Issue 162

December 2017

When I got to Congo, I just fell in love with the people. I actually felt like that’s why I lived. It’s so hard to explain how the Pygmy people are treated because it feels like you stepped onto another planet where people are treated like animals.

I couldn’t believe it. When I came home I had sleepless nights thinking that these people are enslaved. It’s two different countries, two worlds apart. We slept on dirt there and when I got back to the States, I had a big, comfy king-sized bed. I couldn’t get myself to sleep on that bed for two, maybe three months.

A lot of the stuff that has happened there is dark and dangerous and comes out of a very desperate place due to the circumstances they live in. Even the slave masters are living on a dollar or less a day in extreme poverty. I just wanted people in that dark place to see a glimmer of hope that they can grab onto.

I went there off and on for the first two years. I wanted to build relationships. This was my dream and my hope. The second time a little boy died from dirty water. I had him in my hands. I had his blood on my hands. I buried him. I had blisters on my hands from digging his grave and burying him. It wrecked me. It absolutely messed me up, but from that moment, I knew we had to get clean water.

I was able to tell them that maybe one day his death won’t be in vain, and now this village will finally have cleaner.

When I was there, I slept like they sleep – in the dirt and without a mosquito net. I got sick and almost died from Malaria.

I lost 33lb and didn’t urinate for five days, then when I did it was as black as coffee. It was blackwater fever. Everybody was telling me to go back home to get treatment. I could have done that, but all of the team was watching and all of the Pygmies were watching. They don’t have that opportunity.

I wasn’t being stupid, I didn’t want to die but I wanted to depend on the circumstances they go through and use what they have at their fingertips.

I hope they could see the fighter spirit in me and that I truly believe in them as family, that I was able to recover and drive back in a water well drilling truck and I was right back in the forest with them.

They are my family. I don’t mean that in some cheesy or cheap way. I fell in love with the people. My wife and I both have our own names. Three kiddos in three different villages now have land, food and water for the first time. They had nothing to give me in return, so they named their first-born boys after me. A little girl has been named after my wife, too. We just truly love them.

I was a spark plug to the engine. I’m not a hero in this. The people who work there full-time are the heroes. I look up to them. They had the heart to help their home country, but they didn’t have the tools or the empowerment to do it.

We put the tools in their hands, the knowledge in their heads and we train them up and send them out. We try to inspire them. We empower them and we continually encourage them. Our mission for Fight for the Forgotten is to love the unloved and empower the voiceless.

Our vision is to overcome oppression with overwhelming opportunity.

People need help here. People need help there. People need help everywhere. If my story can encourage people to help anywhere, then that is a big victory for me.