Speaker 1: What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
Speaker 1: individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Previously on The Missionary, I'm going to come and do
Speaker 1: my own thing so i can be my own boss
Speaker 1: and run my own show. That was very, very very
Speaker 1: much a trend and a lot of my years of blogging.
Speaker 1: I was young and I wanted to share life can
Speaker 1: look so different than what I thought it looked like
Speaker 1: as a girl from a rural town in America. White
Speaker 1: people fetishize black suffering or like get off on black software,
Speaker 1: like seeing those pictures of those like malnourished Ugandan babies.
Speaker 1: People love that ship. You don't get to place yourself
Speaker 1: in an e er. And then claim was an emergency.
Speaker 1: She wasn't a good Samaritan, she was a fraud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I didn't read the papers. I just listened to
Speaker 1: what I was told. And if that was an oversight
Speaker 1: by our nurses, then I was an oversight. Not to
Speaker 1: cast any blame. It's not about saving kids. It's about
Speaker 1: you being someone who shade these kids. That's what this
Speaker 1: is about. You don't know anything You're just such a
Speaker 1: new me, you know, so definitely a part of me
Speaker 1: thinks like, oh, come on, Jackie, like bless your heart.
Speaker 1: There's a photo on Instagram that you might have seen,
Speaker 1: might have even liked. It's a Barbie Doll wearing a
Speaker 1: white coat, standing in front of a hospital with a
Speaker 1: little black baby doll in one hand and a pink
Speaker 1: stethoscope in the other. The caption reads, there are no
Speaker 1: trained medical professionals or hospitals in Africa, so I'm drawing
Speaker 1: on my vast amount of knowledge to cure and heal
Speaker 1: those around me. It was posted by Barbie Savior, a
Speaker 1: satirical profile that documents the adventures of a Barbie Doll
Speaker 1: following her calling in Africa, holding little black baby dolls
Speaker 1: in her arms, tattooing a map of Africa on her chest,
Speaker 1: banging on drums in a far flowing village. The account
Speaker 1: has a hundred and fifty followers. We didn't do any promotion.
Speaker 1: We just started posting stuff and within the first few
Speaker 1: weeks it started going viral and then kept getting picked up,
Speaker 1: and it was very clear that we had struck a nerve.
Speaker 1: That's Emily Warrel, one of the co founders of the account.
Speaker 1: What people assume with Barbie Saviors that we were trying
Speaker 1: to like solve something, and that was the opposite of
Speaker 1: what we were trying to do, Like we were just
Speaker 1: trying to process what we had experienced. The other co
Speaker 1: founder you might actually recognize, Yeah, that's Jackie Kramlick, the
Speaker 1: same nurse that saved Patricia's life. Some of the first
Speaker 1: ones were honestly straight up mocking Renee, because the one
Speaker 1: where Marbie's like getting on an airplane, that's like getting
Speaker 1: backrup with how Renee leaving for you got. Barbie Saviors
Speaker 1: started out almost as therapy for Jackie and Emily, a
Speaker 1: way to event the endless frustrations of life in Ginger.
Speaker 1: This culture of anything goes as long as you are
Speaker 1: trying to make a difference. You are put on a
Speaker 1: high pedestal and respected and unquestioned, and when you're in
Speaker 1: your early twenties, that's like a drug. Emily was an
Speaker 1: archetype of the Ginger missionary, a twenty something white woman
Speaker 1: from the States who came to Uganda with good intentions,
Speaker 1: the support of folks back home, and the dream of
Speaker 1: running her own ngo. You get praised for what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You get put on this pedestal, you get all this
Speaker 1: respect and like your your brain hasn't even formed yet.
Speaker 1: But after a few years of running a charity for
Speaker 1: children with disabilities, Emily became another archetype, the ex missionary
Speaker 1: who crawled out of the cave and tried to coax
Speaker 1: the rest of her friends to come out too. And
Speaker 1: so that realization that maybe you shouldn't have started an
Speaker 1: NGO was that all of a sudden or a slow realization.
Speaker 1: It was more of a slow realization. Um, But then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it was kind of like, can
Speaker 1: I cuss on this? We encourage it? I got a funk.
Speaker 1: What have I done? Basically, so, I think pieces were
Speaker 1: chipped off over time, and then there wasn't like one
Speaker 1: incident or one like aha moment. It was just coming
Speaker 1: to terms with the fact that something I had built
Speaker 1: my life around was not something I believed in. Her
Speaker 1: transformation came in the mid twenty a time when young
Speaker 1: Christian missionaries were arriving in ginger In Mats You reversibly
Speaker 1: changing the face of this once tight knit community. I
Speaker 1: understood why Emily recoiled from it, because the deeper I
Speaker 1: got into the missionary world, the clearer it became that
Speaker 1: Renee wasn't just a fluke. There was a whole industry
Speaker 1: of mission trips, evangelical politics, and international aids were rolling
Speaker 1: around Ginger. All those things came together in what seemed
Speaker 1: like a perfect storm to create someone like Renee and
Speaker 1: eventually tear this community apart from within this ship. No,
Speaker 1: it was just something I had never seen before, and
Speaker 1: honestly like something I still failed to put words to.
Speaker 1: It was just such a bizarre random events that led
Speaker 1: to what seemed like a catastrophic breakdown of an entire
Speaker 1: community that was supposed to have each other's backs. It
Speaker 1: was just, honestly like mean girls on steroids. In association
Speaker 1: with I Heeart Media, I'm ROGI GOA, I'm helm CONDI,
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Burnley and this is the Missionary Episode five
Speaker 1: Barbie Savior. In s a Baptist minister named William Carey
Speaker 1: published a book titled An Inquiry into the Obligations of
Speaker 1: Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.
Speaker 1: That obligation was the Great Commission, summed up best in
Speaker 1: the Book of Matthew Chapter verse nineteen. Therefore go and
Speaker 1: make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
Speaker 1: of the Father, and of the Son and of the
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit. William Carey is considered the godfather of the
Speaker 1: modern missionary movement, and his book was the manual for
Speaker 1: generations of missionaries setting off from Europe to the uncharted
Speaker 1: continents full of so called savages and nonbelievers. It's said
Speaker 1: that in those days, missionaries packed their clothes in a
Speaker 1: coffin and never expected to return home. That's because the
Speaker 1: story of Christianity of Jesus and his followers is one
Speaker 1: of martyrdom of believers so faithful that they were willing
Speaker 1: to give their lives in service of the Lord. It
Speaker 1: was even written in Philippians Chapter two. Have the same
Speaker 1: mindset as Christ. Jesus he humbled himself by becoming obedient
Speaker 1: to death, even death on a cross. There were a
Speaker 1: few places a missionary could put their faith to the test,
Speaker 1: like Africa. So many died there and en route that
Speaker 1: it became known as the white Man's Graveyard. Someone who
Speaker 1: really feels that they've heard God's voice might talk about
Speaker 1: it as a call. It implies, and I think it
Speaker 1: often is the case that it's not something that I
Speaker 1: went around and studied or planned, or you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily go to college and learn all the languages.
Speaker 1: I just felt it. That's Dr Melanie McAllister. She's a
Speaker 1: professor at George Washington University and the author of The
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God. Has no borders about the role that
Speaker 1: missionaries play in the modern world. And this is a
Speaker 1: language that says, this is not just about me wanting
Speaker 1: an adventure. This is about me feeling God's action in
Speaker 1: my life. I'm doing this by virtue of a fourth
Speaker 1: grader than me. But Dr McAllister says that the way
Speaker 1: missionaries answer that calling has changed a lot in the
Speaker 1: last fifty years. There was a transformation and how missionary
Speaker 1: work happened really beginning in the sixties. With the increase
Speaker 1: in flights and the lowering of costs of flights, people
Speaker 1: were able to go for shorter periods of time and
Speaker 1: get there more quickly. Nowadays, any teenager can hop on
Speaker 1: a plane, travel halfway around the world with their church,
Speaker 1: build a school, take some photos, and come home with
Speaker 1: stories to tell. What used to be a life's work
Speaker 1: was now a spring break tour package. It was now
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar industry selling a shortcut to righteousness to
Speaker 1: nearly two million people a year. Kurt Verbeek is a
Speaker 1: professor at Calvin University. He spent the last twenty years
Speaker 1: studying this stuff. How it's sold is often that this
Speaker 1: is risky, and you know, going to put your face
Speaker 1: to a challenge, and you're going to go and share
Speaker 1: the gospel, and there's this chance for God to use
Speaker 1: this to do great things. It was the same language
Speaker 1: that was used to recruit long term missionaries, and it
Speaker 1: was now targeted at teenagers. In a sense, these short
Speaker 1: trips were a form of role playing. You could live
Speaker 1: the life of a missionary without the long term commitment
Speaker 1: and sacrifice from the pulpit and in the pews. It's
Speaker 1: more of this is going to be this life changing
Speaker 1: experience for the people who receive us. But what lots
Speaker 1: of times I think the parents and the leaders are
Speaker 1: hoping for is a life shaping experience for the people
Speaker 1: who go. After a century of colonialism and forceful efforts
Speaker 1: to change local cultures, Africa was now a place where
Speaker 1: Christians from the West could reconnect with God to heal
Speaker 1: their own souls. They would see in Christians from these
Speaker 1: parts of the world a kind of idealized faith that
Speaker 1: they saw as perhaps more authentic, more passionate, more pure
Speaker 1: than their own, and they looked to those parts of
Speaker 1: the Global South as a kind of spiritual resource. If
Speaker 1: all this work was just a way to find yourself,
Speaker 1: then it didn't really matter what the work was, or
Speaker 1: if it was even useful at all. I talked with
Speaker 1: Dr Verbeek about a story I heard about a mission
Speaker 1: in Mexico that really made that point clear to me.
Speaker 1: Every summer, an American church group brought volunteers to Mexico
Speaker 1: to help build a wall for a local orphanage. After
Speaker 1: a week, the group would move on and locals would
Speaker 1: tear the wall down in preparation for the next crop
Speaker 1: of volunteers. There's sadly a good chunk of stories like that.
Speaker 1: In haiti Un, there's some school. It's a sleep in school,
Speaker 1: but the only time there's kids in the school is
Speaker 1: when the church or mission groups would come down, and
Speaker 1: then they would send them all back to their homes
Speaker 1: until the next group came. Jesus does not ask that
Speaker 1: we care for the less fortunate. He demands it. I
Speaker 1: would like to invite you to come with me on
Speaker 1: this journey that is so far from over and see
Speaker 1: what God will do next. One woman seemed to embody
Speaker 1: the perfect balance of self discovery and serving others. She
Speaker 1: did it so well that she made ginger as snary Mecca.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Davis. I'm twenty one years old and I
Speaker 1: lived here in Uganda. I ran a Maggima ministry. Katie
Speaker 1: Davis's story is one that you might recognize by now.
Speaker 1: She was fresh out of high school when she felt
Speaker 1: God calling her to Africa thing and I'd always said
Speaker 1: I wanted to be mother to resetch just because I
Speaker 1: guess I just loved her heart her children. So she
Speaker 1: left her Tennessee town and said off for Uganda on
Speaker 1: a short term trip just a few months. But when
Speaker 1: she got there, she couldn't believe the poverty around her
Speaker 1: and felt she needed to do something about it. Lord
Speaker 1: with all your heart, and then you're to love your
Speaker 1: neighbor as yourself. I'm like myself doesn't want to be starving,
Speaker 1: and so I don't want other people in the world
Speaker 1: to be starving. So she started an NGO to offer scholarships,
Speaker 1: schooling and resources for thousands of vulnerable children across the country.
Speaker 1: But that's not what made her famous. What made her
Speaker 1: famous were the thirteen Ugandan children she adopted as her
Speaker 1: And the littlest one looks up and she calls me, Mommy.
Speaker 1: My heart breaks in two. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: to do, but something clicks. I'm even more scared than
Speaker 1: the day that I stepped on that plane, but I
Speaker 1: know that this is right. She wrote a book about it,
Speaker 1: called Kisses from Katie, and it made the New York
Speaker 1: Times Best seller list. The recording You've been hearing is
Speaker 1: from a Simon and Schuster advertisement for that book. The
Speaker 1: cover shows a young, smiling Katie Davis on a dirt
Speaker 1: road surrounded by laughing children, and inside the book features
Speaker 1: a photograph taken by one of Katie's best friends, Renee Bach.
Speaker 1: Being a missionary today was not just a way of
Speaker 1: life anymore. It was a lifestyle brand. Blogging about your
Speaker 1: daily adventures, posting photos of your picture perfect Christian family,
Speaker 1: sharing heart wrenching videos of children in need. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just about selling a cause, it was about selling yourself.
Speaker 1: The aspiration used to be martyrdom and conversions. Now it
Speaker 1: was a book deal and influencer status. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: Katie's book or Rene's blogs that were filled with photos
Speaker 1: of people like Nabucosa skinny to the bone or Patricia
Speaker 1: swollen to the point of bursting and all in need
Speaker 1: of rescuing. There were tons of missionaries out there, carefully
Speaker 1: curating their online personas and posting similar images across every
Speaker 1: social media outlet. The missionary brand depended on a charismatic,
Speaker 1: selfless white woman surrounded by black children in need. It
Speaker 1: required everything to be exaggerated. The missionary had to appear
Speaker 1: more selfless, and the Africans had to appear more needy.
Speaker 1: Here's Elizabeth Nicholson, one of the older missionaries in Ginger
Speaker 1: in Uganda. If the children are go out and play,
Speaker 1: it's muddy and dusty and dirty, so you put them
Speaker 1: in the crimest clothes they have and they go out
Speaker 1: and play. But somebody coming from the first world just
Speaker 1: sees these dirty children in rags on Sunday. They're all
Speaker 1: cleaned up and in their Sunday gloves. But actually this
Speaker 1: is just a very old tactic on you platforms. Here's
Speaker 1: Dr McAllister again. There was real pushback in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and nineteen sixties by African Christians about how Africans
Speaker 1: were being represented and a young Congolese Methodist who then
Speaker 1: comes to the US and sees how missionaries are talking
Speaker 1: about Congo, and you know, he's saying, this is a
Speaker 1: We're part of an African continent that is on the rise.
Speaker 1: We have you know, big cities, We're going to be modern,
Speaker 1: we have decolonized, we're talking about freedom, and you all
Speaker 1: are still showing pictures, literally showing pictures from thirty years previous,
Speaker 1: in order to present Africa as inherently and uniformly backward
Speaker 1: and mired in poverty, in order to praise money for
Speaker 1: the missionary work. All of this revolves around a deceptively
Speaker 1: simple question. What is a missionary's job? Is it to
Speaker 1: serve the vulnerable and needy? Or is it to convert
Speaker 1: people to Christianity and save their souls. Renee believed that
Speaker 1: it was to serve. She thought that providing medical care
Speaker 1: and healing children was a way to open the door
Speaker 1: for a conversation about God. My job there was to
Speaker 1: like show people the character and the nature of Christ
Speaker 1: by just acting out of love and kindness. And being
Speaker 1: so compassionate. And I do think that that was effective,
Speaker 1: not in people just walking up to me and being like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, like you must love Jusus. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to love do thus too. But I had
Speaker 1: a lot of experiences where people would just be like,
Speaker 1: why are you being so nice to people that aren't
Speaker 1: even related to you. There's something different about you, and
Speaker 1: I like wonder what it is. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a far more rooted place to start a discussion about God.
Speaker 1: But her board disagreed. When they responded to accusations of
Speaker 1: Renee's malpractice, they quoted a nineteenth century missionary named Oswald
Speaker 1: Chambers in missionary work, the great danger is that God's
Speaker 1: call will be replaced by the needs of the people.
Speaker 1: We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath
Speaker 1: all missionary work is not primarily the elevation of the people,
Speaker 1: their education, nor their needs, but as first and foremost,
Speaker 1: the command of Jesus Christ. In other words, saving souls
Speaker 1: was the only thing that mattered. Her job was to
Speaker 1: win conversions, and there was no cost too high. The
Speaker 1: dead kids were just collateral damage. That's a staggering mindset.
Speaker 1: So you can understand Ugandans who looked at a hundred
Speaker 1: years of colonial history and at the current state of
Speaker 1: things and saw darker motives in Africa or in a community,
Speaker 1: is a people grotify what people? That's Olivia Alasso, a
Speaker 1: social worker and the Ugandan co founder of No White Saviors.
Speaker 1: If people are not held accountable, if people's bad vices
Speaker 1: are not brought up, a people continue to praise them.
Speaker 1: This is also one way of creating awareness in our
Speaker 1: communities by actually calling up people who are doing what
Speaker 1: we consider inhuman. To Olivia, the missionaries continued a white
Speaker 1: supremacist system that placed Ugandans on the bottom, subject to
Speaker 1: the whims and fancies of people who would come to
Speaker 1: do good, a system she and No White Saviors were
Speaker 1: determined to dismantle. This also works up the community for
Speaker 1: them to stand and ask next time to see a
Speaker 1: white person and say, hey, look, you're coming in to
Speaker 1: present yourself as a doctor or as a teacher, can
Speaker 1: we see your papers? This gives them the confidence because
Speaker 1: they have seen someone held But if we leave things
Speaker 1: past like that, then this will continue on the African
Speaker 1: continent because for us here all the time, when you're
Speaker 1: white is right and black is wrong. Olivia was only
Speaker 1: one of many Uganians trying to ensure accountability. Margaret Chambaku
Speaker 1: Laba is the head of the Ginger and Geo Forum,
Speaker 1: an independent body set up to coordinate the activities and
Speaker 1: offer oversight. Tell the hundreds of organizations in Ginger and
Speaker 1: they're still happening because you will find when you go
Speaker 1: to Facebook pages there's so many organizations and when you
Speaker 1: go to the ground to look for them, you don't
Speaker 1: see them. But when you really want to interact and
Speaker 1: say where are you based? Can I come and visit?
Speaker 1: Can I come see the people you're really working with
Speaker 1: the community? You don't see them and they will change
Speaker 1: their names in the face. For years, Margaret has been
Speaker 1: on the front lines doing her best to police and
Speaker 1: geos with a few resources. She has She worried that
Speaker 1: many of the missionaries were only out to enrich themselves,
Speaker 1: but you'll see they're receiving funds that are receiving money.
Speaker 1: The people who want to help, I think as pathetic
Speaker 1: when they hear a story that is so touching, they
Speaker 1: will send the money before they realize it's just a fraud.
Speaker 1: We really have so many of those cases. Margaret told
Speaker 1: me that there were over nine hundred registered organizations in
Speaker 1: Ginger that came out to one NGO for every five
Speaker 1: people in the district. Now, to be clear, not all
Speaker 1: NGOs or missionary run and many are actually Uganda owned.
Speaker 1: But still the numbers blew me away. I asked Margaret
Speaker 1: where Renee in serving his children fit into that picture. So,
Speaker 1: based on the allegations you have heard that she was
Speaker 1: an unlicensed medical facility, that she was providing medical care
Speaker 1: without having medical qualifications, do these allegations surprise you given
Speaker 1: what you know about how NGOs operate here. Um, of
Speaker 1: course they don't surprise me. I know anybody here can
Speaker 1: come and people be live in foreign people very much,
Speaker 1: even you when you're time to see your doctor. No
Speaker 1: one would quote the question your qualifications or anything. So
Speaker 1: to me, it's not a surprise. Do you think it
Speaker 1: could happen again now? Yes, it could even be happening
Speaker 1: somewhere else right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see
Speaker 1: Anson being you know, cold to doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: Every person I spoke to in Ginger had a horror
Speaker 1: story to tell. Some orphanage was abusing kids, or an
Speaker 1: NGO was embezzling its donors, and well, you didn't hear
Speaker 1: this from me, But did you hear about that American
Speaker 1: couple's sketchy adoption renee box story is actually quite a
Speaker 1: bit more common than you might think, maybe not the
Speaker 1: hundred and five dead children, but other parts of it.
Speaker 1: In the year I spent in Uganda, I saw a
Speaker 1: surprising number of missionary scandals in the headlines, like the
Speaker 1: American evangelical who was deported after giving Ugandans a miracle
Speaker 1: drug to cure cancer. US passed up from New Jersey
Speaker 1: had been giving MMS miracle mineral solution, which is basically
Speaker 1: like a bleaching agent to over fifty thousand Ugandans. Or
Speaker 1: the old white guy who was caught on video punching
Speaker 1: a hotel concierge while shouting Uganda hates Jesus, got Jesus,
Speaker 1: oh yeah feeling and though he wasn't a missionary. A
Speaker 1: German national who ran a children's home was arrested on
Speaker 1: charges of defilement and child trafficking. We first said the
Speaker 1: complaint AGAINIST team said that team or Navigations of Sexual
Speaker 1: Actors againist because she was taking care of it was
Speaker 1: clear that Ginger needed a radical transformation. To be honest, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, there is a personal aspect of this case
Speaker 1: for me, and I can't pretend there's not. But the
Speaker 1: personal aspect is not how we'd It's also just knowing
Speaker 1: that she's not the only one like this is not
Speaker 1: Renee is not the only person doing this, not in Uganda,
Speaker 1: not globally, and there needs to be a new standard set.
Speaker 1: When Kelsey Nielsen graduated college, she received a copy of
Speaker 1: Kisses from Katie and soon became one of the hundreds
Speaker 1: of young women who followed her footsteps to Ginger. She
Speaker 1: signed up to volunteer by chance at the same orphanage
Speaker 1: that Renee volunteered at. After a few months there, Kelsey
Speaker 1: founded an NGO called Abide Family Center to support vulnerable
Speaker 1: families and offer them an alternative to putting their kids
Speaker 1: up for adoption. It was thrilling to be a twenty
Speaker 1: something CEO in a foreign country rubbing elbows with your
Speaker 1: celebrity role models. And I just remember being like so
Speaker 1: amazed at Katie and Renee and thinking like they're the
Speaker 1: pinnacle of like what I should be striving for of,
Speaker 1: Like they're so self sacrificial. They they just say yes
Speaker 1: to everything. To Kelsey, they were the real missionaries, giving
Speaker 1: everything they had to the poor people of Ginger. They
Speaker 1: were making real sacrifices and changing lives. So when Renee
Speaker 1: asked for a favor, Kelsey jumped at the chance. I
Speaker 1: sat there and washed. What was I watching? I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing? Why am I Why am I
Speaker 1: going to the hospital watch a child? But I did
Speaker 1: it because I was like I wanted to be friends
Speaker 1: with them like they were they were the cool girls,
Speaker 1: and so being was like that's I wanted to be
Speaker 1: your friends of them. But the more unmeshed Kelsey got
Speaker 1: in the Ginger world, the more she saw another side
Speaker 1: to their image. They set the tone to us what
Speaker 1: would normalize? Like they basically set the tone of like
Speaker 1: this is what is acceptable. So if you, like, if
Speaker 1: you had a kid die or you had um, you
Speaker 1: have just had like an overwhelming amount of like dizziness.
Speaker 1: It was like, Oh, you're doing it right, Like this
Speaker 1: is like this is where God you see God work.
Speaker 1: God works when like things are chaotic, probably when you
Speaker 1: create the chaos. It was easy to see why Ginger
Speaker 1: was an exhausting place to be martyrdom was once the
Speaker 1: highest calling of Christian missionaries, and in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways that culture still lingered. It was a place that
Speaker 1: demanded everything of a person. There were no lines between
Speaker 1: a personal and professional life, and it was almost taboo
Speaker 1: to even think of taking time for yourself. Here's renee.
Speaker 1: For a while, especially when I first got to Ganda,
Speaker 1: it was kind of this like who could like one
Speaker 1: up each other, who was like the most tired and
Speaker 1: life worked the hardest, you know, like like I haven't
Speaker 1: had a day off and in like a month, or
Speaker 1: like oh well I haven't had you know, like I
Speaker 1: haven't been on vacation in five years. You know, and
Speaker 1: people don't I think need it, like subconsciously it's a
Speaker 1: way to like tell that you're working hard. I mean
Speaker 1: I did it. I used to heavily judge people who
Speaker 1: didn't work on the weekend. I was like, who do
Speaker 1: you think you are? You know, working on the weekends?
Speaker 1: Like why are you been here? You know when you've
Speaker 1: got a town full of people who are trying to
Speaker 1: save lives and who were just as ambitious and stressed out, Well,
Speaker 1: you've got a pressure cooker on your hands. It was
Speaker 1: a hard place to live in the sense that, like
Speaker 1: even Kelsey, one of her closest friends was Emily, whirl
Speaker 1: was one of the Barbie Savior girls. Well, I used
Speaker 1: to hear Emily and Kelsey talk about each other terribly
Speaker 1: behind each other's backs in public settings, you know, and
Speaker 1: be like, I can't believe Emily is doing this with
Speaker 1: her kids, or I can't Kelsey is crazy, you know,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why I really didn't want to
Speaker 1: get it involved in the community and have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends, because I thought like, let's just mean, like
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a part of that, and
Speaker 1: it's so easy to get sucked into. Even in my
Speaker 1: time in Ginger, I'd experienced similar things at coffee shops
Speaker 1: and restaurants. Everyone was friendly and happy to chat, but
Speaker 1: then I'd hear them batting rumors around about each other,
Speaker 1: everything from extra marital affairs and drug addictions to child
Speaker 1: abuse and trafficking. When I saw that side of Ginger,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel so special that the box were spreading
Speaker 1: rumors about me. We're trying to get in our heads
Speaker 1: with things like the Patricia video. Ginger had always been
Speaker 1: like this, here's Emily Warrel from Barbie Savior again. I
Speaker 1: think seeing how the community reacted left a really bad
Speaker 1: taste in my mouth, and I just was constantly asking
Speaker 1: myself every day, if this is how Christians are supposed
Speaker 1: to act and treat one another. This is not attractive
Speaker 1: at all, This is embarrassing, This is frankly disgusting. Why
Speaker 1: would I wouldn't be a part of this. When you
Speaker 1: think about missionaries as martyrs, you think of them being
Speaker 1: persecuted by nonbelievers, by kings in foreign lands, or by
Speaker 1: disease and disaster in jungles and deserts. Even these days,
Speaker 1: there's a mindset of persecution that still exists among them.
Speaker 1: You see it all the time when white Christians in
Speaker 1: America say that they're under attack despite everything seemingly going
Speaker 1: their way. But when persecution against missionaries came to Ginger,
Speaker 1: it came from an unexpected place. It came from another missionary.
Speaker 1: Katie and I were never really friends. Myself and any
Speaker 1: of the less attractive white girls in Ginger weren't pretty
Speaker 1: or cool enough for you. I never worshiped you enough
Speaker 1: to be in your inner circle, and I'm cool with that.
Speaker 1: Your whole Christian celebrity persona is a total joke. Also,
Speaker 1: all that defending Renee Bach, a literal murderer of children.
Speaker 1: That is when I lost all respect for you. These
Speaker 1: are Kelsey Nielsen's word taken from a Facebook post, edited
Speaker 1: for clarity and read by a voice actor. Earlier that year,
Speaker 1: Kelsey was sexually assaulted by a colleague in Uganda. It
Speaker 1: led to the deterioration of her mental health, and, as
Speaker 1: she tells it, her NGO forcing her out of the organization.
Speaker 1: After that, Kelsey saw Ginger in a completely different light.
Speaker 1: She was fed up with the sketchy adoptions, the medical malpractice,
Speaker 1: and all the other contradictions she saw. She knew she
Speaker 1: would be mocked and dismissed if she spoke out. She'd
Speaker 1: become a pariah in the missionary community, but she had
Speaker 1: nothing to lose anymore. Just like Jesus said, no profit
Speaker 1: is accepted in his hometown. I'm not doing this for
Speaker 1: the likes or for attention. I'm doing it because it
Speaker 1: needs to be said. And although many will say it
Speaker 1: where it is safe, I'm not interested in staying safe
Speaker 1: about things that matter anymore. She put other NGOs on
Speaker 1: blast two, demanding to see financial records asking how much
Speaker 1: you Gandon staff were being paid and how much the
Speaker 1: directors were spending on travel, house help, and rental properties.
Speaker 1: I'm only getting started. I'm threatening nothing other than exposing
Speaker 1: all the lies, exploitation, and corruption within the missionary community
Speaker 1: in Ginger. If I see the White Saviors of Ginger
Speaker 1: coming clean and admitting their harmful and ethical and criminal acts,
Speaker 1: I'll work towards reconciliation, or i will at the very
Speaker 1: least stop posting about this. Kelsey admits that many of
Speaker 1: these posts were written during a very dark moment in
Speaker 1: her life, when her mental health was at a low point.
Speaker 1: Others in the community were quick to seize on Kelsey's
Speaker 1: history of mental illness and dismiss her one diness with bipolar,
Speaker 1: bipolar and PTSD, And so you have, Okay, we're not
Speaker 1: going to trust anything this woman says, she's just crazy.
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of like stingle around mental health.
Speaker 1: And I've even experienced that since working with the White Saviors,
Speaker 1: since we've created this platform, had people just say like,
Speaker 1: Kelsey is not stable, you shouldn't be having her on
Speaker 1: your team. And it's hard. I mean, that's probably my
Speaker 1: one area and that's really hard because I think I
Speaker 1: still face a lot of self stigma and a lot
Speaker 1: of like inscree of like trusting my own mind and
Speaker 1: trusting so like trusting like what is passionate and driven
Speaker 1: and like ideas and what is my mania? But she
Speaker 1: didn't stop posting about it. Instead, she figured out how
Speaker 1: to turn her newfound perspective into a brand of its own.
Speaker 1: So she linked up with Olivia, the Ugandan social worker
Speaker 1: that used to work in her NGO, and the two
Speaker 1: of them created No White Saviors. What Barbie Savior had
Speaker 1: failed to do, No White Saviors would. My biggest criticism
Speaker 1: of Barbie Savior was that they were just criticizing this
Speaker 1: in a satirical way and nothing was actually being done.
Speaker 1: You could be like actually calling out this stuff directly
Speaker 1: and doing something about it with your platform. It's all
Speaker 1: good and fun to make a joke about it, but
Speaker 1: that ship is literally fasting people lives, and it's not
Speaker 1: funny in a community full of contradictions and abuse and
Speaker 1: people who didn't take kindly to advice from outsiders, No
Speaker 1: White Saviors was just as inevitable as Renee. The direction
Speaker 1: they took was distinctly more confrontational They went after the
Speaker 1: international adoption industry, which they accused of tricking parents into
Speaker 1: selling their kids abroad, and they nearly canceled the British
Speaker 1: TV presenter named Stacy Dooley when she posted a selfie
Speaker 1: with a child in a village without consent. They called
Speaker 1: for boycotts of travel bloggers who posted, in their words,
Speaker 1: poverty porn, and they organized a campaign for the survivors
Speaker 1: of a trafficking ring allegedly run by a German national
Speaker 1: who ran a children's home in Uganda. A white spur mussels.
Speaker 1: It is something that has really had to break. We
Speaker 1: are trying. We don't know when it will die out.
Speaker 1: Without work, we're just laying a foundation. Maybe at one
Speaker 1: point it will be a chief. A lot of people
Speaker 1: in town didn't agree with No White Saviors tactics. Their
Speaker 1: brand of politics felt more like blackmail and extortion than advocacy. Still,
Speaker 1: it forced NGOs and Gina and elsewhere to reconsider the
Speaker 1: way that they behaved online and on the ground. I
Speaker 1: heard from several NGEO directors in Uganda that they now
Speaker 1: asked themselves, what would No White Saviors say before Ginja.
Speaker 1: My entire understanding of what it meant to be a
Speaker 1: missionary came from Sister Gracie, the nun I met in
Speaker 1: South Sudan when I was still in college. She was
Speaker 1: a lifelong missionary, dedicated to the people she lived among,
Speaker 1: dedicated to serving their needs and uplifting them. She learned
Speaker 1: the local language and broke bread with them every night.
Speaker 1: She called South Sudan home. When I asked her if
Speaker 1: she'd ever go back to India, she told me she
Speaker 1: wanted to be buried in South Sudan. The most humbling
Speaker 1: part was that she expected no credit for it, didn't
Speaker 1: even expect results. Sometimes she didn't even know whether anything
Speaker 1: she did mattered. But she wore the same torn and
Speaker 1: frayed habit every single day and went to work because
Speaker 1: she knew she had to keep trying. Ginger seemed like
Speaker 1: the exact opposite. Every stone I turned over was another
Speaker 1: scandal waiting to explode. Every missionary I spoke to was
Speaker 1: more than happy to dish on their neighbors. People seemed
Speaker 1: more worried about keeping up an image of righteousness than
Speaker 1: actually being righteous. And the reason was simple, Doing the
Speaker 1: right thing wasn't easy. If it was, then we'd be
Speaker 1: living in a much different world, but painting that picture
Speaker 1: a picture of doing the right thing that was much easier.
Speaker 1: They were role playing a life like Sister Grace's, and
Speaker 1: it felt like a punch to the gut. I had
Speaker 1: seen the toll it had taken on her, the decades
Speaker 1: of trauma, the gnawing self doubt rushing into Battlefield's time
Speaker 1: and time again. I read the Ginger blogs. I saw
Speaker 1: the heroic images they painted. I saw the NGO fundraising campaigns,
Speaker 1: teary eyed and full of needy children. But then I
Speaker 1: would read the Uganian headlines and I saw the stomach
Speaker 1: churning scandals that came to the surface. And then I
Speaker 1: sat in restaurants with them, eating ramen and drinking coconut latte's,
Speaker 1: all paid for with earnest donations. That's what I've been
Speaker 1: trying to get across this whole episode. Renee isn't an anomaly,
Speaker 1: she isn't some ah historical monster. She's an embodiment of
Speaker 1: all the swirling forces around Ginger and missionary culture at large.
Speaker 1: Young people who tried to solve the world's problems without
Speaker 1: qualifications are oversight folks back home who put them on
Speaker 1: a pedestal for taking action no matter what the outcome,
Speaker 1: and the idea that serving God was the highest calling,
Speaker 1: even if it came at the expense of the people
Speaker 1: you'd come to save. Even Jackie Kramlick, whose accused Renee
Speaker 1: of terrible things, I saw her that way. The analogy
Speaker 1: I use is kind of like a rabid dog and
Speaker 1: a puppy mill that they're like, Oh, that dog was bad,
Speaker 1: good to see you took him out, But let's not
Speaker 1: talk about the evils of the puppy mill. That's the problem,
Speaker 1: and that's why when people are like, oh, she's just
Speaker 1: so evil, blah blah blah, It's like there's a really
Speaker 1: a really big, deep story here of how this comes
Speaker 1: to be and how someone could get into this position
Speaker 1: that everyone needs to be very mindful of. But to
Speaker 1: claim that she's just like completely evil independent of all
Speaker 1: these underlying structures is really missing the point. But Gina's
Speaker 1: reckoning was just about to arrive. Yeah. The Missionaries produced
Speaker 1: an association with iHeartMedia. It's written and reported by Roger Gola,
Speaker 1: Helene mcgegandhi, and Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lands
Speaker 1: and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto is our story editor, Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mangis Thicketter. Our fact checker is Austin Thompson.