It is hard for those of us who live in the West to even begin to understand Steven's life story. As friends who have come to know Steven, we have looked to films and books and stories to help us start to grasp the depth of pain and the remarkable nature of his hope. Below you will find links to films that we have used to help comunicate with our Western friends.
STEVEN's STORY
Uganda, 1978. Five-year-old Steven had been running all night. Running from home - running from his mother. Running from the men's angry voices he had heard. Running in fits and starts, for a moment listening and catching his breath. Then running again - headlong. Stopping to check on the baby sibling he carried - waiting for his brother to catch up. Then running again, fear driving them deeper into the forest. Further from home - further from the men who had come that morning speaking words he didn’t understand, demanding to know where his father was. His father was long dead, as were two brothers. Feeling desperately alone, the weight of the night rested on him.
He had left his mother in fear. At his age he couldn’t imagine what that meant, what Would happen to her after the children escaped. She had begged them to run. “Look after the little ones,” Were the last words she had spoken to him. No tears - she had to be strong for her children and for what was to come. Looking back as an adult, he can imagine what happened to his mother. But Steven has carefully locked this away in some part of his memory where it is too painful to go.
Steven remembers his mother's strength even before that day. It was not the first time that the men had come. She had to be strong on all the other days - when they had come to demand food or comfort. When they had come to accuse her husband of helping other factions. When they had come to drag him to the top of the village and shoot him like a dog. When they had come to do the same to her two eldest sons.
After their escape, the three young children wandered lost in the rain forests of central Africa. Steven survived by eating leaves and roots, but he could not get his young siblings to eat. He carried them, and when they starved to death this little boy buried them. Alone, he finally arrived in a town - one orphan among so many orphans. A refugee, a remnant. He slept in the open and had no idea where he was - even which country he was in. No one knew him.
Eventually, someone took Steven in and gave him shelter, a place to start rebuilding. Normality came and the years passed. The details of his early life faded - he could no longer remember what his family looked like, or their names. But he could not forget leaving his mother or his siblings dying in his care. He felt that he had failed them.
When Steven was twelve the war had passed and the politics had changed. Steven sought the strength to join his family in death. He made so many attempts to commit suicide, believing there was no purpose in living without his family. Several times he strung a rope in a tree. Once he took poison. Each time someone stopped him or rescued him.
At some point he was packed off to an institution in Kampala where he could get proper care. The institution was bankrupt when he arrived and closed its doors in a few short weeks. Was he to be homeless again? A older orphan named Paul had found a bed in a crowded room others were willing to share. He reached out to Steven, who for the next year slept under Paul's bed. It was dry and safer than the streets. This was to become a way of life them - forming a family of orphans.
Sarah was also orphaned by the wars that plague central Africa. Her family was caught in the middle of the conflict with the LRA. It is possible that her brothers were kidnapped to be child soldiers - many boys were. Paul and Steven first noticed her singing in their church's choir. Paul fell in love with Sarah. She was from the North and Paul from the South – this just wasn’t done. What a family they were to be! Paul, Sarah, and Steven - mom, dad, and their first adopted son.
Paul’s found faith in God during the crusades that came to town after Amin. One night he challenged God to meet him - not in the church meetings with music playing, hands waving, prayers said. No - he challenged God to meet him on the streets, and by all accounts He did.
Steven saw Paul's faith that led him to take Steven in, feed him and care for him, not out of abundance but out of Paul's love for God who had met him when he had nothing. Steven was their first adopted child, but certainly not the last. Paul and Sarah have have not counted how many chidren they have embraced, but they have loved each of them as their own. They started a school and build a dormitory to houseand educate their children. They are still bringing orphaned children into their family.
When Steven grew up, he returned to his homeland - Kigali, Rwanda - just after the devastating genocide of 1994. There he met Provience , fell in love and married. He and his wife immediately opened their home and began adopting orphans. First from the streets, clinging to their parents' dead bodies after the wholesale slaughter. Later, as the epidemic of HIV/AIDs took hold, orphans joined the family - some sick themselves with the disease. At last count they have adopted 19 children. The family also includes two biological children and five other adults who help to raise all of the children. Steven continues to live in deep poverty even by African standards and yet that does not deter him from this way of life. He believes hope in God and the love of family keeps us alive, and he shares this with every day of his life.
