VOLSET Foundation

MY STORY

  Nature controlled our family population by claiming some children for the graveyard. Helpless parents comforted themselves with local brew (mwenge) during day time and cruel nights. Children spent their nights on empty stomachs. Like so many others, our parents did not know what it was to be a parent; they were both heavy drinkers and were often violent when drunk.  My brothers and I were largely left to fend for ourselves and find food where we could, education was not even on the horizon.   As young as I was, I was not experienced enough to join the other miserable and helpless gangs of children roaming and looking for whatever they could to sustain themselves.  Instead, I lived in a lonely confusion, wondering whether an opportunity would ever come to lift me out of such a cruel situation. In my heart I knew that I did not ‘apply’ to be born, but I also knew that it was also not a mistake that I was here.  Still, a ‘real’ home full of care and nurture was like a dream and staying away from a life of crime without a guide was nearly impossible.

When I was school age, I began to search for family who might be willing to sponsor me.  After thinking of the families that I knew who had been kind to me in the past, I went to each of their houses asking them for work and telling them of my dream of a good future.  To my great fortune, I was taken in by a local family who treated me as one of their own.  They provided me with a roof over my head, food in my belly and, most important of all, the school fees to pay for my education.  I stayed with that family for eight years and they continue to be my brothers, sisters and parents and are a great source of affection.

Later, when I left primary school and began to work, thinking that my education might be over, I had the further fortune to be sponsored by    Glen Houck, a missionary teacher from the USA, and was able to finish my teacher’s training certificate at a college in Kenya.  This happened during the rule of Idi Amin and it was not only not easy to study in Uganda, but it was also impossible for sponsors to send money to the country.  There was the added fear of being caught writing to someone from the West and being considered a “spy”.

My own experience of what it means to be lifted out of poverty and hopelessness and given the opportunity to exist as a whole, healthy citizen able to serve my own community and be part of the larger global community, is my constant inspiration to offer the same to others.  Having been given a bridge and having crossed it myself, I am convinced that we are here to offer that to one another. If the bridging does not occur then we shall, as humans, be creating a world of troubles and endless conflicts.  Experience has taught me that most Children-in-Need (CHIN) grow into People-in-Need (PIN) who in turn keep our societies undeveloped. Largely migrating to urban centers, though rural areas have their own version of the same, these wanting beings end up in jails, wrapped in violence, excluded, misunderstood and mistreated by society.   They are vulnerable to disease and to HIV and many lose their lives at a young age.  They are left to fend for themselves, creating whole Societies-in-Need (SIN).

The ‘’well-to-do’, dwelling in luxury homes, driving  luxury  vehicles, dressed in the most expensive attire and hoarding their money in real-estate and offshore banks have not realized that the trouble they see around them arises from their own neglect of CHIN-PIN-SIN communities. Our riches, whether they are in the form of material wealth, or whether they are in the form of talents, skills, education and the ability to nurture others are no use to us when we are gone.  A rich society is one in which all of these riches are shared and create a better reality for all.

 USE YOUR BLESSINGS TO BLESS OTHERS