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The way that it began, unbelievably enough, I was sitting at my desk in my office when
I when I lived outside of Philadelphia. I received an airmail letter. This letter was
addressed to me at work. It had my name on it. It was a mystery letter. Inside the envelope
was a letter; a handwritten letter from a young man and the stamp on this letter was
from Malawi. Believe me; I had no idea where Malawi was. The first thing I did was grab
a map to look and see where Malawi was; and when I discovered it was in southeast Africa,
first thing that dawned on me was I don't know anybody in Malawi. I had no idea why
somebody would be writing me. I though maybe in my travels an airport baggage handler had
taken my address; but that doesn't explain why the letter came to me at work and not
at home. So I'll read the first couple lines from the letter. It says,
"High brother, Firstly I want to know your life, how are you, and how is your life there.
To say about me, I'm very well. I'm a single young Malawian boy of 25 years of age. And
I write this letter to tell you that I'm very glad indeed."
This letter was written by a young man in Lilongwe; and purposely sent to me. Now I
kind of thought that there was going to be a chain letter kind of line in it. I kind
of thought that it was going to say "send me money; send me books; give me something".
That never came. It was just a friendly letter. Now I was baffled. I showed all my co-workers.
I was like get this, somebody from Malawi wrote this to me, introducing them self.
What I had discovered, a few months later was that I had donated some clothing to the
Salvation Army. And in the pocket of one of those shirts that I had donated to the Salvation
Army was my identification badge from work. Somehow my badge went from a small town near
Philadelphia; somehow ended up in a shop vendors shop in Lilongwe, Malawi. This young man when
he was unpacking his clothing, his new clothes shipment for the day, saw it drop to the ground,
he picked it up, and he said, "Michael Kirkpatrick. I'm going to write this guy". And he did.
For the next two years, me and a young man named Victory continued to write each other
back and forth for about two years.
Now this same story I told to friends of mine at church. How I was getting these letters
from this guy in Malawi, how my badge had travelled all the way there. And they told
me, "this is your lucky day. We have a friend from Africa who is visiting us. And you can
actually meet a real live African." I didn't think it was too comical but I was intrigued.
They saw the connection that I had and they thought well, maybe you would like to meet
somebody from Africa.
This gentleman, his name was Richard Kabazzi, and he is from Uganda. Richard Kabazzi was
in the US raising awareness, and telling us about the organization that he started back
in the late 80s. At that time was when ***/AIDS really became devastating in that part of
Africa, East Africa; specifically in southern Uganda. Richard explained to us about the
orphans. He explained to us the impact, the devastation; the children that were being
left behind. He was starting his own child sponsorship program. Now he had told us his
life story. He told us how he left Uganda in the 1970s. Much like what Diana said, when
somebody mentions Mugabe they say "ah Zimbabwe" or they say Zimbabwe they say "Mugabe". Often
when people say Uganda they go "ah Idi Amin". Richard had left in the 70s because of Idi
Amin. He came to the States. But in the late 80s he saw the impact that AIDS was having
on his country. He gave up everything he had living a comfortable life in the US to return
to Uganda to start a hospice care with his wife. After a few months Richard realized
that no matter what he did to ease people into death, and to give them a death of dignity;
children were still going to be left behind. Quickly he realized he needed to change his
mission. He needed to change his mission and take care of the children that were being
left behind.
So he told us this story. Of course my beautiful wife, the heart that she has, was ready to
sponsor a dozen kids. She said, "sign us up. We're going to sponsor all these kids. Give
them a great future". I on the other hand am a very skeptical and cynical person. I've
seen the television commercials. I've heard the begging from white westerners. I've seen
the commercials for, and I am not knocking any of these organizations, but I have seen
the commercials for World Vision, I've seen the commercials for Compassion, I have seen
the commercials for UNICEF. Every time I fly on a plane international, I see Change for
the Future. Drop your change in the envelope. I've seen Samaritan's Purse. I've seen World
Relief. I've seen them all. My question was what makes this guy any different. Everybody
wants to stick their hands in my pocket and take my money. I want to know more. So Richard,
kindly enough, accepted our invitation to dinner. When we invited Richard to dinner,
we sat down and I grilled this guy. I asked him all kinds of questions. Where does the
money go? What kind of car do you drive? What kind of house do you live in? How much does
it take to really benefit one of these children? I kept asking him questions until at one point
Richard stopped. He said. "Michael, go get me a calendar." This was in about March of
1998. I got him a calendar. He opened it up to March and goes "here's today's date". He
flipped through April. He flipped through May. He got to June, put his finger down on
a date and he said, "on this day I am picking you up at the airport in Entebbe. Because
for every question I answer you have twenty more. This will never end. The only way that
you will understand is to come for yourself."
So in June 1998, I stepped off a plane in Entebbe, Uganda, bags in tow, with my new
bride, and I wasn't in America anymore. I was in a whole new land. I didn't know what
to expect. I didn't know what I was going to do. I just wanted to find out what I could
do and what I could learn. I'll tell you what, everybody who goes, whether they're missionaries
or whether they're people doing humanitarian work, think that they have to be prepared
and educate the ignorant and save the Africans. I learned more and I was mentored, I learned
more wisdom and I was changed more from my African friends than I could ever change them.
When I came back, I was a changed person. I looked at things differently; started to
kind of think about my life; kind of changing my priorities; but further, what can I do?
A lot of people come back from going to Africa and the first thing they want to do is start
an NGO. They want to start a charity. They want to also help the kids. They want to further
divide the pie. There's only a set amount of money in this world and everybody wants
to start a charity and everybody wants to start an NGO and make the slices of pie smaller
and smaller and smaller and smaller. I didn't want to be a part of that. So when I came
back with all this passion and fire I knew the last thing I wanted to do was start another
organization.
So I continued just learning, educating myself, reading about Africa. Western schools are
notorious; to us African history is learning about Egypt and the Pharaohs. And that's it.
I wanted to educate myself; I wanted to learn. I had a great sensitivity toward everything
in Africa. I had a great sensitivity toward Uganda.
So, when I came back, a few weeks later, standing on a stage in my church, was a gentleman from
Rwanda. I listened to him with deep attention. He told us that he was a survivor of the genocide
in 1994. If I've ever met a gentleman who had every right to be bitter, to be angry
at the world, and to despise the evil that exists, it would be this gentleman. But he
turned that experience into an organization that is called African Leadership and Reconciliation
Ministries. It's a Christian based organization. But he saw one of the root causes of genocide
is lack of leadership, lack of leadership training, and also the need for reconciliation.
His organization now is in eleven countries in Africa. They participated in the post violent,
post election violence in Kenya. This is a gentleman who took a life experience and is
making a difference in the world in people's lives. So Celestin and I became fast friends.
I learned a lot about his work, what he was doing.
So in the year 2000 when my wife and I went back to Uganda, we learned a little more.
We kind of looked at Africa a little differently as we started to educate ourselves.
When we came back from that second trip, again I had a heightened sensitivity. I wanted to
learn more. I was looking at websites. I was reading every day. I was reading the BBC Africa.
I was reading The Nation in Kenya. I was reading the New Vision, the Monitor in Uganda. I wanted
to see what was going on in the land of my friends. So I kept up with current events.
In one of those chat rooms, in one of those websites connected to the Monitor, which is
one of the main newspapers in Uganda, there's a chat room attached to it. So I thought,
what the heck, I want to see what these Ugandans are talking about. So I'd go in and kind of
be a passive watcher to chat conversations. And occasionally I'd chime in. And in any
chat room, there's a lot of nonsense that goes on. A lot of the Ugandans that were in
that chat room were either people in the diaspora in Europe, in Canada and the US or they were
people back home in Uganda. There was one person, one ID, that over the course of several
weeks and several months I kept seeing. He wasn't talking nonsense. This man made great
sense, he had great insight, and we connected on an intellectual level on many topics. The
one thing about a chat room is you don't know what somebody looks like, you don't know where
they're from, if they're male or female, you don't know whether they're old or young, you
don't know their level of education. It is the great equalizer.
So finally after several months, we decided you know what, we feel comfortable enough
with each other, here's my name, what's your name, what's your phone number, where do you
live. That gentleman that I was speaking to in that chat room is the artist whose artwork
you see in the corner and his name is Fred Mutebi.
At the time, Fred Mutebi was a Fulbright scholar. He was teaching at a university in Memphis
for a year. He would get lonely to speak his own language of luganda and the only outlet
that he had to speak his language, to type it, was to go into this chat room. And here
I am, a white guy living in Dallas saying, "I want to meet this guy".
So the next time Stephanie and I went to Africa we now had another friend. We added Fred Mutebi
to our list of friends. We got to see how he produced his beautiful artwork, went to
his studio, got to know his family. We again visited the children we had met in our first
two trips. We visited our friend Richard Kabazzi. Fred also told us about his vision to use
art to teach children. He created an organization called Let Art Talk that teaches principles,
life skills; life principles. He doesn't just take art and have kids out in villages or
at schools draw pretty pictures. He uses art as a vehicle to teach kids things like persistence,
perseverance, setting a goal, not letting obstacles get in your way. But he also discovered
a lot of these kids are incredibly creative. They can paint. There's kids ten, eleven years
old, they're doing woodcut prints just like Fred. He teaches them how to do them. He's
working with a lot of the children affected by AIDS. He's working with a lot of children
that are formerly abducted soldiers from northern Uganda; children that are living in extreme
poverty. And this is a whole world that these children have never been exposed to. So he
goes out to the villages. He brings some of these children who have never been outside
of their villages to Kampala and these kids love it. He's doing all this with his own
pocketbook. He's doing it all with his own wallet. He's not World Vision. He's not Compassion
International. He doesn't have commercials. He can't get an ad on an airline. He doesn't
have billboards. He does it because he has a passion. And he is a stakeholder in his
own country. He knows what the future for his country is if he doesn't personally get
involved in making an impact.
So now when I came back from visiting, this was after my, I'm losing count here, but this
was after my fourth visit to Uganda. I was on fire. I was telling people about Fred Mutebi.
I was telling people about the organization that Richard Kabazzi started, which is called
AROAD, African Rural Outreach and Development. I was trying to raise awareness.
Well in the meantime, I had moved from my corporate office job in Philadelphia to Dallas,
Texas. I was living large. I was doing pretty good for myself; me and the wife. I was pulling
in a six figure salary. We were doing pretty good. I worked for twenty years for a single
company. I worked my way up the food chain in the company and this company had begged
me to move to the corporate headquarters. I obliged, went, and in 2007, they told me
to leave. They let me go. That was devastating. The first thing when I went home and I told my
wife I had lost my job; the first thing she said to me was "go to Africa". I spent a year
with the support and the blessing of my wife; in 2007 I went to Uganda twice. I went in
June of 2007, came back, decided I wasn't there long enough, didn't do enough, and I
just wanted to go back. So I went back, in December of 2007. In December of 2007, which
means I missed my wife's birthday, I missed Christmas, and I missed New Year's away from
my wife. And she gave me her blessing to do it. So I got to be in Africa for those holidays;
got to call my wife on my mobile in the village and wish her a happy birthday.
It was during those two visits that again, I was further impacted by perception; by what
we are fed in the western media. This time I saw it, the reality of it. This time I had
traveled to northern Uganda. I don't know how many of you are familiar with what's been
going on for the last 20 years in northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army. Joseph
Kony. Child soldiers. From 1986 to about 2004, it was just a horrible situation. There have
been organizations born out of that turmoil. There are some wealthy organizations, wealthy
NGOs, in America that are trying to tell that story to raise funds, to raise awareness.
They continue to do it to this day. I went to Gulu. There is no more war. There is no
more night commuting. There are no more child soldiers. The aftermath is there. They are
rebuilding. They are getting their lives together. Children still need to be counseled. They
need to go to school. Things are being promoted to raise funds to tug at the heartstrings
of westerners to get the emotional response isn't happening anymore. When I went and I
saw that I couldn't believe it. I stood in the roundabout in the middle of Gulu and my
friend said "Michael, take a guess how many NGOs are in Gulu." I stood at the roundabout
and I did a 360 and I said, I don't know. 50. Michael, there's more than that. I said
I'll be crazy. I'll double that. A hundred. They said, Michael, there's more than that.
I said now I'll really be crazy, I'm going to double that. Two hundred. They said, Michael,
there's more than that. They said, Michael, registered here in Uganda, in the city of
Gulu, there are about three hundred NGOs registered. And I looked around again and I said, what
the hell are they doing? Why is. There should be a new city built. There should be infrastructure.
There should be roads. There should be new homes. There should be all of these things.
To this day I don't know what most of the NGOs are doing. I know there needs to be healthcare.
I know there needs to be some trauma counseling. There are many organizations doing wonderful
work. But it dawned on me then, that I'm not going to fall for it. I for myself, learned
to trust my African friends. I learned for myself, to listen.
One of the things I've learned in my life, even though I like to speak, even though what
I believe is the part of me is African is I'm a storyteller. One of the things that
Africa taught me is that I need to listen. And when I listen, I could hear them tell
me things. And since I do not represent a government. I do not represent a charity,
an NGO. I don't represent a business. I'm just a global independent citizen. I tend
to have more sincere and honest conversations with people. And they shared things with me
that really allowed me to understand things from their point of view.
And one of my passions now is I love to see Africans helping Africans. What I did was,
I turned that, all my African friends that are trying to do things on the continent,
whether they're here in North America or they're in Africa, lending my services, lending my
time, lending my skills. I help some of them make brochures. I became a graphic artist
to do brochures and announcements for them. I created logos to help them promote their
businesses. To help them do different things. And I also taught myself for Fred Mutebi and
some of my other friends, I had never designed a website before, decided to learn web design.
What better way to tell the world about what my African friends are doing than to create
a website, so anyone in the world could see.
With that, just three quick people that I've met along the way. One young man was a young
man who you would call one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan". His name is Deng. I met him in
a Kinko's coffee, uh, copy shop in the US. Deng is as dark as dark can be and he's confined
to a wheelchair. Deng walked so much in the period of a year, when he walked from southern
Sudan and he walked to Ethiopia, lived in a refugee camp went back to Sudan and then
walked to Kakoma refugee camp in Kenya. He walked so much in his lifetime that he lost
the use of his legs, but he didn't let that deter him. Deng now in his wheelchair is helping
to rebuild southern Sudan and he doesn't complain. He taught me the difference between having
dead legs or a dead mind. Deng to me is an inspiration.
One of the other people I've met, her name's Monique. She started an organization. She's
an Acholi. She started an organization called Kwach Academy. She's another example of an
African helping Africans.
The last gentleman is, his name is Maurice Kirya. An incredibly talented singer/songwriter.
This young man is poised to become a global superstar. He's from Uganda. Very humble man,
but incredibly talented.
What I decided that I wanted to do with my passion was pretty much become a crusader
to leave the politics to the politicians, leave the stories about Africa to the celebrities
and help to promote arts and entertainment on the continent and to help promote travel
and tourism on the continent. Because I know what arts and entertainment did for me to
change my perception of Africa and what just going to Africa did for me. So again, I know
I'm preaching to the choir here. I wish there were more people represented, but have no
fear, I will take this same message and everybody that crosses my path will hear it. And I would
love to just invite everybody that I come into contact with just to go and see for yourself.
Thank you.