In May, 2008, Mike and I took the kids to an old, favorite pizza place. We ordered our food and sodas and sat down to eat. We picked up the newspaper someone had left lying nearby and began looking it over. Mike got really quiet and handed me an article to read. I read it. Then, I was sick. We'd just dropped 30.00 without blinking an eye on pizza and soda to fill our already overfed bellies. The article broke us. It was from the AP about a 9 yr old orphan in Uganda. Stephen, his name, lives alone in a mud hut and busts rocks with a hammer every day, 12 hours a day. He has been working there since he was 4 years old!!!!! Our 4 yr olds go to PreK and Barney Live shows, and eat happy meals, and learn letters. According the the book "Children of Hope" 1 million children in Uganda alone are orphaned due to AIDS.
Here is a portion of the article for you to read.
KAMPALA, Uganda -- Stephen Batte works in a quarry under the blazing sun, chipping rocks into gravel with a homemade hammer. It's tiring, boring and dangerous.
Stephen is 9 years old and has been on the rock pile since he was 4.
"Life has always been hard here," he whispers, carefully positioning a sharp rock before striking it with well-practiced accuracy. "But since my mother died, things have been much harder."
His mother, the woman who taught him to smash rocks when he was a toddler, was killed here in a landslide in August.
His T-shirt torn and his feet bare, Stephen is one of hundreds of people who work in the quarry on the outskirts of Uganda's capital, Kampala. Their shabby figures sit hunched over their heaps of gravel. The chink of metal against stone bounces off the rock faces.
Most of the workers are refugees who fled a civil war in northern Uganda. Now they make 100 Uganda shillings, 6 U.S. cents, for every 5-gallon bucket that they fill with chipped rocks. Stephen works 12 hours a day to fill three buckets.
There's no safety code or protective clothing. The children's arms and legs are covered in scabs from flying stones. Stephen says a friend lost an eye.
Rock falls are frequent. Stephen remembers the one that killed his mother.
"She had left the house early to work," he says through a translator. His voice falters. "We did not know that she was underneath the rocks -- not until we saw her sandals.
The article goes on to tell of the horrible conditions of refugees in Uganda. Mike and I knew we'd never be the same after reading about Stephen Batte. We tore the article from the paper and put it on our refigerator, committing to pray for the child and what our response should be. We discussed adopting a child from Africa, or even moving to Africa to work in an orphanage or clinic. My dad has been to the Congo and my mom to Botswana so we had some practical avenues to work with. I saw a 7months old baby girl in Ethiopia listed on a waiting child site who was blind. We sent a copy of our homestudy to the agency saying we were interested in adopting her. I named that baby girl Chloe and prayed for her to have the family God wanted her to have. I couldn't imagine a sadder life than being an orphaned, blind girl in an Ethiopian orphanage. We heard a few weeks later that the agency had a family for her!! Praise the Lord. So, now what? Mike and I didn't know what God was doing in our lives, but we knew something. In the fall of 2008, we decided to save for our next adventure--maybe a mission trip, maybe an adoption. We didn't know, but God did! In February, He revealed what that adventure was---Hudson! I still struggle with "what about children like Stephen?' Adopting Hudson was fairly easy. What about the children of Africa??
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8
In response to your struggling with that question, remember you and your family were an answer to mine and my family's fervent prayer!! Tina M.
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