MyVoice
Notes from Conrad Mandsager

I Won't Ever Get Used To It…
I knew the call would eventually come, but that knowledge did not prepare me for its final impact. Komakech Sunday, one of our 10 month old little boys, had been admitted to the hospital in early May because he was not thriving and would no longer nurse or eat. He and Concy (There are several girls in the ChildVoice program named Concy. The Concy in this story is different from Concy in the ChildFocus article.), his 16 year old mom, had joined our program in late January. Our staff knew that she was HIV positive, and they suspected that he too was infected as she had been nursing him since his birth.

When he reached the hospital, he was immediately placed on nutritional support. Despite the medical team's efforts, he was not responding. The effects of the HIV infection were just too much for his little body. As I received the discouraging daily updates, I began to dread the call that now seemed eminent. Late in the evening of May 9th, D'Andrea Weeks, our Deputy Director, called to tell me that he had quietly passed away. I buried my head in my hands, stunned and shaken.

My emotions ran from grief to anger and back again. This was just too much for this young girl to have to bear. You see, this was not the first time she has faced the death of a child. This is the second baby she has had to bury… and she is only 16 years old! If it had not been for the LRA and their senseless abuse of children like her, she wouldn't have been pregnant at all at this young age. Instead, she now has to find a way to deal with her grief and rebuild her life. How can someone that young deal with the loss of not one, but two babies?

Death has become all too common to the people of northern Uganda. Over the course of this 22 year old conflict, thousands upon thousands have died at the hands of the rebels or because of the ancillary effects of the war – disease, lack of medical care, violence and abuse in the IDP camps, etc. A recent study published in a British psychiatric journal showed that three fourths (75%) of people in northern Uganda have personally witnessed or experienced the murder of a family or friend. Nearly two thirds (64%) had witnessed the murder of a stranger or strangers. Traditional funerals were abandoned because of the overwhelming numbers. People were buried in mass graves because there wasn't enough manpower to dig individual graves. Over time, even the grieving process was aborted to save one's sanity. Tears just wouldn't flow anymore.

All I could do now was to pray. Not only for Concy, I also prayed for the other girls at our program who had become her family. How would they react when they heard the news? I prayed for James, our Program Director, who would have to bury this baby the next day at the IDP camp because there was no one else to do the funeral. I prayed for our staff who had come to love Concy and Sunday and now would grieve his loss.

I will never get used to this …

As discouraged as I am about Sunday's death, I have to keep reminding myself of the numbers of children whose lives we are saving. Not only the girls and their children in our residential program who are the happiest and healthiest they have ever been, but the hundreds who have received medical care at our medical clinic for malaria and other life threatening diseases, the thousands who are getting clean water from new wells we have drilled or where we have rebuilt pumps to make dry wells functional again, and the hundreds of school children who are getting hot, nutritious meals through the feeding program we run at Lukodi Primary School. Yes, we are making a difference.

I want to personally ask you to join our monthly giving program that we are calling Amplified! and make a monthly commitment to help us save the lives of these children. As Mother Theresa once said, "To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it." I desperately need your help to keep oil in the lamps we have lit in northern Uganda. We are literally saving lives, but we cannot do it without your financial help. Click on the link for Amplified! now and make your pledge. We have to do more and we need your help.

I know that I will never get used to this… I hope you won't either.