Pray for Viola

We have a problem here. A very big problem. If you are the praying sort, please get busy now. One of our girls from the orphanage ran away yesterday morning and she is still missing. She's a 9 year old named Viola and she's very timid and quite easily frightened. She ran away because she wet her bed and was afraid that she would be punished for it. You see, in Uganda the common solution to a problem is still to "beat", meaning they whack you on the back of your legs with a switch or something. We've had all of our teachers sign a form which indicates that we're trying to teach problem solving at the school so they are not to use physical punishment. But the idea of beating is so stuck in the kids minds still. Viola was so scared when she had to get a needle that she wouldn't even go into the hospital without screaming and crying. She's just an overly sensitive kid.

We think she may have been heading to her grandmother's home in Bugembe, but we don't think she even knows the way. It's really easy to get turned around once you make a few wrong turns here. She left yesterday morning and there's been no news of her yet. We've contacted people in her area, but nobody's found her. We've also had announcements on the radio and we've gone to the police to report her. Paul (the head teacher) and Afan (another teacher) are going around to all of the officials in the area with her picture as well and the teachers are going around the areas on motorcycles looking for her too. She's been gone all night and it was raining last night, so we're really praying that she found somewhere safe to go, but maybe she's just afraid to come back now because she thinks she'll get in trouble. Also, Paul is kind of nervous that the police might detain him if we don't find her. He's the head teacher, and he was really nervous to provide his contact information to the police because he does stand a very good chance at being detained, given the way the police usually operate here. Can we say corrupt? But we had to go to them, or there would have been more trouble if we didn't report what had happened.

I don't know if you're aware, but child sacrifice is a very big problem here in Uganda. Businessmen will have a witch doctor behead a child and bury it under a new building they are putting up to ensure its success. There's a lot of other reasons why it happens, too. But it is a very real problem, and even in our area here. Not only is it already a problem, but it's also on the increase. So we are just praying really hard that the wrong person doesn't pick her up...it's pretty scary. I don't want to say too much about that because it's pretty disturbing and we see enough of it in the newspapers. It's just horrible.

It's been just over 30 hours...pray hard or think about her if you're not the praying kind. We want the message out that she will not be in trouble when she comes back, we just want her to be found safely. No matter what, we just hope she's safe.