Most of the weekend went well until Sunday afternoon. It is difficult to tell this story, but I must share about Samuel.
Every year I’ve been here we’ve had a really amazing relationship with an orphanage here in Gulu. St. Jude’s Orphanage is a great place where Sister Filda takes in children who otherwise are not cared for. Some of them are living with HIV, others have no living relatives, and others were abandoned by parents and other family is unable to take them in.
We now have a great relationship with them, and two girls in my group are even trying to start a reading program there for the kids after school. They are teaching the older kids to read to the younger kids, in hopes that it can continue after the few weeks that we are here.
We had scheduled a visit for Sunday afternoon, and shortly after we arrived things started to go bad. I was honestly real excited to visit the kids and play with them. Unfortunately about 3 minutes after we got there, one of the mothers had run from behind a building saying something about a kid who fell. Some of the women ran back there, and we weren’t really sure what was happening. Slowly, we walked back to where they were, and a little boy had fallen down into a sewage hole, basically a latrine hole. Some people from our group were reaching into the hole to help pull him out. He had probably been down there for a few minutes by the time we got him out. Some teachers starting giving him CPR, but he wasn’t breathing. Then three teachers then went with a mother and him and rushed him to Lacor hospital. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even know what to think. I stayed with about 6 other teachers as they rushed him to the hospital. The six of us were still at the orphanage and we were trying to figure out what to do as we stayed there and the others had gone to the hospital. It was real awkward, so we stayed and prayed a little with the kids and some of the mothers. Then we just walked back towards town and caught bodas back to town.

By the time we reached home, we got word from the three teachers at Lacor that the boy did not make it. Apparently they arrived at Lacor and went running into the hospital and through the wards, but some how they were surprised at the lack of concern people showed as they tried to get help. They felt like they were tearing down the halls, trying to find the emergency room, and people weren’t even phased by it, as if it wasn’t an emergency. They finally got him to a bed, as in the bottom half of a bed that already had someone with an IV at the top half. Some people came over to help him, had a machine that was suppose to help him, but the machine apparently didn’t even have a cord, and they couldn’t figure out how to plug it in at first. Once they figured out the machine, at this point the teachers finally were able to stop giving the boy CPR, and let the machine take over. Sadly, he didn’t make it.
The boy’s name was Samuel. He was about 2 years old.

We had collected some money earlier in our trip and we were going to buy them some much needed pots and pans (think giant pots) so that they could do a better job of feeding the kids. Now that this tragedy has occurred, we have decided to take our money and give it to the orphanage to pay for Samuel’s funeral costs. While I write this I realize that maybe together we can help this orphanage. With a few dollars from you we could very easily help to purchase some pots and pans for these kids. Please think about giving just a few dollars. Money here goes far and together we can give them some much needed supplies.
The widget on the right will feed right into my PayPal account, and I will then take the money out of my account the day before we leave, and purchase some much needed cooking supplies for St. Judes. Please pass this link along to anyone you think may be interested in donating. A few dollars goes really far here.
Thank you for your generosity.