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: In January of this year, I made my way to
Speaker 1: the courthouse in Ginger. It had been almost exactly a
Speaker 1: full year since the case against Renee was filed and
Speaker 1: we started looking into it. The courthouse was full of
Speaker 1: journalists from the States, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, all waiting
Speaker 1: for news. The plaintiffs were also here. Gimbo Zubda, the
Speaker 1: mother of Tlali, was in the courtyard speaking with her lawyers,
Speaker 1: and Kakai Rose, the other mother in the case, was
Speaker 1: sitting in a corner by herself. I waved hello and
Speaker 1: she gave me a smile. I had met Kakai a
Speaker 1: couple of times by then. In the beginning, she was
Speaker 1: shy and didn't open up very easy way, but over
Speaker 1: the course of that year she became a bit more
Speaker 1: friendly with me. We didn't speak the same language, but
Speaker 1: she always waved and greeted me when she saw me,
Speaker 1: asked me how I was doing that day. No one
Speaker 1: was interpreting for her, but she seemed glad to be there,
Speaker 1: to just be present. Sitting on a wooden bench outside
Speaker 1: the courtroom, I couldn't help but think about the first
Speaker 1: time I was here, about the energy that Kelsey and
Speaker 1: Olivia brought with them into this courthouse when they joined
Speaker 1: the lawyers who were filing a civil suit against Renee
Speaker 1: and serving his children back in twenty nine. So this
Speaker 1: is what I want to see right now. For me,
Speaker 1: this is so important, you know, it will help me
Speaker 1: more forward. This is historical. It's going down the books
Speaker 1: of history in my country, in Uganda and the world
Speaker 1: as well, that this is the first time that someone
Speaker 1: is looking into work that is done by a white person.
Speaker 1: More feels that they're helping so much, like we compass
Speaker 1: of Africa and we're sacrificing. To Livia, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to show the wall that it's not sacrifice. She was
Speaker 1: not doing us any sacrifice, but she was just humming
Speaker 1: us like she was destroying our society. A lot had
Speaker 1: changed since those early days when I used to think
Speaker 1: that No Waite Saviors was our story. It had gotten
Speaker 1: so much bigger. It was about a whole system of
Speaker 1: international aid and injustice, the trauma of people affected by it,
Speaker 1: and the moral dilemma of doing the right thing. Renee
Speaker 1: and no White Saviors began to seem like small characters
Speaker 1: in a much larger saga. Eventually we made our way
Speaker 1: into the courtroom. After an hour of hearing news on
Speaker 1: other local cases, the judge finally mentioned Renee's case in
Speaker 1: association with iHeart Media, I'm ROGI Gola, I'm Hee make Con,
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Burnley and this is the missionary Episode eight.
Speaker 1: What's left? Media interest in Renee Bach and serving his
Speaker 1: children has ebbed and flowed throughout the past year. One
Speaker 1: of the only things I found to be consistent in
Speaker 1: the story was the lawyer representing the women in the case.
Speaker 1: Her name is Prima qua Gala. She runs the Women's
Speaker 1: pro bono initiative in Uganda, and she was one of
Speaker 1: the very first people I interviewed for this story last year.
Speaker 1: Even then, she seemed pretty confident about the case she
Speaker 1: had in hand. Perhaps every lawyer feels that way, but
Speaker 1: Prima is one of the few health rights lawyers in Uganda,
Speaker 1: and she had taken people bigger than Renee to court,
Speaker 1: even litigated against the Ugandan government. So Prima had guts
Speaker 1: and experience. I thought it was crazy, according to much
Speaker 1: doing something like that taking place in our country, especially
Speaker 1: I mean from a white person. We look at white
Speaker 1: people as very good people. They have very good intentions
Speaker 1: for us. So when someone told me that, I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god. I have been doing cases in the
Speaker 1: health sector for almost tamyas now I had never come
Speaker 1: across anything like that. By early two thousand nineteen, Prima
Speaker 1: had the testimonies of these two women. She also had
Speaker 1: clear evidence that serving his children had been an unlicensed
Speaker 1: health facility and was still providing advanced medicine to children
Speaker 1: like tolal A. That alone is illegal in Uganda, as
Speaker 1: we've said, in the same way that it is in
Speaker 1: the US, where it's a felony. Keep in mind, medical
Speaker 1: malpractice and fraud isn't a uniquely Ugandan problem. Imagine finding
Speaker 1: out your doctor didn't have a license to practice. Like
Speaker 1: so many other fake health care workers in Colorado, this
Speaker 1: one is also accused of tending to be someone she's
Speaker 1: not to treat some of our state's most vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: Police say they got an anonymous tip that Golden was
Speaker 1: practicing as a medical doctor but with no license. In
Speaker 1: North Carolina, state regulators are letting dozens of these impostors
Speaker 1: go unlicensed and unpunished. The system is flawed. She's able
Speaker 1: to slip through these cracks like this over and over again.
Speaker 1: Over the past year. I would check in on and
Speaker 1: off with Prima and her partner, Beatrice Kayaga to see
Speaker 1: if they had made any other breakthroughs in this case,
Speaker 1: found any new witnesses that we hadn't, or any outstanding
Speaker 1: piece of evidence, maybe a video of Renee performing surgery
Speaker 1: or something like that, And for the most part, there wasn't,
Speaker 1: but they didn't need it. My cass is not really
Speaker 1: about her character who she is. A case is very simple.
Speaker 1: It's just that she was not licensed to do any
Speaker 1: medical work. Her facility did not have license. Prima's focused,
Speaker 1: simple and narrow approach to this case always struck me
Speaker 1: because it was such a stark contrast from the full
Speaker 1: range and volume of accusations against Renee that Renee had
Speaker 1: stolen babies from hospitals, experimented on children, and bribed Ugandan officials.
Speaker 1: An unlicensed facility seems like a rather minor, albeit still
Speaker 1: illegal fact, and that's been the most frustrating and challenging
Speaker 1: part of reporting this story. The more complex the accusations became,
Speaker 1: the harder it was to be able to know factually
Speaker 1: was it true or not, because they relied on conflicting
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence and interpretations of Renee's actions. I learned this
Speaker 1: as I went to track down more than a dozen
Speaker 1: Ugandan health workers who had worked at serving his children,
Speaker 1: as well as senior health officials. So I can see
Speaker 1: why Prima kept her case so narrow to her. Those
Speaker 1: other questions are besides the point her cases that you
Speaker 1: gone and women like Kakai had a basic right for
Speaker 1: themselves and their children to be treated at legitimate health
Speaker 1: facilities within Uganda's health care system by licensed professionals, the
Speaker 1: right to dignity for me to ask for what has
Speaker 1: given my child, and you can't give me answers because
Speaker 1: I don't deserve any. But you took my child away
Speaker 1: with the promise that you're going to help them, but
Speaker 1: then you can't give me feedback. That's in human, it's degrading.
Speaker 1: It's for years on end. She can't get any answers
Speaker 1: until we by the case. She says Renee had violated
Speaker 1: the rights of the most vulnerable women. Rights given are
Speaker 1: Uganda's Constitution. Most of these women are illiterate. They've never
Speaker 1: been to school, they can't speak a word but English.
Speaker 1: They don't have jobs, they can't and even fifty dollars
Speaker 1: in a year they can't. Someone who is vulnerable, very poor,
Speaker 1: and is looking at her child dying, when someone tells
Speaker 1: her that Rainie's hope and Rainy is doing this, they
Speaker 1: go because they're looking for help. And then here's a
Speaker 1: white person saying, oh, I'm going to give your food.
Speaker 1: I mean, you go to her home. There's a bed,
Speaker 1: there is porridge, there is tea, you can use the bathroom,
Speaker 1: you can wash your clothes. It seems like heaven to them.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you gone and have gone that long without oversight?
Speaker 1: They wouldn't last a year, not even five months. People
Speaker 1: would say where are you getting that money? Who are you?
Speaker 1: You know, even those illiterate women would ask are you
Speaker 1: qualified to do this? They stand up to you and
Speaker 1: ask that. But this is a white person that's intimate
Speaker 1: dating already that you're white, and we assume that the
Speaker 1: white people are educated people. In fact, in May two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, only two months after serving his children, was
Speaker 1: shut down. Health clinics in northern Uganda were shut down
Speaker 1: for nearly the same reasons. Officials say the clinics at
Speaker 1: the level of health center to are being operated by
Speaker 1: underqualified people. The aim of the operation is to protect
Speaker 1: the public from home. Those who are arrested will be
Speaker 1: changed in court. Seven people were arrested and while serving
Speaker 1: his children was shut down. Renee was never arrested, nor
Speaker 1: were any members of her staff, and they were able
Speaker 1: to reopen, albeit in a different district. Now, whether that
Speaker 1: was due to pour oversight, bribes or genuine reform, we
Speaker 1: still don't know. The wise in the house. In both
Speaker 1: Uganda and in the US, people have gone to jail
Speaker 1: for these violations or faced other repercussions were it's still
Speaker 1: in Virginia. Oh. There is no such thing as running
Speaker 1: away from the law in this world, especially in a
Speaker 1: civil case. WHOA that can be enforced anywhere. It can
Speaker 1: even be enforced on us soil. We just have to
Speaker 1: forward the judgment to the authorities in the U s
Speaker 1: and they'll get her. Prina also told me that whether
Speaker 1: they win or lose the case, it will have still
Speaker 1: made a difference. I see people are becoming more alive
Speaker 1: to challenging the system. People are starting to say, no,
Speaker 1: we can't do better, start questioning the system and the services.
Speaker 1: So it is through cases like this I like to say,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's not that we want to win, but we
Speaker 1: want to cause people to learn to question because maybe
Speaker 1: I will lose. But next time a white person comes around,
Speaker 1: they're going to think about the expenses they have to
Speaker 1: to incur if someone came up with a suit against them,
Speaker 1: because you would say, oh, you lost, No I did not.
Speaker 1: Really has spent money defending herself, so she is aware
Speaker 1: that she can't get away with what she's doing anymore.
Speaker 1: So it's a stut. We always have to start from somewhere.
Speaker 1: This story has tapped into a much bigger conversation about
Speaker 1: the role of white people in Africa more broadly, a
Speaker 1: discussion that Africans and black people have been having for decades.
Speaker 1: In the past, the conversation was about colonizers, missionaries, imperialists.
Speaker 1: These days it extends to white journalists, aid workers, humanitarians, activists,
Speaker 1: and social entrepreneurs. Why do white journalists have certain privileges,
Speaker 1: Why are white people called expats instead of immigrants, Why
Speaker 1: do white aid workers have these six figure salaries? Well,
Speaker 1: you've gone an experts get pennies on the dollar. Why
Speaker 1: do white entrepreneurs get so much more venture capital compared
Speaker 1: to local African startups. These are all questions that I
Speaker 1: hear constantly, and Serving his Children and Renee were smack
Speaker 1: in the middle of this conversation. But the question that
Speaker 1: remains is what's next? Do white foreigners have a role
Speaker 1: in contemporary Africa at all? Months into reporting this story,
Speaker 1: I finally went to Serving his Children's current facility in
Speaker 1: Chi Gondolo. Remember now, it's operating within a government facility,
Speaker 1: and from what we could tell, was operating by the books.
Speaker 1: It's run by Ugandan health professionals, but is funded by
Speaker 1: Serving his Children. Inside there's a small sign with the
Speaker 1: logos of Serving His Children on one side and Uganda's
Speaker 1: Ministry of Health on the other. The staff invited me
Speaker 1: into the children's ward, so I took off my shoes
Speaker 1: and entered. It looked like an ordinary clinic with child
Speaker 1: sized hospital beds lining both sides of the room, cartoons
Speaker 1: on the walls. But when I saw the children, I
Speaker 1: was shocked. By then, I had passed through countless photos
Speaker 1: of emaciated, bloated and utterly sick children who had been
Speaker 1: posted on Serving His Children's website over the years, or
Speaker 1: on the blogs of other missionaries and volunteers. Standing in
Speaker 1: that room, I was struck with such a strong sense
Speaker 1: of deja vu. In the center, there were mothers sitting
Speaker 1: on the floor with their babies whose skin was peeling
Speaker 1: off due to infections related to severe malnutrition. The mothers
Speaker 1: were bathing their children in a brownish liquid that nurses
Speaker 1: said was an iodine solution to help their skin heal.
Speaker 1: The staff told me these mothers had come from far
Speaker 1: off rural areas where severe malnutrition is still a problem
Speaker 1: and access to affordable healthcare is still limited. I still
Speaker 1: think back to that day a year later, after trying
Speaker 1: to piece together the parts of this story to figure
Speaker 1: out the facts. The clearest thing to me still is
Speaker 1: that the problem of severe child malnutrition, this problem that
Speaker 1: a young Renee thought she could end, that the Ugandan
Speaker 1: government has been trying to tackle, is still a big problem.
Speaker 1: The news attention for this story will eventually fade, and
Speaker 1: the court case could settle, but there are still mothers
Speaker 1: who are desperately looking for care and children who are
Speaker 1: still suffering from severe malnutrition. So When I think back
Speaker 1: to that day, I still wonder what will happen to
Speaker 1: them m Back in the summer, I was shocked that
Speaker 1: Renee ever spoke to me, But the truth is she
Speaker 1: was never fully bought into this podcast. I figured early
Speaker 1: on that the best way to keep her involved would
Speaker 1: be to indulge her point of view, to make it
Speaker 1: abundantly clear that part of my process was to see
Speaker 1: her side of things. And I spent more than a
Speaker 1: dozen hours talking with her, but each interaction felt like
Speaker 1: meeting her all over again. The real Renee was walled off, unknowable.
Speaker 1: There was always an emotional barrier. Sometimes it was a
Speaker 1: hard time limit, a lawyer listening by phone, or the
Speaker 1: over politeness of my questions trying not to offend her.
Speaker 1: We went long gaps without speaking because Renee stopped participating
Speaker 1: at multiple points. The closest I got to a breakthrough
Speaker 1: was a few weeks before Christmas of last year. Are
Speaker 1: good talking about well marked? It doesn't have these people
Speaker 1: that are using. Renee invited me over for lunch and
Speaker 1: what wound up being our last interview. Her place was small,
Speaker 1: a converted garage on a friend's property, surrounded by woods
Speaker 1: and farmland. When I entered, there was the aroma of
Speaker 1: fresh bread in the kitchen above a space heater. In
Speaker 1: the living room next to Renee's bed, there were a
Speaker 1: few stockings and tinsel on the wall, and the rest
Speaker 1: to the apartment was dedicated to the baby. The younger
Speaker 1: of her two adopted daughters, less than two years old,
Speaker 1: was awake when I got there. She was scrambling around
Speaker 1: the place and smashing face first into a mirror, from
Speaker 1: which she got up giggling to look at yourself, because
Speaker 1: you're so cute. Renee left Uganda in October two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen to finalize her daughter's adoption. The court case against
Speaker 1: her was filed three months later, and Renee hasn't returned since.
Speaker 1: It's why there are almost no mementos in her house
Speaker 1: from her entire time in Uganda, which is we're wondering,
Speaker 1: is anything from Uganda or is it pretty much all
Speaker 1: stuff you required names. My sister made that Eileen Chrism.
Speaker 1: She's talking about a cow skull named Boris on her wall.
Speaker 1: When her daughter took a nap, Renee, her mom and
Speaker 1: I walked around outside for a bit. The property was
Speaker 1: a hundred forty acres. The trails went back for miles,
Speaker 1: but right next to Renee's apartment was a k barn.
Speaker 1: It looked like a wedding venue with polished carriages inside,
Speaker 1: just like the how she grew up in. There were
Speaker 1: quotations inscribed throughout the property Psalm nine one. The heavens
Speaker 1: declare the glory of God, the skies proclaimed the work
Speaker 1: of his hands. And there are far better things ahead
Speaker 1: than any we leave behind. C. S. Lewis from our
Speaker 1: very first interview, Renee used famous quotes as a way
Speaker 1: of grounding herself amidst all this controversy. There's a really
Speaker 1: great quote on my brain now, but basically just talking
Speaker 1: about like there are so many people that will just
Speaker 1: sit and point fingers at people that are in the arena,
Speaker 1: you know of blood, sweat and tears um, but like
Speaker 1: who are they to really speak into that. She found
Speaker 1: the quote later and texted it to me. It came
Speaker 1: from Teddy Roosevelt. It is not the critic who counts,
Speaker 1: not the man who points out how the strong man
Speaker 1: stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done
Speaker 1: the better. The credit belongs to the man who is
Speaker 1: actually in the arena. Whose face is mob Bob dustin
Speaker 1: sweat and blood, who straws valiantly, who airs, who comes
Speaker 1: short again and again, because there is no effort without
Speaker 1: error and shortcoming. If he fails, at least fails while
Speaker 1: daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
Speaker 1: those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Speaker 1: During the we published this, it was announced that the
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt statue outside the American Museum of Natural History
Speaker 1: would be removed expressly because of its racist depiction of
Speaker 1: black and indigenous people. Under the President's subjugation, he was
Speaker 1: a cheerleader for colonization, which he justified with poetic passages
Speaker 1: like the one Renee shared. Was it worth it? Did
Speaker 1: I hear God wrong? These were the questions Renee said
Speaker 1: she'd been asking herself lately, the things she never stopped
Speaker 1: to ask of herself all those years in Uganda. So
Speaker 1: I'm really curious to talk about, you know, especially leading
Speaker 1: up to if there were moments that you recall of
Speaker 1: having self doubt about not so much submission of the organization,
Speaker 1: just about how are you were going about it, how
Speaker 1: much work you were doing, For example, like the workaholic
Speaker 1: thing that a I was so busy that I almost
Speaker 1: like didn't have time to probably doubt the things that
Speaker 1: were going on. Um, whether that's like right, wrong or indifferent,
Speaker 1: But I felt with such strong certainty that like serving
Speaker 1: as children was doing what it was supposed to do.
Speaker 1: As like ignorant and like kind of pumpous as it sounds,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of self doubt back then,
Speaker 1: and I think part of that was because I was
Speaker 1: like young and ignorant and ambitious, and you know, like
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I didn't know. And I think
Speaker 1: that's some more now, Like did I just like totally
Speaker 1: waste my life and like ruin other people's lives? But
Speaker 1: doing the last decade of my life, um is more
Speaker 1: thought now. And I think I've always felt like sure
Speaker 1: of my decisions when I come to them, like all
Speaker 1: growing up and through high school and even like my
Speaker 1: decision to go to you gone to the first time,
Speaker 1: and once I made those decisions, I felt like such
Speaker 1: a strong conviction it was what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like I missed. I missed that feeling of
Speaker 1: of being assured that like I'm on the right path
Speaker 1: in life, and um, I definitely don't have that anymore.
Speaker 1: When I first began working on this story, I thought
Speaker 1: we were going to figure out the truth. Either Renee
Speaker 1: was a monster and she'd killed those kids, or she'd
Speaker 1: been wrongly accused and she was the victim of a
Speaker 1: tremendous injustice. But then I spent time with her and
Speaker 1: discovered what a mess this whole thing was, and I
Speaker 1: came to believe that Renee wants and has always wanted
Speaker 1: to be a force for good in this world. I
Speaker 1: really do believe that. Still, as we sat on the
Speaker 1: floor of her home, eating her mom's stew, I kept
Speaker 1: thinking about one simple fact, the same thing Helema could
Speaker 1: never get past. Renee had run an unlicensed facility where
Speaker 1: medicine was practiced on vulnerable children, something she'd never have
Speaker 1: gotten away with in the US, And if Renee wanted
Speaker 1: to make a difference, then she should go to jail
Speaker 1: for it. That's the only way there's going to be
Speaker 1: systemic change that we might have a shot at ending
Speaker 1: white saviorism. Watching Renee be a mom the empathy I
Speaker 1: felt it was hard to reconcile with these thoughts. But
Speaker 1: as we said before, this story was about so much
Speaker 1: more than just one woman. Renee was now a symbol.
Speaker 1: She's the monument that has to be topic and it's
Speaker 1: very hard. But I didn't say anything. I just sat there, listen.
Speaker 1: Did you even make a difference, because like, all I
Speaker 1: wanted to do was like make a difference and help people.
Speaker 1: But did I not help anyone? And did I not
Speaker 1: make a difference? Like that's why I'm being told that
Speaker 1: art by the world, you know, um, And so wrestling
Speaker 1: through that stuff really tough. Um. Before I left, I
Speaker 1: asked Renee if she had any pictures of the early
Speaker 1: days of serving his children before this all happened. So
Speaker 1: this was at the house. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever seen it. I guess I don't actually think I've seen.
Speaker 1: She pulled out an old laptop and began combing through
Speaker 1: folders and so like, this was my bedroom right here,
Speaker 1: and there's like a little small room and there were
Speaker 1: pictures of kids on pink swing sets on the porch,
Speaker 1: a photo of a camel that arrived one day at
Speaker 1: the center and never left. The day when ten baby
Speaker 1: goats were born and the staff cradled them all at once.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty happy place with the most part
Speaker 1: people were pretty I'm sure this was. This was our kitchen,
Speaker 1: and these two rooms turned into also rooms with cribs
Speaker 1: for kids, and that was the intensive care room. Then
Speaker 1: we got to photos that we talked about a lot
Speaker 1: sick kids before coming to serving his children and happy
Speaker 1: kids going home. And this little girl was actually admitted
Speaker 1: to the center when we um closed in two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: She was less than a kilo. She was like a
Speaker 1: pound or something. Yeah, she was in the center. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was her in the ICU. So he was some
Speaker 1: before and after one. They were hung like this, so
Speaker 1: like before and after, before and after we had, you know,
Speaker 1: almost a thousand of those. They went like all the
Speaker 1: way down and all the way to the ceiling. After
Speaker 1: our center closed, these photos stayed up for a really
Speaker 1: long time. It was actually like a very emotional process
Speaker 1: for me to take. It was kind of like a
Speaker 1: morning I guess process too. That's probably a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of things. That was where I left Renee,
Speaker 1: sorting through the memories, taking the good ones with her,
Speaker 1: leaving the bad ones behind, while her daughter, who knew
Speaker 1: nothing of this, slept peacefully in the other room. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would love to be able to work in the
Speaker 1: like humanitarian service industry. Again, um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's possible for a while. I'm not super favorably looked
Speaker 1: upon and so some of those circles. But I think
Speaker 1: this has helped remind me that like that is still
Speaker 1: my heartbeat, and I still do love that, And even
Speaker 1: though I've been so burned by it, I still a
Speaker 1: big part of my heart is still in that world.
Speaker 1: That day in the courtroom, the judge announced that after
Speaker 1: months enclosed or negotiations, both sides, Renee and the mothers
Speaker 1: still hadn't reached an agreement, so he ordered the case
Speaker 1: back to legal mediation, a last dig attempt to settle
Speaker 1: things out of court. After a whole year, it was
Speaker 1: tough to see any ending or any answers to this
Speaker 1: whole case. It felt like things had never left the
Speaker 1: starting line. But there's one child who's been on my
Speaker 1: mind this whole time, one we haven't told you about yet.
Speaker 1: His name is Elijah Kawa Gamba, and he's the son
Speaker 1: of Kakai Annette Rose, one of the mothers involved in
Speaker 1: the court case. There's a simple reason you haven't heard
Speaker 1: much about Kawa Gamba. Yet it's because well, we don't
Speaker 1: really know what happened to him, and neither does Kai.
Speaker 1: And then I met Kakai for the first time shortly
Speaker 1: after the case was filed at a hotel Enginer. She
Speaker 1: was shy, looking down at her feet with her hands
Speaker 1: folded in her lap. Joyce Alana, one of Herne's former
Speaker 1: social workers, helped interpret for me without any without discharge
Speaker 1: from They didn't even tell how the shell is suffering from.
Speaker 1: What Kakai did know was that Cala Gamba passed away
Speaker 1: shortly after being discharged from serving his children's new reopened facility.
Speaker 1: But she was never told why her baby died. Reaching
Speaker 1: their home, they said, just spent three days and they
Speaker 1: said date. So she doesn't know what was done to
Speaker 1: the child. She can't now return her child back. All
Speaker 1: the hopes not there and all the hopes are gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had three other children, the young one who is
Speaker 1: for us. Keep on asking them where is Cala Gande?
Speaker 1: Doesn't know that I do what The last line of
Speaker 1: kais affidavit reads, I strongly believe that serving his children's
Speaker 1: employees did something to my child that led to his death.
Speaker 1: Here's Prima again. It's abuse of dignity. You basically stripped
Speaker 1: these women of the woman who would say that you
Speaker 1: treat them like they're not people. She asked for what
Speaker 1: had killed her child, and no explanation was given. It
Speaker 1: was until we filed the case and they fired this
Speaker 1: response almost four or five months later. As a human being,
Speaker 1: you deserve a right to access your medical records. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if I'm illiterate or I paid no I
Speaker 1: stew As a human being, I have rights to dignity
Speaker 1: because you took my child a life. My child is
Speaker 1: did Renee, however, denies that Kawa Gamba was ever even
Speaker 1: admitted to serving his children. She says she knows nothing
Speaker 1: about him or Kakai. Then we started hearing rumors that
Speaker 1: this whole thing was a setup, that Kawa Gamba's death
Speaker 1: was due to Kakai's negligence. We needed to follow up
Speaker 1: on these new revelations, so I went over to Kakai's
Speaker 1: house with Samy, the same former employee who helped me
Speaker 1: track down Nabucoz's mother. The whole bumpy motorcycle ride there,
Speaker 1: my stomach was in a not Kakai didn't know what
Speaker 1: our interview was going to be about, and the last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to do just confront a grieving mother
Speaker 1: with a conspiracy that she killed her own child and
Speaker 1: pinned it on Renee. Kah Kakai's family home was on
Speaker 1: a small farm of banana trees and cassava plants, with
Speaker 1: a few chickens running around and making a racket. She
Speaker 1: smiled as soon as we wrote in and invited us
Speaker 1: inside with her elderly mother. We sat around a small
Speaker 1: wooden table and started talking. Okay, so yeah, I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to hear your story from the beginning to the end
Speaker 1: um and then from there we will discuss more. Mike
Speaker 1: Wanda m m story. Mm hmm, you're good, I go
Speaker 1: on it. She told me the same story that she'd
Speaker 1: written in her affidavit, her back and forth journeys to
Speaker 1: serving his children, to Ginger and my Yuka, to home
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and eventually the death of her son Isa.
Speaker 1: He's trying to tell you that her child, though the
Speaker 1: child was small, the child was living a happy life,
Speaker 1: was so happy, was so lively because being small. It's
Speaker 1: not her sickness. What paining most was that, to this
Speaker 1: day she's never been told exactly what caused her son's death?
Speaker 1: Did they give her a reason for this? Church? Back
Speaker 1: walk when the sea to energy and tell you what come?
Speaker 1: She's telling you that? Now what reason? If they even
Speaker 1: failed to present a dougment to her about the medicine
Speaker 1: that the child has been given the condition, Now what dougment?
Speaker 1: But then I had to ask the question that I'd
Speaker 1: come here to ask. The story I've heard is this
Speaker 1: that they told her that the child has pneumonia. The
Speaker 1: doctor said that this clinic does not have the equipment
Speaker 1: or qualifications to treat pneumonia, so they gave her medicine
Speaker 1: and told her to go to a different hospital. Buddy, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my, no what She slammed her finger on the
Speaker 1: table to make a point in a single word. But
Speaker 1: I never heard her like this. No, no, no, like
Speaker 1: to see what they she's telling you that he was
Speaker 1: not told anything about when a sickness Caba Gandia suffering from.
Speaker 1: If they're saying like that that the child had money
Speaker 1: and she was advised to go and seek for medical treatment,
Speaker 1: theyre just liars. Go man, article see and no, I
Speaker 1: could see we didn't go on that child even better
Speaker 1: passing she began to shake with anger one and the
Speaker 1: man to south grand about I'm tears ran down her cheeks.
Speaker 1: What a man hanger, Nancy you. I pulled the microphone
Speaker 1: away and looked down at my feet. I felt like
Speaker 1: I'd driven a knife into Kai and twisted it. I
Speaker 1: began to question what I was even doing there in
Speaker 1: the first place. And something she said earlier in the
Speaker 1: interview ray in my ears louder and louder, what is
Speaker 1: the relationship that Mr Kakai has with Kelsey and No
Speaker 1: Waight Saviors? How did she come to know them? Nea
Speaker 1: wm Zio solf has come here? When she met them,
Speaker 1: they asked her some questions and she answered to them
Speaker 1: how she has answered you. No Wight Saviors had shown
Speaker 1: up and asked Kakai to retell the most painful moments
Speaker 1: of her life. Then they packed their bags and were off.
Speaker 1: It was the same pattern Kakai saw and every single journalist,
Speaker 1: lawyer and activists that visited, and I realized I was
Speaker 1: no different. We spoke to over a hundred people around
Speaker 1: the world to get to the bottom of the story. Well,
Speaker 1: there'd be malnourished children and then one day they've Begune
Speaker 1: what happened? Why we dove deep in the ginger community
Speaker 1: and got caught up in the drama of it all.
Speaker 1: It was just, honestly, like mean girls on steroids. We
Speaker 1: flipped through centuries of history to understand the impact of
Speaker 1: the missionary movement. I'm doing this by virtue of a
Speaker 1: fourth greater than me. We waded through rivers of red
Speaker 1: tape to understand how the government could let something like
Speaker 1: this happen. See goed the step and say the center
Speaker 1: has been closed. We spent so much time piecing together
Speaker 1: contradictory narratives. She wasn't a good Samaritan, She's a fraud
Speaker 1: hunting for clues the Missongus that found Nabucosa. They're saying
Speaker 1: that she was neglected and getting caught up in the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty of it. This is the city as Proceedia
Speaker 1: that I forgot what this story was actually about. This
Speaker 1: case became a symbol for white guilt. Black lives do
Speaker 1: not matter to the same level to us as white people,
Speaker 1: the failures of international aid but we can't get rid
Speaker 1: of it, and structural racism in Africa. People galify what
Speaker 1: people seemed like everyone involved in this case was using
Speaker 1: it to make a point. I hoped to see humility
Speaker 1: to defend an idea, was watching her be literally crucified
Speaker 1: for trying to do the right thing. Somewhere along the way,
Speaker 1: this case stopped being about two mothers seeking answers the
Speaker 1: most simple and basic reparation. And as the world debated
Speaker 1: on Twitter, on cable news, in editorial columns, the Savior Complex,
Speaker 1: five children died in an unlicensed Kakai was here alone,
Speaker 1: still searching for some comfort an answer. After she had
Speaker 1: a moment to breathe, I asked where Kawakamba's grave was.
Speaker 1: She got up and silently led the way. So I
Speaker 1: followed through the banana groves and into a small clearing
Speaker 1: and in the corner was a mound of earth. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dick a wemma, I'm bad to Wenmer. Sit up,
Speaker 1: it is not listen no, addie. Kakai went over and
Speaker 1: started clearing the weeds from the grave. She told me
Speaker 1: she came out here every week if she could to
Speaker 1: keep kawa Ganbe's grave clean. And then she walked to
Speaker 1: the other corner, sat down and wept to herself for
Speaker 1: a while. I just stood there until Kokai rose to
Speaker 1: her feet and brought us back to the house. She
Speaker 1: took a seat on a bench with her hands in
Speaker 1: her lap. As we packed her back acts and boarded
Speaker 1: our motorcycles. She gave us a wave as we set off,
Speaker 1: and when I looked back a ways down the road,
Speaker 1: she was still there, hands folded, looking down at her
Speaker 1: feet as the crickets drowned on into the evening. The
Speaker 1: Missionaries produced in association with I Heart Media. It's written
Speaker 1: and reported by Roger Gola, Helene mcge Coondhi, and Malcolm Burnley.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Michelle Lands and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto
Speaker 1: is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangishler. Our
Speaker 1: fact checker is Austin Thompson.