KAMPALA, UGANDA—When you Google “Stephen Batte,” you get over 600 hits. That’s a huge number of Internet references for a nine-year old Ugandan orphan, who up until recently didn’t have enough to eat, shoes, clean clothes, or a blanket, let alone a web presence.
But, now that he’s famous, in part thanks to me, he’s got an online following and about a dozen American and Canadian couples anxious to adopt him.
I met Stephen in May just outside Kampala, when I went to take photos for the Associated Press for a story about young children slaving all day to crush rocks in a stone quarry. Most people in the area are urban refugees from a twenty-year conflict that has ravaged Northern Uganda, though most of these children don’t know the place their parents left behind or the regional geopolitics that perpetuate the conflict. They do, however, know how to crush rocks: filling a twenty-litre jerry can earns them 100 shillings (about six cents). While their parents may have fled Northern Uganda for the safety of Kampala and the possibility of economic advancement, few people make it out of the quarry once they arrive. Every day, hundreds of adults and children sit scattered throughout the vast pit, tirelessly crushing rocks into smaller and smaller pebbles.I went to the quarry and found a community leader I had spoken with on the phone. She led me to Stephen, who an AP colleague had already interviewed and written about. He was shy and quiet, small and timid. I spoke with him for a quarter of an hour and then asked if I could take his picture. He let me. Then I walked around, watching dozens and dozens of children crush walks. I took about eight GB of photos over two or three days, and filed about twenty shot to an AP editor in Johannesburg, who put them on the wire. They were published in scores of newspapers across the West and posted on many web sites around the beginning of June.
Stephen’s web presence was born.
I posted them on my blog as well, with a short note about how sad Stephen was, how perplexed my colleague and I were about what—if anything—to do. Within twenty-four hours, I’d received about five emails from people telling me they wanted to find Stephen and help him. The Nairobi Bureau Chief of the AP said they have been inundated with messages.
Since the story was posted in the beginning of June, I’ve gotten about thirty emails about Stephen.
“I told [friends going to Uganda] about Stephen and my burden for him.”
“We have spoken to the director [of our mission] and he has given us the freedom to pursue Steven.”
“I would like to find a way to assist in getting Stephen out of the mines, paying his school fees for the next eight to ten years.”
On my blog, I posted the names of a few organizations that were doing work in the Kireka quarry and how to get in touch with them. Still, the inquires continued. People didn’t want to get in touch with an organization, they wanted to get in touch with Stephen. I emailed people, and posted: Stephen is very, very sad. But every single kid in the quarry is very, very sad. And there were hundreds of kids working there. It’s great to want to help Stephen, but sitting right next to Stephen, also crushing rocks in the quarry, is another kid who needs help, and right next to the other kid is another one.
On July 1, someone emailed me a link to the story The Power of One Donor. It tells the story of a woman in Washington state who was determined to help Stephen. She found a missionary group in Kampala that partnered with her church in Washington and contacted them and sent them money to find and help Stephen.
I called David Knowlton, the Ugandan man who took Stephen in with assistance from the lady in Washington, to check in on Stephen and see what else was new in the quarry.
Knowlton said he’d received many inquires about Stephen. He said that he’s told the interested parties that he’s taken Stephen in, and that there are a lot of other children in the quarry who are just as badly off and would love assistance.
I asked him if any of those people had followed up in the quarry, agreed to help others, after they’d heard that Stephen was already being assisted.
None that he knew of, he said.
Too bad the other kids aren’t on Google, I thought.
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