Martha Rial: Uganda
Jalia skims the water with her fingers during an evening outing to Lake Victoria. She was orphaned when both of her parents died of AIDS. Her goal is to become a surgeon.
In November 2014, I traveled to Uganda to document the work that Victoria Nalongo Namusisi and Medi Bugembe are doing to empower orphaned children.
Lou Picard, director of the International Development Program and professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, introduced me to Ms. Namusisi when she spoke at GSPIA a few years ago. I knew immediately that I wanted to tell her story. Ms. Namusisi has rescued hundreds of children and is renowned throughout Uganda for her humanitarian work.
Uganda is known as the Pearl of Africa for its rugged beauty and fertile lands, but the East African nation is widely considered to be one of the poorest and the most politically corrupt countries in the world. In this nation of almost 39 million people afflicted by poverty and AIDS, a civil war waged against the Lord’s Resistance Army has resulted in tens of thousands of casualties, appalling acts of torture and the dislocation of more than 1 million people. Nearly half the population is under the age of 15, and an estimated 2 million children have been orphaned.
Mr. Bugembe knows the pain of coming of age in a time of turmoil. He spent several years of his childhood begging for food, sleeping in a tunnel and running from police in Kampala’s Katwe slum. He was rescued from the streets by Ms. Namusisi, when he was 11-years-old and he joined other children who were neglected, orphaned or victims of extreme poverty at her newly opened Bright Kids Uganda orphanage. Mr. Bugembe was enrolled in school and encouraged to find his own path.
After studying to become a teacher, three years ago Mr. Bugembe opened an orphanage and school of his own — The Great Kings and Queens Children’s Centre — on the outskirts of Kampala. Many of the children come from the same streets where he fought for survival.
