The story starts with the picture of this cute little boy... We called him Paul and we think he was around 6 months old. On March 6, we received a phone call from a police post in the village. They had found a baby in the bushes, near the trading centre of the village. The villages are often very stretched and they mostly have a small centre, where the police has a post, where a couple of small shops are and where often also a very small market is. They found the Babyboy, laying in the bushes. The social workers hopped in the car to go and pick the baby.
Paul is a healthy baby boy, often children who are left abandoned, are malnourished or sick, but Paul was not sick or malnourished, you could see that he was taken care off.
The social workers went back to the village, we had made posters with the picture of Paul and the information when he was found. We asked everybody, who recognised the baby, to contact the Police or Amecet Children's Home. They talked with people, asking if they had seen anybody who they didn't know or if they knew anybody who had a baby and suddenly the baby was gone.
We had just decided to do radio messages about Paul, to ask more people if they knew anything about a missing baby.
But then this morning a gentleman came at the door in Amecet, telling us that he saw the picture and he thought that he might be a relative of the baby.
Our three social workers, Simon, Andrew and Pius, went today to the village. They found the grandmother of Paul, through the directions of the gentleman of this morning. And they were not prepared for the story they heard there.....
The grandmother also had seen the picture, some women showed her the picture, and she said that the baby just looked like her daughter, when she was small. Her daughter had just come back home after a disappearance of two years!! She had disappeared out of school, went to Jinja and stayed there for 2 years. The grandmother was suspicious of her, when she saw the picture of baby Paul. She went to the community leader 3, he promised to investigate and asked the grandmother for 210,000 ush. (around 55 Euro), which is a lot of money for the in the village. The grandmother had to borrow money from people to pay the L.C.3 for the facilitation of the investigation. He talked with the daughter and in that talk the daughter agreed that the baby on the picture, was her son. The local leader then went back to the grandmother and told her that he had been to Amecet Children's Home and that the baby was her grandson, but the baby had died and the people of Amecet had buried him. The money was already used for the fuel of his motorbike and other costs.
On the picture, the grandmother sits on the ground, surrounded by her family, neighbours and friends. The daughter had ran away, when Simon, Andrew and Paul arrived, the people were ready for the meeting!! Many of them had witnessed the grandmother giving the money to the community leader and had heard that he told the old lady that her grandson was dead and buried. When Simon told them that the baby from the picture was very alive and doing good in Amecet, everybody was very happy, but also very upset by what the community leader had said and done.
They had also asked the daughter why she abandoned the baby in the bushes. She told them that she was afraid to come home with a baby. The father of the baby abandoned her, and she had no other place to go back to, than home. She is only 20 years old and was scared of the reaction of the clan. The grandmother is very happy to have a grandson, and Paul is very welcome at home!!
Simon, Andrew and Pius went back to Soroti, after giving report to the police. Paul was given to Amecet by the Police, it is now a police case with a case number.
The grandmother and the mother of Paul are coming next week to Amecet to identify the baby. We will lay all our baby's in a line and they have to get Paul out of that line...
The local leader is called and told to bring the money back to the grandmother before the end of this week. If he failed to do so, there will be consequences for him.
This is a corruption story from the village, where people don't have much money and it is so sad that a community leader takes advantage of the misery of this old lady.
We are happy that Paul has a family, a home and that he wanted and loved...
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