It was a difficult trip, to say the least. A 10-hour bus ride. The others being left behind at the border, so arriving in a strange city alone. A very basic place to stay for the night. More taxi rides, in the rain, foreign language, and lots of confusion. Hours later, hiring bicycles to take us to the parents' home.
I had been watching Innocent the whole time, watching his face as he looked out the bus windows. He had a smile on his face as we pulled away from Kampala...but the closer we got to Rwanda, the more he started bouncing with excitement in his seat. By the time we got on the bicycles, he could hardly suppress a smile.
The evening before, I asked him how he was feeling..."Just so happy. I'm excited to see my family again." Why? "I haven't seen them in 4 years!" How have you spent those past 4 years? "A woman convinced me to go to Kampala to work for her. She would pay me 3,000/= (roughly $1.50 USD) each month. But then she just stopped paying me and still expected all the same work. I finally got tired of it and ran away one day, and became a street kid. And at the end of January, I found out about the church in Kivulu and the programs you have there for street kids. That's how I started to come." Did your family know you had gone to Kampala? "No, I left with the woman one day but didn't tell anyone where I was going. Nobody knows where I have been."
His story ran through my head as we started the ride on the bicycles, each of us seated on a small platform behind the rider of the bike, our feet on pegs on the back wheel. When I sat down, I thought my seat had a cushion...but as the minutes and kilometers ticked by, I realized there wasn't much cushion at all. At one of the more painful parts of the journey, riding almost straight down a mountain-side and praying for all I was worth that the bike wouldn't hit a stone and twist out from under us, I thought of the boy's family. Would they welcome him? Would they be happy to see him? Or would they be mad that he had run away? Would they even be at the end of this long bike ride...or would have they moved to a different town, or have died? What if they didn't want their son back...then what would we do?
Heavenly Father, I beg you, let this be a happy home-coming. Please Lord, let these parents be overjoyed to see their son!
It's always a bit iffy taking street kids home to their families. More often than we would like, parents aren't very happy to see their children. It's heart-rending when all the child wants is to be home, and the parents are disgusted that he has come. Please Lord, not one of those receptions...
Finally, several hikes up mountains and rides down the other side, the boy said we were home. At one point in the trip, we had passed a man herding cows- when he saw Innocent, it took him a moment to recognise who it was, but then the old man came and wrapped his arms around the boy and was so happy to see him...I continued my prayer that his parents would respond the same way.
We hopped off the bikes and a man with a sun-withered face came to meet us. He stared in disbelief for a moment, having a hard time grasping that his son was standing there in front of him. He finally found his voice and said, "I thought you had died. Four years ago, I thought you had died. But you have come home!!" and then he, too, wrapped his arms around his son and pulled him into his fatherly embrace.
We followed the father and son to the mud hut and sat down in the shade. Neighbors came to greet Innocent and welcome him home (and unfortunately, to stare at their first muzungu and the camera she was clicking away). Someone had gone to bring the mother, and after a few moments, the crowd parted and another thin, leathery face came through the crowd. She, too, was speechless for a moment, and then she put her hand to her chest and pulled out the rosary she had around her neck. When she finally found her voice, she said, "I have prayed every day for the past 4 years that God would bring you home. He has answered my prayers! Every day, for the past 4 years, I have prayed! And now you are here!" She repeated this over and over as she, too, pulled her son into an embrace.
It was incredible. One of the happiest homecomings I have ever had the priviledge of witnessing! And suddenly, my body didn't feel so sore and achy from the trip, and it didn't matter to me that all these people were staring at my white skin. God had used me to answer the prayers of a mother for her son. God had used me to reunite a family. As hard as the trip had been (and would continue to be- we had ridden down so many hillsides, and now we had to walk up them; we would be given wrong directions; we would have long rides and border crossings and no real food for a while still), it was all worth it.
We shook hands and said goodbye, but the mother held onto my hand longer- and this time repeated, over and over, "Murakoze, murakoze..." The word lingered in my thoughts through the hours of travel...
"Murakoze- Thank you."