Laura Moran

Life was good in our village of Kamituga in the district of Mwenga, DRC. I lived there with both of my parents, my three sisters, and my brother. I was the firstborn. Mugoli, my sister, was next, then Bife, my other sister, and last came my brother, John. My parents enjoyed catering to my siblings and I, and showing us care and love. Life was not hard. We had our own house, clothes, and a bicycle. We were not rich, but we lived happily, with everything we could have wanted. Our village of Kamituga was wonderful. People loved each other and shared things. In our village, if someone got married or had a child, we would celebrate it together. Sometimes we would organize parties in the village just to enjoy each other and be together. It was good for us village children to love each other like that. We were united. It was home. One Tuesday evening, on the fifth day of July, eleven years ago, my father fell sick. We took him to the hospital. My family was in deep distress seeing him in pain. We thought that he would be treated, return home, and enjoy life with us again. The doctors treated him as best as they could, but he could not recover. They operated on him to see what was inside, but they failed to find an answer. He went to another hospital, but they too could not discover the cause of my father’s sickness. After spending a week in the hospital with no answers, we took my father back home. He took medicine at home, but things were still not good. I wanted to take my father to an herbalist; but, my uncle, aunt, and grandmother all refused. When things became so desperate that we sensed my father was about to die, my family changed their minds. We found an herbalist named Maroy. He was a tall, thin, dark-skinned gentleman dressed in a white shirt and black trousers. When we reached him, we asked Maroy what caused the sickness. He said, “First, take a seat while we see what to do.” We sat down and, after some minutes, Maroy came with medicine and testing materials. After preparing his things, he took my father and started a series of tests. Soon after, the herbalist came and told us that a poison was causing my father’s illness—that it had affected all of his body. He said it was a terrible poison that would destroy my father’s intestines. Maroy tried as much as possible to treat my father, but he failed. My father died of the poison. At the burial of my father, my uncle, aunt, and grandmother decided to take all of our property. They took the house we lived in, our clothes, our utensils. They took our things by force. They left us with nothing. They said that these things were the riches of their brother. We could not do anything. We were too young and my mum was too stressed from the death of her husband. We were choked. They went with everything and said that because their brother will not be alive again, they had to take his things. This made no sense to my family and I, but we had no way to fight back. After our father’s relatives stole our home, we moved to our neighbour’s house. One evening, our mum came and told us we were going to travel to Uganda the next day. We had to leave, she said, because we had nothing in our hand, and our neighbours had helped us as much as they could. We packed our things that very night, feeling devastated and alone. It wasn’t long before we faced another tragedy. When we set off in our car the next morning, a passing car knocked into us and pushed us off the road. We survived the accident. God saved us, along with the other people involved. But still, we could not eat or drink. We had no money. We faced hunger. We faced bad people–people who took all of the things that we had, what little clothes we had left, and our shoes. But again, we survived. When we arrived in Uganda, we found things were harder than we imagined. My mum moved us into a house in Nakivale near the police station where we could stay with the whole family. My siblings and I could not get jobs because we were underage. Our English was poor, and everything was in English. We could not go to school. We could not eat. Everything in our lives had changed. We lived this way, lost and scared, for a while. We could not get any help from my relatives or friends. We faced a difficult time during that moment. One day, six months later, a gentleman visited us. His name was Joshua. He was our neighbour. The day we arrived, he was there; our house and his were at the same place in one compound. We were still suffering when Joshua visited us. We had no schooling and there was not enough food to eat. There was not much food for us. Joshua approached us, he explained, because my mother was generous, despite our situation, and my sisters and I were kind, funny, and respectful to him. We had spent some time in passing with Joshua, sharing ideas about life and joking together. When he approached us that day, Joshua offered to teach my mother, my sisters, and me English, and my family accepted his help. Seven months later, Joshua offered my sister Mugoli a job at his school. Mugoli is intelligent and kind and she had started speaking English very well. Now she has a good post, and at the end of the first month, they gave Mugoli four hundred dollars. My sisters and I have started schooling, wearing new clothes, eating well and buying water to drink. Next year, I will get my diploma and