row in Malawi or know anyone who has,' he said. (Prior to PEPFAR, so many carpenters switched to making coffins in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, that their workshops along Kenyatta Drive acquired a new, macabre name.) 'So it can be much more theoretical than personal when this is not addressing an issue that your friend, neighbor, or even extended family member is facing, like, cancer or type 2 diabetes.' A lot of churches really are caring for 'the least of these,' to use a phrase from Jesus, and braiding their faith with a social conscience. But they do so on issues other than PEPFAR. Scott Dudley, of Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington, believes the destruction of PEPFAR is a tragedy, but his church is preoccupied with other unfolding changes. 'The main reason we haven't addressed PEPFAR,' he told me, 'is because we are more involved with issues around refugees, asylum seekers, and immigration. Our partners in this are Christian nonprofits who lost huge amounts of money in the cuts to USAID.' Congregants, he said, risk being overwhelmed and exhausted, and so he encourages them to focus on the arenas in which they are already most involved. Another person who was involved in church ministry put it to me this way: 'We are finite creatures, each called to particular causes. The Church should respond to injustice, but it can't respond to every injustice all the time.' Some ministers, instead, cited an aversion to becoming involved in politics, especially politics that might roil a congregation. Many Christians believe that church is meant for worship, not for guidance on policy, even on pressing humanitarian issues. One person told me that the pastor's responsibility is 'to preach the word in season and out and pray that his people grow in Christ enough to change the world in their spheres of influence. On extremely rare occasions—i.e., declaring war on another country—it might be right to preach from the pulpit about an overtly political cause. But in general I think it will only polarize and fragment the church further.' A principled aversion to politicizing the pulpit was sometimes difficult to distinguish from a very human fear of speaking out on issues that might trigger an angry response from Trump supporters in the pews. Even pastors whose moral conscience might make them inclined to speak out against the decimation of PEPFAR think twice about doing so, because they don't want to become the target of attacks by members of their own congregation. One conservative-leaning pastor confided to me, 'Sometimes I wish I weren't a pastor so I could speak up more loudly and more clearly.' A pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America—a conservative denomination—put it to me this way: 'There are pastors who act like gatekeepers and spend an inordinate amount of time publicly shaming those whom they politically disagree with on social media, putting pressure on them to respond or even call for resignations.' He worried that the attacks would distract him from his responsibilities to his local congregation. 'I wonder what public statements would even accomplish in such a polarized environment, other than to bring grief on my family and church,' he said. He's hardly alone. 'Any pastor who has ever ventured to speak out on a controversial 'political' issue, whether it's a moral issue or not, knows that he will get tremendous, angry feedback from some of his people,' a man who had pastored an influential evangelical church in Northern Virginia told me. 'This causes him to hesitate. He wonders if addressing this issue to his little flock will really be helpful to anyone.' (This individual told me that if he were still pastoring his church, he hopes he would speak out, even if he would do so reluctantly, because 'a pastor must also warn his sheep of the dangers around them.') Some people in the Christian relief and development community are remaining silent because the administration has proved both capricious and volatile. They still hope to change its course, but fear that public criticism could lead it to dig in. Others pointed to the deep distrust of government that runs through many conservative churches. Since the evangelical move into right-wing politics in the late 1970s, one pastor told me, evangelicals have held as axiomatic the words of Ronald Reagan in his 1981 inaugural address: 'Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.' His church supports medical missionaries and nonprofits that work on health issues overseas, but that doesn't necessarily translate to support for PEPFAR. 'There is a general suspicion of government programs and an assumption that anything run by the government is characterized by inefficiencies and graft,' he told me. 'So the slashing of governmental programs rarely causes an outcry among evangelicals.' A person who was once involved in ministry described the mindset this way: 'The government shouldn't be doing this. Even if PEPFAR is a great program and saves millions of lives, it's not the role of the U.S. government to spend the money obtained from the forcible confiscation of citizens' property for the benefit of non-Americans. Reduce taxes, highlight the issue, and encourage Americans to set up and charitably give to NGOs that perform the same function.' A minister in a church in Memphis told me it's important to 'recall that most evangelicals also originally viewed the HIV/AIDS issue as a result of sexual promiscuity, and gay promiscuity especially. So I suspect too many of them regard the HIV/AIDS crisis as a self-inflicted contagion. I can imagine the moralists saying, 'They brought this on themselves. It's God's judgment on them for their sexual sin. And they shouldn't expect me to pay for their meds.'' Some of the opposition has very different roots. Tim Dearborn helped lead World Vision—an interdenominational Christian humanitarian aid, development, and advocacy organization—during the years PEPFAR was introduced. World Vision, along with the National Association of Evangelicals, Samaritan's Purse, a handful of other Christian groups, the rock star Bono, who in 2004 co-founded the ONE Campaign, an advocacy organization focused on fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases, particularly in Africa, and the preacher Rick Warren and his wife Kay, co-founders of Saddleback Church, worked tirelessly to convince evangelicals that AIDS was an issue about which they should care. But World Vision also encountered pushback. 'The judgment that it was either a gay disease or the result of extramarital promiscuity fed evangelicals' resistance and disinterest,' Dearborn told me. Despite its efforts to focus evangelicals on saving millions in Africa from dying of AIDS, World Vision had difficulty making inroads. 'It's never been a priority, even though women and children are often innocent victims who suffer and die from the disease,' he said. Ken Casey worked at World Vision for more than 20 years. From 2001 to 2007, he led its global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He pointed to more theological explanations. 'Evangelicals tend to prioritize getting people to make a (one-time) decision to have faith in Jesus without giving sufficient attention to following Jesus' commands to love God and our neighbors,' he told me in an email. So there are plenty of explanations for why evangelicals have not spoken out against what is happening to PEPFAR, some of them far more understandable than others. But it's still hard to ignore this fact: White evangelicals voted in overwhelming numbers to put into office a president who has, for now, decimated a program that qualifies as among the greatest health interventions in the history of medicine and one of the most humanitarian acts in the history of America. Millions may die as a result. And a religious movement that proudly advertises itself as pro-life, and which over the years has taken public stands on issues including abortion, same-sex marriage, pornography, critical race theory, the role of women in combat, school curriculum, and sports betting and gambling in all forms, has, with rare exceptions, said nothing about it. A pastor of a conservative evangelical church told me he's grieved by this. 'I got exhausted by the sympathetic inaction,' he told me. 'If a Democratic administration were doing this—callously, illegally and completely unnecessarily destroying a cause prayed for, advocated for, designed by and in many cases carried out by evangelical believers—I struggle to believe that the response would be any less immediate and strident than if they were to mandate states to permit abortion.' He added, 'The gleeful destruction of USAID and careless discarding of lives, and the associated lies, are such obvious crossings of red lines, such blatant violations of a basic Christian posture in the world, that acting as though they are politics as usual actively deceives and disempowers our people, and we will have to deal with the cost of inaction as the projections become historical fact.' Mark Labberton, the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has found in his work that many white pastors around the country see far fewer red lines in this moment than do pastors serving communities of color. 'White churches and congregations seem tone-deaf to the raw pain and suffering so many are experiencing,' he told me. 'When the social location of our gospel allows us to not see, to not hear, or to not care for vulnerable people, we fail the way of Jesus.' What gospel, he asked, are we prepared to live? When Labberton became a Christian in the 1970s, he realized that his new faith wasn't meant to be merely an add-on to his life, but instead, a faith that should reframe everything. That vision—in which hearts of flesh would replace hearts of stone, in the words of Ezekiel—seems at odds with the reaction of the evangelical world to the end of PEPFAR. That PEPFAR should appeal to pro-life Christians feels like an obvious truth to those who know what it has accomplished. The award-winning Christian singer-songwriter Amy Grant performed last month along with fellow evangelical musicians at a church in Brentwood, Tennessee, to raise awareness of and support for PEPFAR. 'I look at the conservative faith community and the word pro-life is said many times, and I go, 'Whoa, there's not much more of a pro-life effort than combatting HIV/AIDS worldwide,'' Grant said. She was joined by Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today. 'PEPFAR should be an easy call for evangelical Christians,' Moore told me. 'It affirms human dignity and the sanctity of life in ways easily within the reach and responsibility of our country. It is hard to know whether the glee for destroying one of the most effective and successful moral reforms American evangelicals have ever supported is more sadism, cruelty for cruelty's sake, or masochism.' President Bush, himself a Christian and self-described 'compassionate conservative' who in 2003 explained that the moral foundation for PEPFAR was the belief that 'everybody has worth, everybody matters, everybody was created by the Almighty,' put it this way a few days ago in a video praising the outgoing staff of USAID: 'Is it in our interest that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is.' 'My longing is that my fellow evangelicals would sit down with the sheer, disproportionate statistics of the closing of PEPFAR,' Chris Davis of Groveton Baptist told me. 'The cost is a minuscule sliver of federal spending that has saved more than 25 million lives to date. The lives that could be lost by shuttering the program exceeds the amount of lives lost to abortion each year in our country. If we could end abortion deaths in America for 0.08 percent of the federal budget, evangelicals would support it in a heartbeat.' Davis is grieved by the sheer cruelty of abandoning PEPFAR. 'It does almost nothing to address our national debt, it does nothing to transfer these lifesaving programs to other funding sources, and costs a potential of millions of lives per year,' he said. 'To what end? For what great cause? This is the exact disregard for human life that animates our anger against abortion. So why are we not furious at this catastrophic loss of life?' Answering that piercing question requires understanding the cultural politics that have shaped American evangelicalism over the past half century. There is a 'cultural lens that people have that sits atop evangelical theology,' Michael Keller, a pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, told me. It's not the theology that explains the silence on PEPFAR; it's 'the cultural lens we're using to parse how we engage,' according to Keller. The problem is that in too many cases, that cultural lens has very little to do with the priorities of Jesus. People who have become 'culture warriors' in the name of Jesus often validate their cultural politics by proof-texting the Bible. But proof-texting the Bible can lead to some very bad places, as we've seen throughout Christian history, when verses from the Bible were used to justify everything from genocide to wars, from anti-Semitism to slavery and segregation, from geo-centrism to attacks on evolution. In Luke 4, we're told that Satan used the Bible—Psalm 91—to tempt Jesus, in what is surely the most prominent of the great proof-texting wars. In 2014, World Vision announced that it was willing to hire Christians in same-sex marriages in the United States. The reaction was instantaneous, overwhelming, and ferocious. Prominent evangelicals and organizations denounced the Christian humanitarian organization for deviating from traditional Christian values. The charity lost more than 3,000 sponsors for needy children. Evangelical groups across the country called for a boycott. Prominent evangelicals such as Franklin Graham and Al Mohler attacked World Vision; Mohler referred to its decision as 'a grave and tragic act.' Evangelical scholars called it a 'betrayal.' The extraordinary humanitarian work of World Vision didn't seem to matter; prosecuting the culture war did, even if innocent children were the collateral damage. Within two days, World Vision reversed its decision. It's a revealing comparison: A decision by a venerated Christian relief agency to hire Christians in same-sex relationships caused an immediate, angry, and explosive reaction across the evangelical world, while the decision to effectively end a program that has saved more than 25 million lives on the African continent barely registers. Few of those who are aware of what's happening have anything to say about it. And many who are inclined to say something pull back, fearful of the consequences. Because of the brazen cruelty of the Trump administration, we can expect there to be new murals of Jesus surrounded by children who died of AIDS in Ethiopia, new 'Coffin Rows' in countries like Malawi, and fewer miracles like the one that saved the life of John Robert Engole. Evangelicals in America—for a dozen different reasons—have mostly turned their eyes away from what is happening on the African continent. They have other things to do. They have culture wars to fight. Jesus knew such people in his time. They were religious figures who, when they saw that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, passed to the other side. Article originally published at The Atlantic
RNZ News
05-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Bamboo School - caring for orphans next to a conflict zone
Running an orphanage and an ambulance service is no easy feat, but when you're also right next to a civil war, there are a lot more complications. Catherine Riley-Bryan is a New Zealander and founder of Bamboo School , located in a village called Bong Ti in western Thailand, right next to the Myanmar border. Myanmar has had a troubled history of civil war in recent years, the latest conflict started just four years ago, when the army seized power from the civilian government. Since then, ethnic militias and anti-coup fighters have been trying to wrestle back power. But recently the conflict has become extremely fierce sparking fears of evacuating the school at any moment. Catherine speaks with Mihi about what it's like running an orphanage and ambulance service right next to a conflict zone. Catherine Riley-Bryan with some of the children at Bamboo School in Thailand. Photo: Supplied / Catherine Riley-Bryan
Daily Mail
29-06-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Revealed: The dark truth about the thousands of Chinese babies snatched from their mothers and sold to childless couples in Britain and America
Abandoned by her parents, Fu Lian Doble was left outside a bank on a wintry Boxing Day in 1999. Or at least that is according to records kept by the Chinese orphanage that took her in. But in adult life, having been adopted by a British couple she calls mum and dad, she has discovered this is almost certainly a lie because the orphanage has been exposed for buying and selling babies for international adoption. 'It really hit home how much of our identity is grounded on just a few pieces of paper, and we can't even trust those,' she says.
Al Jazeera
21-06-2025
- Health
- Al Jazeera
The woman raising 98 children with disabilities in Uganda
At her 'Home of Hope', Edith Lukabwe cares for children abandoned by their families. Home of Hope founder and director Edith Lukabwe feeds a child inside her orphanage's therapy room [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Home of Hope founder and director Edith Lukabwe feeds a child inside her orphanage's therapy room [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Jinja District, Uganda - On a muddy, uneven and unnamed road on the outskirts of the eastern city of Jinja, children laugh and play in a compound surrounded by green hills and sugarcane plantations. A child hurtles his wheelchair down the driveway at breakneck speed towards a heavy gate manned by a friendly security guard. On the worn concrete veranda, a young boy with hydrocephalus - a condition in which fluid enlarges the skull - laughs loudly as he plays checkers with two friends. The cheerful atmosphere belies the difficult backgrounds of the 98 children - aged six months to 18 years - who live on the compound. All were abandoned. Most were babies when their parents left them. Some were left at the compound gate, others at hospital after they were born while one three-year-old boy was rescued from his home days after his parents disappeared. Today, more than six million people in Uganda, a country of nearly 50 million, live with a disability. Many consider disability to be a burden due to a long-held cultural belief that it is a curse. Families with disabilities are often shunned by their communities and, in the absence of support or knowledge of better practices, often resort to restraint, tethering and forced seclusion. In some cases, children are abandoned due to social stigma and financial hardship. About 31 percent of households with a disability live in poverty. Just 1 percent of the country's health budget goes towards helping these families. 'A meagre amount,' says Andrew Mubangizi, assistant commissioner for disability. In rural areas in particular, a lack of staffing and resources at government-run clinics means caregivers often have to travel long distances to access support. However, for the past two decades, small, donor-funded organisations and charities dotted around the country have tried to fill the void left by the health system to care and advocate for those living with disabilities. One of the people leading the movement is Edith Lukabwe, who is raising the 98 children at her Home of Hope orphanage. She hopes that educating small pockets of her local community to raise awareness will balloon into a more accepting society. '[People] can then teach their communities. … There shouldn't be a cultural stigma,' she says. Mildred, two, who has Down syndrome, uses a walking frame at the Home of Hope. Every Tuesday is therapy day at the home. About 25 parents bring their children to see a physiotherapist and occupational therapist, Eddie Opio, seen here speaking with Mildred's mother, Ida [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Mildred, two, who has Down syndrome, uses a walking frame at the Home of Hope. Every Tuesday is therapy day at the home. About 25 parents bring their children to see a physiotherapist and occupational therapist, Eddie Opio, seen here speaking with Mildred's mother, Ida [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] On a humid, late afternoon in November, Edith sits giggling loudly and bantering with two older members of her team during a lull between heavy rain showers. They watch as younger staff members dodge puddles and sweat through a daily aerobics routine in the muddy courtyard. As energetic pop music blares across the compound made up of three single- and double-storey buildings, seven-year-old Diego, who has cerebral palsy, heads up a concrete ramp towards a therapy room. His wrists twisted, he crawls forward slowly until Edith spots him. 'Diego, my boy!' the 49-year-old calls out with a wide grin. She runs over to him, her loose dress billowing as she scoops him up and swings him quickly onto her hip. He gives her a high five, and the two laugh before turning their attention to the workout. The warmth and affection between Edith and her staff and the children at the orphanage make the place feel like it belongs to a very large family. Edith's own journey as a disability rights figure in Uganda began in 2000 with the birth of her first child, Derrick, in Jinja. When Derrick was two days old, he turned yellow and cried excessively. So Edith and her husband, Richard, took him to a hospital where he was misdiagnosed with malaria. For two weeks, their son suffered convulsions, and upon seeing another doctor, he was found to have complications with his spinal cord after contracting meningitis. Witch doctors like Robert Apedu in Soroti District provide 77 percent of health services in rural areas. They offer a more convenient alternative to health facilities and medicines found in cities [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] 'When he made three months, this is when I realised that my son was not growing as a normal child. He had poor head control. He had a curved spinal cord. He was very floppy,' Edith recalls while sitting in her office. Its walls are adorned with certificates of appreciation and merit, and a portrait of President Yoweri Museveni hangs above the door. As she looks out a window onto a playground full of children, Edith recalls how she and Richard struggled to get information about their son's condition and were ostracised by their friends and family who were fearful of them and Derrick. 'We started coming into the hospital, in and out. Home, hospital, home, hospital. And with his situation, especially with convulsions, people were like, 'He has got epilepsy. He has demons.' And this is where I was rejected by the community,' she says. 'They were like, 'She gave birth to a demon-possessed child.'' In the village of Omalera, Robert rubs a paste of plant matter and water onto the skin of Noah Oyara, 17, who has no use of his legs and also lives with hydrocephalus. Due to negative connotations surrounding his profession, Robert refers to himself as a 'traditional healer' or 'herbalist' [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Historically and until today, education about disabilities has not been promoted through government-run schools or local clinics, leading many Ugandans to resort to traditional healing. Without a diagnosis and feeling helpless, Edith succumbed to social pressure and took her son to traditional healers. 'I tried to take him to different witch doctors. They were cutting him all over the body, smearing him with their herbs, washing him with blood of the chicken, the blood of the goat. They could take us in at night to shower us with the blood of the chicken, but still, Derrick didn't change,' she recalls. 'It was just worsening.' But then an elderly couple at her church encouraged her to return to the hospital and supported her family. So Edith returned with Derrick to the hospital. After 12 months, he was diagnosed with permanent disability. The prolonged lack of treatment for meningitis had led to severe brain damage and cerebral palsy, leaving him nonverbal and unable to walk or feed himself for the rest of his life. In Wanyange parish, Margret Nakimbugwe embraces her two-year-old son Ali Nsimba at her roadside stall. Ali has cerebral palsy and receives therapy at the Home of Hope while social workers there provide her with counselling. The home also gave her interest-free capital to start a small business [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] In Wanyange parish, Margret Nakimbugwe embraces her two-year-old son Ali Nsimba at her roadside stall. Ali has cerebral palsy and receives therapy at the Home of Hope while social workers there provide her with counselling. The home also gave her interest-free capital to start a small business [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Hoping to help with Derrick's lack of mobility, Edith started attending a physical therapy session with him at the local government hospital. There she met other mothers and grandmothers who brought their children with different disabilities. She was shocked to see how malnourished some of them were. Edith took note of the techniques the therapists and the nurses were using. The nurses taught her how to better care for Derrick. They showed her how to mash his food so he could swallow more easily, for example. Meanwhile, Edith befriended the other women who attended and with her newfound knowledge began offering to help them with small tasks, like cutting their children's nails. 'Mama, can I help to cut off these nails?' she recalls asking them, explaining that because they were long the child could injure themself. Grateful, the women started to bring her food whenever they came to the hospital. 'So we became such friends. So I started visiting them once in a week,' Edith recounts. Although she suspected neglect was behind some of the children's poor states, she was shocked when she visited the homes and saw how some were being locked inside - a consequence of stigma, a lack of support and education, and poverty. 'It broke my heart that every time I was going to visit the grandma, I found this child locked in the house. The child has been there for the whole day,' she explains. 'That's the moment I knew I wanted to help.' In Omalera, 17-year-old David Emwodu sits with his hands bound by a rope tied to the bunk bed he shares with his brother. David lives with an undiagnosed intellectual disability. He can become violent, especially towards his eldest brother, and when this occurs, his family tethers him to the bed [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Edith began an informal support group at the hospital where she and others attending the therapy sessions would pool together money, usually about 1,000 Ugandan shillings ($0.30), and give it to someone among them who needed it most. Meanwhile, the therapists working with Derrick and the other children moved them to a local charity. After seeing Edith's work, the charity offered her a job visiting the parents of children with disabilities to provide support and therapy. But the work was unpaid, and she and Richard now had two more children alongside a three-year-old Derrick to raise on just one salary. Edith soon quit. About that time, she had a car accident that left her with a spinal cord fracture and an open head injury. 'I ended up in the hospital, in Jinja hospital, for a year,' she says. Richard was left to care for the children, which left less time for work. This period was very difficult on her family and marriage, Edith says, but she resolved to push through. 'After six months at home, I was able to begin putting my assistive devices down, and I started walking,' she recalls. 'I say to God that if you heal me, I'll take care of the disabled children.' As she recovered, she would spend the day on the porch of her family's rented home, often seated in a wooden chair, to look after Derrick. Wanting to help the families she had assisted before her accident, Edith asked her cousin to bring the children to her home. Within a month, she was caring for six children, including her son. Soon after, two babies were left on her doorstep. She believes they were abandoned due to the taboo surrounding disability and left with her as a result of gossip within the community. 'They were like … 'She's taking care of those children with demons. I think it's the demons which also caused her accident due to her son,'' Edith says with sadness in her voice. Edith says her first-born son, Derrick, is the reason she is fighting to help children with disabilities [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Edith says her first-born son, Derrick, is the reason she is fighting to help children with disabilities [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Edith worked with the local village elder to try to locate the abandoned babies' parents, but their efforts were unsuccessful. She was then obliged to formalise their adoption. She did this by registering her work as a caregiver at a community-based organisation and orphanage in 2007. The Home of Hope started on the porch of her house, and then in 2013 with the help of international donors, she was able to move her growing organisation - and her family - to the large open compound they are at today. Edith recalls this as a happy time for her and Derrick. She would take him for walks in his wheelchair outside the compound and remembers how he'd smile brightly at passers-by. Ever since he was born, she had shared a bed with Derrick to watch over him and never stayed away from him for too long because he would cry out for her whenever she left the room. Derrick was 'a blessing for the family', she says. In 2014, as Edith was now raising four of her own children and a growing number of others at the orphanage, Derrick died of cardiac arrest after a short illness. He was 14. Derrick's death devastated Edith. 'This is my own womb, my own blood, my own child. I can't even know how to express that. I still have pain. I'm just learning to live with that pain,' she says softly. The home suffered. 'It perished,' she says. But over time, she started to think about how to channel her grief into her work and expand it in Derrick's memory. Edith says she thinks of him during happy times, but also when things are difficult. 'In tough times, I feel I wish he was by my side,' she admits. 'Every time I was with him, we could laugh. He could bring that smile. Whenever I was stressed, I could look at him, and he gives me that bright, light smile,' she recalls. 'The love was a really happy memory.' It is because of Derrick that Edith says she is doing what she does today. 'I don't want this [home] to exist when I'm alive and then when I get out of the world, it dies. I know children with disability will continue to exist,' she explains. Joseph, 10, sits alone outside the therapy room at the Home of Hope [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Edith set up a hospital to both honour her son and allow the organisation to be more self-sufficient. Home of Hope is 99 percent funded by international donors, and Edith was able to raise the money to build a fully staffed hospital for the children who live on the compound. It's also open to the local community. Richard, who oversees all the maintenance, looks after a chicken hatchery that provides the kitchen with eggs and meat. The organisation hosts therapy and social work students from Europe as volunteers to supplement the work of the full-time staff. Two of Edith and Richard's sons also work there: Denis, 24, is the operations director, and Francis, 20, is a nurse. Most recently, they built an assisted living home in nearby Buwenge for those aged 18 and older who are too old to legally live in the compound. At the main orphanage, the once bright paint on the walls is faded and shows the strains of time, but it continues to provide warm, comfortable bedrooms with animal decals and bunk beds, three meals a day and children's activities. Yet its work stretches beyond the high brick wall surrounding it. Dr Sam Ecengu offers advice to parents with children living with disabilities at a community outreach programme run by the nonprofit Cherish Ikoku Uganda. The programme is an important component in the battle against cultural stigma [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Dr Sam Ecengu offers advice to parents with children living with disabilities at a community outreach programme run by the nonprofit Cherish Ikoku Uganda. The programme is an important component in the battle against cultural stigma [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] As the staff disperse, panting yet smiling after their workout, a thin, neatly dressed man approaches Edith. He greets the children as he crosses the yard. Peter Osire is Edith's right-hand man. In 2013, impressed by his attention to detail and work ethic when approving the charity's regulatory paperwork in his role at the local council, Edith persuaded him to join her team. Affable yet firm, the 41-year-old is the Home of Hope's programme coordinator and runs its community outreach programmes. Covering a 30km (19-mile) radius surrounding Jinja, Peter engages local 'village mobilisers' to identify children with disabilities living - and often hidden - in villages. Their families are invited to monthly sessions held by a team of social workers, therapists and nurses who not only provide medicine and therapy if needed but also education about disabilities. The hope is they will spread what they learn deeper into their rural, isolated communities. Recently, Peter met Olivia, a young mother who, after being abandoned by her family and left on her own to care for her son with Down's syndrome, attempted suicide. He also met Moses, a 16-year-old boy with epilepsy whose lack of mobility has left him permanently fixed in a foetal position. Home of Hope has therapists and counsellors who can help them both. Students stare at Moses, 16, as his mother, Evelyn Mbwali, explains his story to a health worker at a local outreach clinic. Moses was brought to the clinic because his mother was worried about his lack of mobility [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] It was at an outreach session where 41-year-old Ruth* approached Peter for help. Ruth is seven months pregnant and raising two girls with cerebral palsy - Jesca*, 13, and Mariam*, 12 - as a single mother. They live in a village that is almost exclusively home to sugarcane workers. The girls' father abandoned them after Mariam was born, and due to the stigma attached to disabilities, she has received little support from their community. Like most children with a disability, the girls do not attend school. They help their mother with chores, such as doing the laundry and tending to their small corn crop. When the girls were young, Ruth would take them to canefields for the day, keeping one eye on her daughters as she cut and packed sugarcane. When they were older, she felt comfortable enough to leave them on their own at their small mud house on the village outskirts. But in mid-2024, Ruth says, their 37-year-old neighbour lured Jesca into the fields and raped her. Ruth didn't suspect anything was wrong until one day when Jesca started refusing to get out of bed. At the local clinic, Jesca was tested for malaria. The test came back negative. But her pregnancy test was positive. Ruth says she doesn't know how many times her child was raped. But she learned that her daughter was receiving small amounts of money, 100 shillings ($0.03), regularly, and when pressed on its source, Jesca named their neighbour. Then Jesca took Ruth to the place where she had been assaulted. Jesca is comforted by her mother, Ruth, in the bedroom they share with Jesca's sister, Mariam. The girls have cerebral palsy. Jesca is currently seven months pregnant after being raped [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Jesca is comforted by her mother, Ruth, in the bedroom they share with Jesca's sister, Mariam. The girls have cerebral palsy. Jesca is currently seven months pregnant after being raped [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] When Ruth confronted the neighbour and his family, threatening to go to the police, he admitted his guilt. After a village elder's mediation, Ruth was assured the family would receive ongoing support once Jesca's baby was born and a bar of soap and 2kg (4.4lb) of sugar every month until the birth. Feeling she had no other option, Ruth agreed. But as Jesca's belly grew, her rapist fled the county. The soap and sugar were never seen. 'This is not justice for my girl. I want him imprisoned,' a frustrated Ruth says, adding that as she has pushed for justice, her neighbours have become hostile. 'There is a lot of hatred towards me now.' With the desperate realisation that soon there would be another two mouths to feed, with Jesca also seven months pregnant, Ruth felt she had to act. But the police weren't likely to help, she believed, without 'facilitation', or bribes, something she couldn't afford. So she sought help from the Home of Hope. When it comes to such cases, however, Edith and Peter are limited in what they can do. Peter has guided Ruth in dealing with the local authorities, but has found the process frustrating. Jesca was raped by a neighbour in these fields surrounding her home [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] 'The family [of the accused] knows where the man is, though they claim they don't know. But then the police have not yet done any follow-up because they just keep on telling these people, 'Make sure you look for him and bring him,'' he explains after a meeting with Ruth to discuss the status of the case. Police respond to requests to speed up the investigation by saying, 'We don't have facilitation. Will you facilitate?' Peter adds. Meanwhile, the police have told Ruth that if she continues to push for charges, she could be arrested on grounds of neglect. But discrimination is the main hurdle in achieving justice for Jesca, Peter explains. One in four adults living with an intellectual disability in Uganda has been sexually abused, often with no formal or legal recourse for the victim. Peter has reached out to a legal aid organisation in the hope that its involvement will push the police into action. Edith is frustrated. The case should have gone straight to the police. But because the child has a disability, no one is taking the case seriously, she says. 'The LC [the local court or village elder] contrived with the family, with the family of the man, and they didn't help because this child is what? Disabled. They see the child as useless,' she says, her voice rising in anger. Simon Okurut carries his son Paul Oribo, who lives with cerebral palsy, to a makeshift ambulance driven by Fred Alimet from the charity Cherish Ikoku Uganda. Alimet says Uganda's poor roads and lack of a transport system is a major factor why families are unable to access proper healthcare [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Simon Okurut carries his son Paul Oribo, who lives with cerebral palsy, to a makeshift ambulance driven by Fred Alimet from the charity Cherish Ikoku Uganda. Alimet says Uganda's poor roads and lack of a transport system is a major factor why families are unable to access proper healthcare [Christopher Hopkins/Al Jazeera] Despite the lack of government funding and assistance and systemic and cultural barriers, Edith and Peter are buoyed by small changes. Weekly therapy sessions are now attended by more than 20 people who bring their children with disabilities. Attendance at monthly outreach sessions held in three subdistricts has also grown. Peter says the first session in 2009 attracted about 20 people. Now 80 to 100 people attend. Both the therapy and outreach sessions are crucial in that they provide primary caregivers with a network to talk to others about their children and experiences. 'In the 20 years that I've run Home of Hope, I've seen change,' Edith says. 'I've seen that parents have started accepting the children [as] they are now. They are no longer getting ashamed of exposing their children to the community. They bring them out, they take them for therapy, they bring them for medication. We are no longer having children who are abandoned on our gates.' Sitting on the floor of the therapy room, surrounded by immobile children, Edith cradles a toddler with cerebral palsy. She pours porridge into his mouth from a large cup, gently wiping any spills with care, just as she did with Derrick 25 years ago. 'I want them to live happily,' she says. 'So long as they are living in this world and I'm also living, I want them to be recognised that they are also human beings.' *Names have been changed to protect identities
