June 26, 2020 • 40 mins
After becoming an international controversy, Renee reconsiders her entire life’s work. But the mothers suing her are still nowhere closer to finding answers.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
In January of this year, I made my way to
the courthouse in Ginger. It had been almost exactly a
(00:21):
full year since the case against Renee was filed and
we started looking into it. The courthouse was full of
journalists from the States, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, all waiting
for news. The plaintiffs were also here. Gimbo Zubda, the
mother of Tlali, was in the courtyard speaking with her lawyers,
(00:44):
and Kakai Rose, the other mother in the case, was
sitting in a corner by herself. I waved hello and
she gave me a smile. I had met Kakai a
couple of times by then. In the beginning, she was
shy and didn't open up very easy way, but over
the course of that year she became a bit more
friendly with me. We didn't speak the same language, but
(01:07):
she always waved and greeted me when she saw me,
asked me how I was doing that day. No one
was interpreting for her, but she seemed glad to be there,
to just be present. Sitting on a wooden bench outside
the courtroom, I couldn't help but think about the first
time I was here, about the energy that Kelsey and
(01:28):
Olivia brought with them into this courthouse when they joined
the lawyers who were filing a civil suit against Renee
and serving his children back in twenty nine. So this
is what I want to see right now. For me,
this is so important, you know, it will help me
more forward. This is historical. It's going down the books
of history in my country, in Uganda and the world
(01:51):
as well, that this is the first time that someone
is looking into work that is done by a white person.
More feels that they're helping so much, like we compass
of Africa and we're sacrificing. To Livia, I just wanted
to show the wall that it's not sacrifice. She was
not doing us any sacrifice, but she was just humming
us like she was destroying our society. A lot had
(02:17):
changed since those early days when I used to think
that No Waite Saviors was our story. It had gotten
so much bigger. It was about a whole system of
international aid and injustice, the trauma of people affected by it,
and the moral dilemma of doing the right thing. Renee
(02:37):
and no White Saviors began to seem like small characters
in a much larger saga. Eventually we made our way
into the courtroom. After an hour of hearing news on
other local cases, the judge finally mentioned Renee's case in
association with iHeart Media, I'm ROGI Gola, I'm Hee make Con,
(03:00):
I'm Malcolm Burnley and this is the missionary Episode eight.
What's left? Media interest in Renee Bach and serving his
children has ebbed and flowed throughout the past year. One
(03:21):
of the only things I found to be consistent in
the story was the lawyer representing the women in the case.
Her name is Prima qua Gala. She runs the Women's
pro bono initiative in Uganda, and she was one of
the very first people I interviewed for this story last year.
Even then, she seemed pretty confident about the case she
had in hand. Perhaps every lawyer feels that way, but
(03:44):
Prima is one of the few health rights lawyers in Uganda,
and she had taken people bigger than Renee to court,
even litigated against the Ugandan government. So Prima had guts
and experience. I thought it was crazy, according to much
doing something like that taking place in our country, especially
I mean from a white person. We look at white
(04:06):
people as very good people. They have very good intentions
for us. So when someone told me that, I said,
oh my god. I have been doing cases in the
health sector for almost tamyas now I had never come
across anything like that. By early two thousand nineteen, Prima
had the testimonies of these two women. She also had
(04:28):
clear evidence that serving his children had been an unlicensed
health facility and was still providing advanced medicine to children
like tolal A. That alone is illegal in Uganda, as
we've said, in the same way that it is in
the US, where it's a felony. Keep in mind, medical
malpractice and fraud isn't a uniquely Ugandan problem. Imagine finding
(04:51):
out your doctor didn't have a license to practice. Like
so many other fake health care workers in Colorado, this
one is also accused of tending to be someone she's
not to treat some of our state's most vulnerable people.
Police say they got an anonymous tip that Golden was
practicing as a medical doctor but with no license. In
North Carolina, state regulators are letting dozens of these impostors
(05:14):
go unlicensed and unpunished. The system is flawed. She's able
to slip through these cracks like this over and over again.
Over the past year. I would check in on and
off with Prima and her partner, Beatrice Kayaga to see
if they had made any other breakthroughs in this case,
found any new witnesses that we hadn't, or any outstanding
piece of evidence, maybe a video of Renee performing surgery
(05:37):
or something like that, And for the most part, there wasn't,
but they didn't need it. My cass is not really
about her character who she is. A case is very simple.
It's just that she was not licensed to do any
medical work. Her facility did not have license. Prima's focused,
(05:58):
simple and narrow approach to this case always struck me
because it was such a stark contrast from the full
range and volume of accusations against Renee that Renee had
stolen babies from hospitals, experimented on children, and bribed Ugandan officials.
An unlicensed facility seems like a rather minor, albeit still
(06:20):
illegal fact, and that's been the most frustrating and challenging
part of reporting this story. The more complex the accusations became,
the harder it was to be able to know factually
was it true or not, because they relied on conflicting
anecdotal evidence and interpretations of Renee's actions. I learned this
(06:40):
as I went to track down more than a dozen
Ugandan health workers who had worked at serving his children,
as well as senior health officials. So I can see
why Prima kept her case so narrow to her. Those
other questions are besides the point her cases that you
(07:01):
gone and women like Kakai had a basic right for
themselves and their children to be treated at legitimate health
facilities within Uganda's health care system by licensed professionals, the
right to dignity for me to ask for what has
(07:22):
given my child, and you can't give me answers because
I don't deserve any. But you took my child away
with the promise that you're going to help them, but
then you can't give me feedback. That's in human, it's degrading.
It's for years on end. She can't get any answers
(07:43):
until we by the case. She says Renee had violated
the rights of the most vulnerable women. Rights given are
Uganda's Constitution. Most of these women are illiterate. They've never
been to school, they can't speak a word but English.
They don't have jobs, they can't and even fifty dollars
(08:03):
in a year they can't. Someone who is vulnerable, very poor,
and is looking at her child dying, when someone tells
her that Rainie's hope and Rainy is doing this, they
go because they're looking for help. And then here's a
white person saying, oh, I'm going to give your food.
I mean, you go to her home. There's a bed,
(08:24):
there is porridge, there is tea, you can use the bathroom,
you can wash your clothes. It seems like heaven to them.
Wouldn't you gone and have gone that long without oversight?
They wouldn't last a year, not even five months. People
would say where are you getting that money? Who are you?
(08:46):
You know, even those illiterate women would ask are you
qualified to do this? They stand up to you and
ask that. But this is a white person that's intimate
dating already that you're white, and we assume that the
white people are educated people. In fact, in May two
thousand fifteen, only two months after serving his children, was
(09:07):
shut down. Health clinics in northern Uganda were shut down
for nearly the same reasons. Officials say the clinics at
the level of health center to are being operated by
underqualified people. The aim of the operation is to protect
the public from home. Those who are arrested will be
changed in court. Seven people were arrested and while serving
(09:31):
his children was shut down. Renee was never arrested, nor
were any members of her staff, and they were able
to reopen, albeit in a different district. Now, whether that
was due to pour oversight, bribes or genuine reform, we
still don't know. The wise in the house. In both
(09:52):
Uganda and in the US, people have gone to jail
for these violations or faced other repercussions were it's still
in Virginia. Oh. There is no such thing as running
away from the law in this world, especially in a
civil case. WHOA that can be enforced anywhere. It can
(10:13):
even be enforced on us soil. We just have to
forward the judgment to the authorities in the U s
and they'll get her. Prina also told me that whether
they win or lose the case, it will have still
made a difference. I see people are becoming more alive
to challenging the system. People are starting to say, no,
(10:34):
we can't do better, start questioning the system and the services.
So it is through cases like this I like to say,
sometimes it's not that we want to win, but we
want to cause people to learn to question because maybe
I will lose. But next time a white person comes around,
they're going to think about the expenses they have to
(10:58):
to incur if someone came up with a suit against them,
because you would say, oh, you lost, No I did not.
Really has spent money defending herself, so she is aware
that she can't get away with what she's doing anymore.
So it's a stut. We always have to start from somewhere.
(11:23):
This story has tapped into a much bigger conversation about
the role of white people in Africa more broadly, a
discussion that Africans and black people have been having for decades.
In the past, the conversation was about colonizers, missionaries, imperialists.
These days it extends to white journalists, aid workers, humanitarians, activists,
(11:47):
and social entrepreneurs. Why do white journalists have certain privileges,
Why are white people called expats instead of immigrants, Why
do white aid workers have these six figure salaries? Well,
you've gone an experts get pennies on the dollar. Why
do white entrepreneurs get so much more venture capital compared
to local African startups. These are all questions that I
(12:09):
hear constantly, and Serving his Children and Renee were smack
in the middle of this conversation. But the question that
remains is what's next? Do white foreigners have a role
in contemporary Africa at all? Months into reporting this story,
(12:30):
I finally went to Serving his Children's current facility in
Chi Gondolo. Remember now, it's operating within a government facility,
and from what we could tell, was operating by the books.
It's run by Ugandan health professionals, but is funded by
Serving his Children. Inside there's a small sign with the
(12:50):
logos of Serving His Children on one side and Uganda's
Ministry of Health on the other. The staff invited me
into the children's ward, so I took off my shoes
and entered. It looked like an ordinary clinic with child
sized hospital beds lining both sides of the room, cartoons
on the walls. But when I saw the children, I
(13:13):
was shocked. By then, I had passed through countless photos
of emaciated, bloated and utterly sick children who had been
posted on Serving His Children's website over the years, or
on the blogs of other missionaries and volunteers. Standing in
that room, I was struck with such a strong sense
(13:35):
of deja vu. In the center, there were mothers sitting
on the floor with their babies whose skin was peeling
off due to infections related to severe malnutrition. The mothers
were bathing their children in a brownish liquid that nurses
said was an iodine solution to help their skin heal.
(13:58):
The staff told me these mothers had come from far
off rural areas where severe malnutrition is still a problem
and access to affordable healthcare is still limited. I still
think back to that day a year later, after trying
to piece together the parts of this story to figure
(14:20):
out the facts. The clearest thing to me still is
that the problem of severe child malnutrition, this problem that
a young Renee thought she could end, that the Ugandan
government has been trying to tackle, is still a big problem.
The news attention for this story will eventually fade, and
the court case could settle, but there are still mothers
(14:45):
who are desperately looking for care and children who are
still suffering from severe malnutrition. So When I think back
to that day, I still wonder what will happen to
them m Back in the summer, I was shocked that
(15:26):
Renee ever spoke to me, But the truth is she
was never fully bought into this podcast. I figured early
on that the best way to keep her involved would
be to indulge her point of view, to make it
abundantly clear that part of my process was to see
her side of things. And I spent more than a
dozen hours talking with her, but each interaction felt like
(15:49):
meeting her all over again. The real Renee was walled off, unknowable.
There was always an emotional barrier. Sometimes it was a
hard time limit, a lawyer listening by phone, or the
over politeness of my questions trying not to offend her.
We went long gaps without speaking because Renee stopped participating
(16:12):
at multiple points. The closest I got to a breakthrough
was a few weeks before Christmas of last year. Are
good talking about well marked? It doesn't have these people
that are using. Renee invited me over for lunch and
(16:36):
what wound up being our last interview. Her place was small,
a converted garage on a friend's property, surrounded by woods
and farmland. When I entered, there was the aroma of
fresh bread in the kitchen above a space heater. In
the living room next to Renee's bed, there were a
(16:56):
few stockings and tinsel on the wall, and the rest
to the apartment was dedicated to the baby. The younger
of her two adopted daughters, less than two years old,
was awake when I got there. She was scrambling around
the place and smashing face first into a mirror, from
which she got up giggling to look at yourself, because
(17:19):
you're so cute. Renee left Uganda in October two thousand
eighteen to finalize her daughter's adoption. The court case against
her was filed three months later, and Renee hasn't returned since.
It's why there are almost no mementos in her house
from her entire time in Uganda, which is we're wondering,
(17:42):
is anything from Uganda or is it pretty much all
stuff you required names. My sister made that Eileen Chrism.
She's talking about a cow skull named Boris on her wall.
When her daughter took a nap, Renee, her mom and
(18:03):
I walked around outside for a bit. The property was
a hundred forty acres. The trails went back for miles,
but right next to Renee's apartment was a k barn.
It looked like a wedding venue with polished carriages inside,
just like the how she grew up in. There were
(18:23):
quotations inscribed throughout the property Psalm nine one. The heavens
declare the glory of God, the skies proclaimed the work
of his hands. And there are far better things ahead
than any we leave behind. C. S. Lewis from our
very first interview, Renee used famous quotes as a way
(18:46):
of grounding herself amidst all this controversy. There's a really
great quote on my brain now, but basically just talking
about like there are so many people that will just
sit and point fingers at people that are in the arena,
you know of blood, sweat and tears um, but like
who are they to really speak into that. She found
(19:07):
the quote later and texted it to me. It came
from Teddy Roosevelt. It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done
the better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena. Whose face is mob Bob dustin
(19:31):
sweat and blood, who straws valiantly, who airs, who comes
short again and again, because there is no effort without
error and shortcoming. If he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
(19:59):
During the we published this, it was announced that the
Teddy Roosevelt statue outside the American Museum of Natural History
would be removed expressly because of its racist depiction of
black and indigenous people. Under the President's subjugation, he was
a cheerleader for colonization, which he justified with poetic passages
(20:22):
like the one Renee shared. Was it worth it? Did
I hear God wrong? These were the questions Renee said
she'd been asking herself lately, the things she never stopped
to ask of herself all those years in Uganda. So
(20:43):
I'm really curious to talk about, you know, especially leading
up to if there were moments that you recall of
having self doubt about not so much submission of the organization,
just about how are you were going about it, how
much work you were doing, For example, like the workaholic
thing that a I was so busy that I almost
(21:04):
like didn't have time to probably doubt the things that
were going on. Um, whether that's like right, wrong or indifferent,
But I felt with such strong certainty that like serving
as children was doing what it was supposed to do.
As like ignorant and like kind of pumpous as it sounds,
I didn't have a lot of self doubt back then,
and I think part of that was because I was
(21:25):
like young and ignorant and ambitious, and you know, like
I didn't know what I didn't know. And I think
that's some more now, Like did I just like totally
waste my life and like ruin other people's lives? But
doing the last decade of my life, um is more
thought now. And I think I've always felt like sure
(21:48):
of my decisions when I come to them, like all
growing up and through high school and even like my
decision to go to you gone to the first time,
and once I made those decisions, I felt like such
a strong conviction it was what I was supposed to do.
And yeah, like I missed. I missed that feeling of
of being assured that like I'm on the right path
(22:09):
in life, and um, I definitely don't have that anymore.
When I first began working on this story, I thought
we were going to figure out the truth. Either Renee
(22:31):
was a monster and she'd killed those kids, or she'd
been wrongly accused and she was the victim of a
tremendous injustice. But then I spent time with her and
discovered what a mess this whole thing was, and I
came to believe that Renee wants and has always wanted
to be a force for good in this world. I
(22:51):
really do believe that. Still, as we sat on the
floor of her home, eating her mom's stew, I kept
thinking about one simple fact, the same thing Helema could
never get past. Renee had run an unlicensed facility where
medicine was practiced on vulnerable children, something she'd never have
(23:12):
gotten away with in the US, And if Renee wanted
to make a difference, then she should go to jail
for it. That's the only way there's going to be
systemic change that we might have a shot at ending
white saviorism. Watching Renee be a mom the empathy I
felt it was hard to reconcile with these thoughts. But
(23:34):
as we said before, this story was about so much
more than just one woman. Renee was now a symbol.
She's the monument that has to be topic and it's
very hard. But I didn't say anything. I just sat there, listen.
Did you even make a difference, because like, all I
wanted to do was like make a difference and help people.
(23:54):
But did I not help anyone? And did I not
make a difference? Like that's why I'm being told that
art by the world, you know, um, And so wrestling
through that stuff really tough. Um. Before I left, I
asked Renee if she had any pictures of the early
days of serving his children before this all happened. So
(24:15):
this was at the house. I don't know if you
ever seen it. I guess I don't actually think I've seen.
She pulled out an old laptop and began combing through
folders and so like, this was my bedroom right here,
and there's like a little small room and there were
pictures of kids on pink swing sets on the porch,
a photo of a camel that arrived one day at
(24:36):
the center and never left. The day when ten baby
goats were born and the staff cradled them all at once.
It was a pretty happy place with the most part
people were pretty I'm sure this was. This was our kitchen,
and these two rooms turned into also rooms with cribs
for kids, and that was the intensive care room. Then
(25:00):
we got to photos that we talked about a lot
sick kids before coming to serving his children and happy
kids going home. And this little girl was actually admitted
to the center when we um closed in two thousand fifteen.
She was less than a kilo. She was like a
pound or something. Yeah, she was in the center. Yeah,
this was her in the ICU. So he was some
(25:22):
before and after one. They were hung like this, so
like before and after, before and after we had, you know,
almost a thousand of those. They went like all the
way down and all the way to the ceiling. After
our center closed, these photos stayed up for a really
long time. It was actually like a very emotional process
(25:42):
for me to take. It was kind of like a
morning I guess process too. That's probably a lot of
a lot of things. That was where I left Renee,
sorting through the memories, taking the good ones with her,
leaving the bad ones behind, while her daughter, who knew
(26:05):
nothing of this, slept peacefully in the other room. I mean,
I would love to be able to work in the
like humanitarian service industry. Again, um, I don't know if
that's possible for a while. I'm not super favorably looked
upon and so some of those circles. But I think
(26:29):
this has helped remind me that like that is still
my heartbeat, and I still do love that, And even
though I've been so burned by it, I still a
big part of my heart is still in that world.
(27:04):
That day in the courtroom, the judge announced that after
months enclosed or negotiations, both sides, Renee and the mothers
still hadn't reached an agreement, so he ordered the case
back to legal mediation, a last dig attempt to settle
things out of court. After a whole year, it was
tough to see any ending or any answers to this
(27:26):
whole case. It felt like things had never left the
starting line. But there's one child who's been on my
mind this whole time, one we haven't told you about yet.
His name is Elijah Kawa Gamba, and he's the son
of Kakai Annette Rose, one of the mothers involved in
(27:48):
the court case. There's a simple reason you haven't heard
much about Kawa Gamba. Yet it's because well, we don't
really know what happened to him, and neither does Kai.
And then I met Kakai for the first time shortly
(28:08):
after the case was filed at a hotel Enginer. She
was shy, looking down at her feet with her hands
folded in her lap. Joyce Alana, one of Herne's former
social workers, helped interpret for me without any without discharge
from They didn't even tell how the shell is suffering from.
(28:28):
What Kakai did know was that Cala Gamba passed away
shortly after being discharged from serving his children's new reopened facility.
But she was never told why her baby died. Reaching
their home, they said, just spent three days and they
said date. So she doesn't know what was done to
(28:49):
the child. She can't now return her child back. All
the hopes not there and all the hopes are gone. Yeah,
she had three other children, the young one who is
for us. Keep on asking them where is Cala Gande?
(29:11):
Doesn't know that I do what The last line of
kais affidavit reads, I strongly believe that serving his children's
employees did something to my child that led to his death.
Here's Prima again. It's abuse of dignity. You basically stripped
(29:33):
these women of the woman who would say that you
treat them like they're not people. She asked for what
had killed her child, and no explanation was given. It
was until we filed the case and they fired this
response almost four or five months later. As a human being,
(29:53):
you deserve a right to access your medical records. It
doesn't matter if I'm illiterate or I paid no I
stew As a human being, I have rights to dignity
because you took my child a life. My child is
did Renee, however, denies that Kawa Gamba was ever even
(30:14):
admitted to serving his children. She says she knows nothing
about him or Kakai. Then we started hearing rumors that
this whole thing was a setup, that Kawa Gamba's death
was due to Kakai's negligence. We needed to follow up
on these new revelations, so I went over to Kakai's
(30:37):
house with Samy, the same former employee who helped me
track down Nabucoz's mother. The whole bumpy motorcycle ride there,
my stomach was in a not Kakai didn't know what
our interview was going to be about, and the last
thing I wanted to do just confront a grieving mother
with a conspiracy that she killed her own child and
(30:58):
pinned it on Renee. Kah Kakai's family home was on
a small farm of banana trees and cassava plants, with
a few chickens running around and making a racket. She
smiled as soon as we wrote in and invited us
inside with her elderly mother. We sat around a small
wooden table and started talking. Okay, so yeah, I'm hoping
(31:22):
to hear your story from the beginning to the end
um and then from there we will discuss more. Mike
Wanda m m story. Mm hmm, you're good, I go
(31:47):
on it. She told me the same story that she'd
written in her affidavit, her back and forth journeys to
serving his children, to Ginger and my Yuka, to home
in the hospital, and eventually the death of her son Isa.
He's trying to tell you that her child, though the
(32:08):
child was small, the child was living a happy life,
was so happy, was so lively because being small. It's
not her sickness. What paining most was that, to this
day she's never been told exactly what caused her son's death?
Did they give her a reason for this? Church? Back
(32:31):
walk when the sea to energy and tell you what come?
She's telling you that? Now what reason? If they even
failed to present a dougment to her about the medicine
(32:53):
that the child has been given the condition, Now what dougment?
But then I had to ask the question that I'd
come here to ask. The story I've heard is this
that they told her that the child has pneumonia. The
doctor said that this clinic does not have the equipment
or qualifications to treat pneumonia, so they gave her medicine
(33:16):
and told her to go to a different hospital. Buddy, yeah,
oh my, no what She slammed her finger on the
table to make a point in a single word. But
(33:39):
I never heard her like this. No, no, no, like
to see what they she's telling you that he was
not told anything about when a sickness Caba Gandia suffering from.
(34:01):
If they're saying like that that the child had money
and she was advised to go and seek for medical treatment,
theyre just liars. Go man, article see and no, I
could see we didn't go on that child even better
passing she began to shake with anger one and the
(34:25):
man to south grand about I'm tears ran down her cheeks.
What a man hanger, Nancy you. I pulled the microphone
away and looked down at my feet. I felt like
(34:48):
I'd driven a knife into Kai and twisted it. I
began to question what I was even doing there in
the first place. And something she said earlier in the
interview ray in my ears louder and louder, what is
the relationship that Mr Kakai has with Kelsey and No
(35:09):
Waight Saviors? How did she come to know them? Nea
wm Zio solf has come here? When she met them,
they asked her some questions and she answered to them
how she has answered you. No Wight Saviors had shown
(35:31):
up and asked Kakai to retell the most painful moments
of her life. Then they packed their bags and were off.
It was the same pattern Kakai saw and every single journalist,
lawyer and activists that visited, and I realized I was
no different. We spoke to over a hundred people around
(35:52):
the world to get to the bottom of the story. Well,
there'd be malnourished children and then one day they've Begune
what happened? Why we dove deep in the ginger community
and got caught up in the drama of it all.
It was just, honestly, like mean girls on steroids. We
flipped through centuries of history to understand the impact of
the missionary movement. I'm doing this by virtue of a
(36:13):
fourth greater than me. We waded through rivers of red
tape to understand how the government could let something like
this happen. See goed the step and say the center
has been closed. We spent so much time piecing together
contradictory narratives. She wasn't a good Samaritan, She's a fraud
hunting for clues the Missongus that found Nabucosa. They're saying
(36:33):
that she was neglected and getting caught up in the
nitty gritty of it. This is the city as Proceedia
that I forgot what this story was actually about. This
case became a symbol for white guilt. Black lives do
not matter to the same level to us as white people,
the failures of international aid but we can't get rid
(36:53):
of it, and structural racism in Africa. People galify what
people seemed like everyone involved in this case was using
it to make a point. I hoped to see humility
to defend an idea, was watching her be literally crucified
for trying to do the right thing. Somewhere along the way,
this case stopped being about two mothers seeking answers the
(37:15):
most simple and basic reparation. And as the world debated
on Twitter, on cable news, in editorial columns, the Savior Complex,
five children died in an unlicensed Kakai was here alone,
(37:37):
still searching for some comfort an answer. After she had
a moment to breathe, I asked where Kawakamba's grave was.
She got up and silently led the way. So I
followed through the banana groves and into a small clearing
(38:01):
and in the corner was a mound of earth. Oh,
I'm gonna dick a wemma, I'm bad to Wenmer. Sit up,
it is not listen no, addie. Kakai went over and
started clearing the weeds from the grave. She told me
(38:28):
she came out here every week if she could to
keep kawa Ganbe's grave clean. And then she walked to
the other corner, sat down and wept to herself for
a while. I just stood there until Kokai rose to
(38:53):
her feet and brought us back to the house. She
took a seat on a bench with her hands in
her lap. As we packed her back acts and boarded
our motorcycles. She gave us a wave as we set off,
and when I looked back a ways down the road,
she was still there, hands folded, looking down at her
(39:15):
feet as the crickets drowned on into the evening. The
(39:58):
Missionaries produced in association with I Heart Media. It's written
and reported by Roger Gola, Helene mcge Coondhi, and Malcolm Burnley.
It's produced by Michelle Lands and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto
is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangishler. Our
fact checker is Austin Thompson.
What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
In January of this year, I made my way to
the courthouse in Ginger. It had been almost exactly a
(00:21):
full year since the case against Renee was filed and
we started looking into it. The courthouse was full of
journalists from the States, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, all waiting
for news. The plaintiffs were also here. Gimbo Zubda, the
mother of Tlali, was in the courtyard speaking with her lawyers,
(00:44):
and Kakai Rose, the other mother in the case, was
sitting in a corner by herself. I waved hello and
she gave me a smile. I had met Kakai a
couple of times by then. In the beginning, she was
shy and didn't open up very easy way, but over
the course of that year she became a bit more
friendly with me. We didn't speak the same language, but
(01:07):
she always waved and greeted me when she saw me,
asked me how I was doing that day. No one
was interpreting for her, but she seemed glad to be there,
to just be present. Sitting on a wooden bench outside
the courtroom, I couldn't help but think about the first
time I was here, about the energy that Kelsey and
(01:28):
Olivia brought with them into this courthouse when they joined
the lawyers who were filing a civil suit against Renee
and serving his children back in twenty nine. So this
is what I want to see right now. For me,
this is so important, you know, it will help me
more forward. This is historical. It's going down the books
of history in my country, in Uganda and the world
(01:51):
as well, that this is the first time that someone
is looking into work that is done by a white person.
More feels that they're helping so much, like we compass
of Africa and we're sacrificing. To Livia, I just wanted
to show the wall that it's not sacrifice. She was
not doing us any sacrifice, but she was just humming
us like she was destroying our society. A lot had
(02:17):
changed since those early days when I used to think
that No Waite Saviors was our story. It had gotten
so much bigger. It was about a whole system of
international aid and injustice, the trauma of people affected by it,
and the moral dilemma of doing the right thing. Renee
(02:37):
and no White Saviors began to seem like small characters
in a much larger saga. Eventually we made our way
into the courtroom. After an hour of hearing news on
other local cases, the judge finally mentioned Renee's case in
association with iHeart Media, I'm ROGI Gola, I'm Hee make Con,
(03:00):
I'm Malcolm Burnley and this is the missionary Episode eight.
What's left? Media interest in Renee Bach and serving his
children has ebbed and flowed throughout the past year. One
(03:21):
of the only things I found to be consistent in
the story was the lawyer representing the women in the case.
Her name is Prima qua Gala. She runs the Women's
pro bono initiative in Uganda, and she was one of
the very first people I interviewed for this story last year.
Even then, she seemed pretty confident about the case she
had in hand. Perhaps every lawyer feels that way, but
(03:44):
Prima is one of the few health rights lawyers in Uganda,
and she had taken people bigger than Renee to court,
even litigated against the Ugandan government. So Prima had guts
and experience. I thought it was crazy, according to much
doing something like that taking place in our country, especially
I mean from a white person. We look at white
(04:06):
people as very good people. They have very good intentions
for us. So when someone told me that, I said,
oh my god. I have been doing cases in the
health sector for almost tamyas now I had never come
across anything like that. By early two thousand nineteen, Prima
had the testimonies of these two women. She also had
(04:28):
clear evidence that serving his children had been an unlicensed
health facility and was still providing advanced medicine to children
like tolal A. That alone is illegal in Uganda, as
we've said, in the same way that it is in
the US, where it's a felony. Keep in mind, medical
malpractice and fraud isn't a uniquely Ugandan problem. Imagine finding
(04:51):
out your doctor didn't have a license to practice. Like
so many other fake health care workers in Colorado, this
one is also accused of tending to be someone she's
not to treat some of our state's most vulnerable people.
Police say they got an anonymous tip that Golden was
practicing as a medical doctor but with no license. In
North Carolina, state regulators are letting dozens of these impostors
(05:14):
go unlicensed and unpunished. The system is flawed. She's able
to slip through these cracks like this over and over again.
Over the past year. I would check in on and
off with Prima and her partner, Beatrice Kayaga to see
if they had made any other breakthroughs in this case,
found any new witnesses that we hadn't, or any outstanding
piece of evidence, maybe a video of Renee performing surgery
(05:37):
or something like that, And for the most part, there wasn't,
but they didn't need it. My cass is not really
about her character who she is. A case is very simple.
It's just that she was not licensed to do any
medical work. Her facility did not have license. Prima's focused,
(05:58):
simple and narrow approach to this case always struck me
because it was such a stark contrast from the full
range and volume of accusations against Renee that Renee had
stolen babies from hospitals, experimented on children, and bribed Ugandan officials.
An unlicensed facility seems like a rather minor, albeit still
(06:20):
illegal fact, and that's been the most frustrating and challenging
part of reporting this story. The more complex the accusations became,
the harder it was to be able to know factually
was it true or not, because they relied on conflicting
anecdotal evidence and interpretations of Renee's actions. I learned this
(06:40):
as I went to track down more than a dozen
Ugandan health workers who had worked at serving his children,
as well as senior health officials. So I can see
why Prima kept her case so narrow to her. Those
other questions are besides the point her cases that you
(07:01):
gone and women like Kakai had a basic right for
themselves and their children to be treated at legitimate health
facilities within Uganda's health care system by licensed professionals, the
right to dignity for me to ask for what has
(07:22):
given my child, and you can't give me answers because
I don't deserve any. But you took my child away
with the promise that you're going to help them, but
then you can't give me feedback. That's in human, it's degrading.
It's for years on end. She can't get any answers
(07:43):
until we by the case. She says Renee had violated
the rights of the most vulnerable women. Rights given are
Uganda's Constitution. Most of these women are illiterate. They've never
been to school, they can't speak a word but English.
They don't have jobs, they can't and even fifty dollars
(08:03):
in a year they can't. Someone who is vulnerable, very poor,
and is looking at her child dying, when someone tells
her that Rainie's hope and Rainy is doing this, they
go because they're looking for help. And then here's a
white person saying, oh, I'm going to give your food.
I mean, you go to her home. There's a bed,
(08:24):
there is porridge, there is tea, you can use the bathroom,
you can wash your clothes. It seems like heaven to them.
Wouldn't you gone and have gone that long without oversight?
They wouldn't last a year, not even five months. People
would say where are you getting that money? Who are you?
(08:46):
You know, even those illiterate women would ask are you
qualified to do this? They stand up to you and
ask that. But this is a white person that's intimate
dating already that you're white, and we assume that the
white people are educated people. In fact, in May two
thousand fifteen, only two months after serving his children, was
(09:07):
shut down. Health clinics in northern Uganda were shut down
for nearly the same reasons. Officials say the clinics at
the level of health center to are being operated by
underqualified people. The aim of the operation is to protect
the public from home. Those who are arrested will be
changed in court. Seven people were arrested and while serving
(09:31):
his children was shut down. Renee was never arrested, nor
were any members of her staff, and they were able
to reopen, albeit in a different district. Now, whether that
was due to pour oversight, bribes or genuine reform, we
still don't know. The wise in the house. In both
(09:52):
Uganda and in the US, people have gone to jail
for these violations or faced other repercussions were it's still
in Virginia. Oh. There is no such thing as running
away from the law in this world, especially in a
civil case. WHOA that can be enforced anywhere. It can
(10:13):
even be enforced on us soil. We just have to
forward the judgment to the authorities in the U s
and they'll get her. Prina also told me that whether
they win or lose the case, it will have still
made a difference. I see people are becoming more alive
to challenging the system. People are starting to say, no,
(10:34):
we can't do better, start questioning the system and the services.
So it is through cases like this I like to say,
sometimes it's not that we want to win, but we
want to cause people to learn to question because maybe
I will lose. But next time a white person comes around,
they're going to think about the expenses they have to
(10:58):
to incur if someone came up with a suit against them,
because you would say, oh, you lost, No I did not.
Really has spent money defending herself, so she is aware
that she can't get away with what she's doing anymore.
So it's a stut. We always have to start from somewhere.
(11:23):
This story has tapped into a much bigger conversation about
the role of white people in Africa more broadly, a
discussion that Africans and black people have been having for decades.
In the past, the conversation was about colonizers, missionaries, imperialists.
These days it extends to white journalists, aid workers, humanitarians, activists,
(11:47):
and social entrepreneurs. Why do white journalists have certain privileges,
Why are white people called expats instead of immigrants, Why
do white aid workers have these six figure salaries? Well,
you've gone an experts get pennies on the dollar. Why
do white entrepreneurs get so much more venture capital compared
to local African startups. These are all questions that I
(12:09):
hear constantly, and Serving his Children and Renee were smack
in the middle of this conversation. But the question that
remains is what's next? Do white foreigners have a role
in contemporary Africa at all? Months into reporting this story,
(12:30):
I finally went to Serving his Children's current facility in
Chi Gondolo. Remember now, it's operating within a government facility,
and from what we could tell, was operating by the books.
It's run by Ugandan health professionals, but is funded by
Serving his Children. Inside there's a small sign with the
(12:50):
logos of Serving His Children on one side and Uganda's
Ministry of Health on the other. The staff invited me
into the children's ward, so I took off my shoes
and entered. It looked like an ordinary clinic with child
sized hospital beds lining both sides of the room, cartoons
on the walls. But when I saw the children, I
(13:13):
was shocked. By then, I had passed through countless photos
of emaciated, bloated and utterly sick children who had been
posted on Serving His Children's website over the years, or
on the blogs of other missionaries and volunteers. Standing in
that room, I was struck with such a strong sense
(13:35):
of deja vu. In the center, there were mothers sitting
on the floor with their babies whose skin was peeling
off due to infections related to severe malnutrition. The mothers
were bathing their children in a brownish liquid that nurses
said was an iodine solution to help their skin heal.
(13:58):
The staff told me these mothers had come from far
off rural areas where severe malnutrition is still a problem
and access to affordable healthcare is still limited. I still
think back to that day a year later, after trying
to piece together the parts of this story to figure
(14:20):
out the facts. The clearest thing to me still is
that the problem of severe child malnutrition, this problem that
a young Renee thought she could end, that the Ugandan
government has been trying to tackle, is still a big problem.
The news attention for this story will eventually fade, and
the court case could settle, but there are still mothers
(14:45):
who are desperately looking for care and children who are
still suffering from severe malnutrition. So When I think back
to that day, I still wonder what will happen to
them m Back in the summer, I was shocked that
(15:26):
Renee ever spoke to me, But the truth is she
was never fully bought into this podcast. I figured early
on that the best way to keep her involved would
be to indulge her point of view, to make it
abundantly clear that part of my process was to see
her side of things. And I spent more than a
dozen hours talking with her, but each interaction felt like
(15:49):
meeting her all over again. The real Renee was walled off, unknowable.
There was always an emotional barrier. Sometimes it was a
hard time limit, a lawyer listening by phone, or the
over politeness of my questions trying not to offend her.
We went long gaps without speaking because Renee stopped participating
(16:12):
at multiple points. The closest I got to a breakthrough
was a few weeks before Christmas of last year. Are
good talking about well marked? It doesn't have these people
that are using. Renee invited me over for lunch and
(16:36):
what wound up being our last interview. Her place was small,
a converted garage on a friend's property, surrounded by woods
and farmland. When I entered, there was the aroma of
fresh bread in the kitchen above a space heater. In
the living room next to Renee's bed, there were a
(16:56):
few stockings and tinsel on the wall, and the rest
to the apartment was dedicated to the baby. The younger
of her two adopted daughters, less than two years old,
was awake when I got there. She was scrambling around
the place and smashing face first into a mirror, from
which she got up giggling to look at yourself, because
(17:19):
you're so cute. Renee left Uganda in October two thousand
eighteen to finalize her daughter's adoption. The court case against
her was filed three months later, and Renee hasn't returned since.
It's why there are almost no mementos in her house
from her entire time in Uganda, which is we're wondering,
(17:42):
is anything from Uganda or is it pretty much all
stuff you required names. My sister made that Eileen Chrism.
She's talking about a cow skull named Boris on her wall.
When her daughter took a nap, Renee, her mom and
(18:03):
I walked around outside for a bit. The property was
a hundred forty acres. The trails went back for miles,
but right next to Renee's apartment was a k barn.
It looked like a wedding venue with polished carriages inside,
just like the how she grew up in. There were
(18:23):
quotations inscribed throughout the property Psalm nine one. The heavens
declare the glory of God, the skies proclaimed the work
of his hands. And there are far better things ahead
than any we leave behind. C. S. Lewis from our
very first interview, Renee used famous quotes as a way
(18:46):
of grounding herself amidst all this controversy. There's a really
great quote on my brain now, but basically just talking
about like there are so many people that will just
sit and point fingers at people that are in the arena,
you know of blood, sweat and tears um, but like
who are they to really speak into that. She found
(19:07):
the quote later and texted it to me. It came
from Teddy Roosevelt. It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done
the better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena. Whose face is mob Bob dustin
(19:31):
sweat and blood, who straws valiantly, who airs, who comes
short again and again, because there is no effort without
error and shortcoming. If he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
(19:59):
During the we published this, it was announced that the
Teddy Roosevelt statue outside the American Museum of Natural History
would be removed expressly because of its racist depiction of
black and indigenous people. Under the President's subjugation, he was
a cheerleader for colonization, which he justified with poetic passages
(20:22):
like the one Renee shared. Was it worth it? Did
I hear God wrong? These were the questions Renee said
she'd been asking herself lately, the things she never stopped
to ask of herself all those years in Uganda. So
(20:43):
I'm really curious to talk about, you know, especially leading
up to if there were moments that you recall of
having self doubt about not so much submission of the organization,
just about how are you were going about it, how
much work you were doing, For example, like the workaholic
thing that a I was so busy that I almost
(21:04):
like didn't have time to probably doubt the things that
were going on. Um, whether that's like right, wrong or indifferent,
But I felt with such strong certainty that like serving
as children was doing what it was supposed to do.
As like ignorant and like kind of pumpous as it sounds,
I didn't have a lot of self doubt back then,
and I think part of that was because I was
(21:25):
like young and ignorant and ambitious, and you know, like
I didn't know what I didn't know. And I think
that's some more now, Like did I just like totally
waste my life and like ruin other people's lives? But
doing the last decade of my life, um is more
thought now. And I think I've always felt like sure
(21:48):
of my decisions when I come to them, like all
growing up and through high school and even like my
decision to go to you gone to the first time,
and once I made those decisions, I felt like such
a strong conviction it was what I was supposed to do.
And yeah, like I missed. I missed that feeling of
of being assured that like I'm on the right path
(22:09):
in life, and um, I definitely don't have that anymore.
When I first began working on this story, I thought
we were going to figure out the truth. Either Renee
(22:31):
was a monster and she'd killed those kids, or she'd
been wrongly accused and she was the victim of a
tremendous injustice. But then I spent time with her and
discovered what a mess this whole thing was, and I
came to believe that Renee wants and has always wanted
to be a force for good in this world. I
(22:51):
really do believe that. Still, as we sat on the
floor of her home, eating her mom's stew, I kept
thinking about one simple fact, the same thing Helema could
never get past. Renee had run an unlicensed facility where
medicine was practiced on vulnerable children, something she'd never have
(23:12):
gotten away with in the US, And if Renee wanted
to make a difference, then she should go to jail
for it. That's the only way there's going to be
systemic change that we might have a shot at ending
white saviorism. Watching Renee be a mom the empathy I
felt it was hard to reconcile with these thoughts. But
(23:34):
as we said before, this story was about so much
more than just one woman. Renee was now a symbol.
She's the monument that has to be topic and it's
very hard. But I didn't say anything. I just sat there, listen.
Did you even make a difference, because like, all I
wanted to do was like make a difference and help people.
(23:54):
But did I not help anyone? And did I not
make a difference? Like that's why I'm being told that
art by the world, you know, um, And so wrestling
through that stuff really tough. Um. Before I left, I
asked Renee if she had any pictures of the early
days of serving his children before this all happened. So
(24:15):
this was at the house. I don't know if you
ever seen it. I guess I don't actually think I've seen.
She pulled out an old laptop and began combing through
folders and so like, this was my bedroom right here,
and there's like a little small room and there were
pictures of kids on pink swing sets on the porch,
a photo of a camel that arrived one day at
(24:36):
the center and never left. The day when ten baby
goats were born and the staff cradled them all at once.
It was a pretty happy place with the most part
people were pretty I'm sure this was. This was our kitchen,
and these two rooms turned into also rooms with cribs
for kids, and that was the intensive care room. Then
(25:00):
we got to photos that we talked about a lot
sick kids before coming to serving his children and happy
kids going home. And this little girl was actually admitted
to the center when we um closed in two thousand fifteen.
She was less than a kilo. She was like a
pound or something. Yeah, she was in the center. Yeah,
this was her in the ICU. So he was some
(25:22):
before and after one. They were hung like this, so
like before and after, before and after we had, you know,
almost a thousand of those. They went like all the
way down and all the way to the ceiling. After
our center closed, these photos stayed up for a really
long time. It was actually like a very emotional process
(25:42):
for me to take. It was kind of like a
morning I guess process too. That's probably a lot of
a lot of things. That was where I left Renee,
sorting through the memories, taking the good ones with her,
leaving the bad ones behind, while her daughter, who knew
(26:05):
nothing of this, slept peacefully in the other room. I mean,
I would love to be able to work in the
like humanitarian service industry. Again, um, I don't know if
that's possible for a while. I'm not super favorably looked
upon and so some of those circles. But I think
(26:29):
this has helped remind me that like that is still
my heartbeat, and I still do love that, And even
though I've been so burned by it, I still a
big part of my heart is still in that world.
(27:04):
That day in the courtroom, the judge announced that after
months enclosed or negotiations, both sides, Renee and the mothers
still hadn't reached an agreement, so he ordered the case
back to legal mediation, a last dig attempt to settle
things out of court. After a whole year, it was
tough to see any ending or any answers to this
(27:26):
whole case. It felt like things had never left the
starting line. But there's one child who's been on my
mind this whole time, one we haven't told you about yet.
His name is Elijah Kawa Gamba, and he's the son
of Kakai Annette Rose, one of the mothers involved in
(27:48):
the court case. There's a simple reason you haven't heard
much about Kawa Gamba. Yet it's because well, we don't
really know what happened to him, and neither does Kai.
And then I met Kakai for the first time shortly
(28:08):
after the case was filed at a hotel Enginer. She
was shy, looking down at her feet with her hands
folded in her lap. Joyce Alana, one of Herne's former
social workers, helped interpret for me without any without discharge
from They didn't even tell how the shell is suffering from.
(28:28):
What Kakai did know was that Cala Gamba passed away
shortly after being discharged from serving his children's new reopened facility.
But she was never told why her baby died. Reaching
their home, they said, just spent three days and they
said date. So she doesn't know what was done to
(28:49):
the child. She can't now return her child back. All
the hopes not there and all the hopes are gone. Yeah,
she had three other children, the young one who is
for us. Keep on asking them where is Cala Gande?
(29:11):
Doesn't know that I do what The last line of
kais affidavit reads, I strongly believe that serving his children's
employees did something to my child that led to his death.
Here's Prima again. It's abuse of dignity. You basically stripped
(29:33):
these women of the woman who would say that you
treat them like they're not people. She asked for what
had killed her child, and no explanation was given. It
was until we filed the case and they fired this
response almost four or five months later. As a human being,
(29:53):
you deserve a right to access your medical records. It
doesn't matter if I'm illiterate or I paid no I
stew As a human being, I have rights to dignity
because you took my child a life. My child is
did Renee, however, denies that Kawa Gamba was ever even
(30:14):
admitted to serving his children. She says she knows nothing
about him or Kakai. Then we started hearing rumors that
this whole thing was a setup, that Kawa Gamba's death
was due to Kakai's negligence. We needed to follow up
on these new revelations, so I went over to Kakai's
(30:37):
house with Samy, the same former employee who helped me
track down Nabucoz's mother. The whole bumpy motorcycle ride there,
my stomach was in a not Kakai didn't know what
our interview was going to be about, and the last
thing I wanted to do just confront a grieving mother
with a conspiracy that she killed her own child and
(30:58):
pinned it on Renee. Kah Kakai's family home was on
a small farm of banana trees and cassava plants, with
a few chickens running around and making a racket. She
smiled as soon as we wrote in and invited us
inside with her elderly mother. We sat around a small
wooden table and started talking. Okay, so yeah, I'm hoping
(31:22):
to hear your story from the beginning to the end
um and then from there we will discuss more. Mike
Wanda m m story. Mm hmm, you're good, I go
(31:47):
on it. She told me the same story that she'd
written in her affidavit, her back and forth journeys to
serving his children, to Ginger and my Yuka, to home
in the hospital, and eventually the death of her son Isa.
He's trying to tell you that her child, though the
(32:08):
child was small, the child was living a happy life,
was so happy, was so lively because being small. It's
not her sickness. What paining most was that, to this
day she's never been told exactly what caused her son's death?
Did they give her a reason for this? Church? Back
(32:31):
walk when the sea to energy and tell you what come?
She's telling you that? Now what reason? If they even
failed to present a dougment to her about the medicine
(32:53):
that the child has been given the condition, Now what dougment?
But then I had to ask the question that I'd
come here to ask. The story I've heard is this
that they told her that the child has pneumonia. The
doctor said that this clinic does not have the equipment
or qualifications to treat pneumonia, so they gave her medicine
(33:16):
and told her to go to a different hospital. Buddy, yeah,
oh my, no what She slammed her finger on the
table to make a point in a single word. But
(33:39):
I never heard her like this. No, no, no, like
to see what they she's telling you that he was
not told anything about when a sickness Caba Gandia suffering from.
(34:01):
If they're saying like that that the child had money
and she was advised to go and seek for medical treatment,
theyre just liars. Go man, article see and no, I
could see we didn't go on that child even better
passing she began to shake with anger one and the
(34:25):
man to south grand about I'm tears ran down her cheeks.
What a man hanger, Nancy you. I pulled the microphone
away and looked down at my feet. I felt like
(34:48):
I'd driven a knife into Kai and twisted it. I
began to question what I was even doing there in
the first place. And something she said earlier in the
interview ray in my ears louder and louder, what is
the relationship that Mr Kakai has with Kelsey and No
(35:09):
Waight Saviors? How did she come to know them? Nea
wm Zio solf has come here? When she met them,
they asked her some questions and she answered to them
how she has answered you. No Wight Saviors had shown
(35:31):
up and asked Kakai to retell the most painful moments
of her life. Then they packed their bags and were off.
It was the same pattern Kakai saw and every single journalist,
lawyer and activists that visited, and I realized I was
no different. We spoke to over a hundred people around
(35:52):
the world to get to the bottom of the story. Well,
there'd be malnourished children and then one day they've Begune
what happened? Why we dove deep in the ginger community
and got caught up in the drama of it all.
It was just, honestly, like mean girls on steroids. We
flipped through centuries of history to understand the impact of
the missionary movement. I'm doing this by virtue of a
(36:13):
fourth greater than me. We waded through rivers of red
tape to understand how the government could let something like
this happen. See goed the step and say the center
has been closed. We spent so much time piecing together
contradictory narratives. She wasn't a good Samaritan, She's a fraud
hunting for clues the Missongus that found Nabucosa. They're saying
(36:33):
that she was neglected and getting caught up in the
nitty gritty of it. This is the city as Proceedia
that I forgot what this story was actually about. This
case became a symbol for white guilt. Black lives do
not matter to the same level to us as white people,
the failures of international aid but we can't get rid
(36:53):
of it, and structural racism in Africa. People galify what
people seemed like everyone involved in this case was using
it to make a point. I hoped to see humility
to defend an idea, was watching her be literally crucified
for trying to do the right thing. Somewhere along the way,
this case stopped being about two mothers seeking answers the
(37:15):
most simple and basic reparation. And as the world debated
on Twitter, on cable news, in editorial columns, the Savior Complex,
five children died in an unlicensed Kakai was here alone,
(37:37):
still searching for some comfort an answer. After she had
a moment to breathe, I asked where Kawakamba's grave was.
She got up and silently led the way. So I
followed through the banana groves and into a small clearing
(38:01):
and in the corner was a mound of earth. Oh,
I'm gonna dick a wemma, I'm bad to Wenmer. Sit up,
it is not listen no, addie. Kakai went over and
started clearing the weeds from the grave. She told me
(38:28):
she came out here every week if she could to
keep kawa Ganbe's grave clean. And then she walked to
the other corner, sat down and wept to herself for
a while. I just stood there until Kokai rose to
(38:53):
her feet and brought us back to the house. She
took a seat on a bench with her hands in
her lap. As we packed her back acts and boarded
our motorcycles. She gave us a wave as we set off,
and when I looked back a ways down the road,
she was still there, hands folded, looking down at her
(39:15):
feet as the crickets drowned on into the evening. The
(39:58):
Missionaries produced in association with I Heart Media. It's written
and reported by Roger Gola, Helene mcge Coondhi, and Malcolm Burnley.
It's produced by Michelle Lands and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto
is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangishler. Our
fact checker is Austin Thompson.
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