One-Time Street Kid on the Power of a Helping Hand

PETER’S ESCAPE

Growing up, Peter and his siblings endured physical abuse from his father at least four times a week. His dad did not have a reason for lashing out at them. In Uganda, a man can beat his wife and children and no one cares. Peter says, “While the physical abuse happened every other day, the verbal abuse came every moment of every day.”

He was told, “You are garbage, I wish you were never born, and I wish you were dead.” Peter began to view himself through the eyes of his father. He began to believe he was useless.

At ten-years old Peter had given up on life. One night while his father was beating his mother, his dad told Peter to go get him cigarettes. This was Peter’s chance at an escape. He had been saving money by selling handfuls of peanuts at the bus station a few miles from his house. The fear of the unknown was easier for him to deal with than the fear of what he faced in his own home. Peter ran to the bus station as fast as he could, “This was my first step toward taking power over my life. It would not be my last.”

He traveled to Kampala and got off the bus. There he met other street kids who helped him survive. For the next five years, Peter, known on the streets as Habi, lived around the bus station with these other boys. They picked up trash on the bus or carried people’s bags in exchange for food. If begging for food did not work, they would just steal the food and share it with one another. Some of these boys used drugs or alcohol to cope with life on the street. Peter avoided it but did engage in sniffing diesel. 

A man approached him in the bus station and told him that he had a relative in a nearby town. Peter went to live with the relative for two months. She cooked him meals and was kind to him, but the neighborhood was very rough, and she did not have a lot of money. One night he heard a man kill a prostitute. The trauma from his own childhood was reignited so he decided to return to the streets instead of live in a place where behavior like his dad's was the norm.

GLIMMER OF HOPE

Shortly after returning to the streets, Peter met a man named James at the marketplace near the bus station. His kindness was unexpected. Months went by, maybe a year or more, and Peter would see him and help him with his bags. One day, James said, “Peter you are a smart kid. If you had the opportunity to go to school, would you go?”

Peter thought he was joking because after all there was no way he could go to school; he had no shoes, nowhere to sleep and his clothes were rags. He would act interested in this conversation with James as a way to get food from him. Eighteen months (Peter was fifteen-years-old) later James told Peter about a Christian boarding school that would give him a place to sleep and three meals a day. He had arranged everything because he saw potential in Peter. “He chose to believe that there was something in me that could be nurtured into a better life,” shares Peter.

He gave Peter new clothes and his first pair of shoes. Adjusting to his new living environment took time. He did not trust that the food was edible at first because he did not understand why it would be free. He thought playing with other students was a trick that would eventually lead to a beating. Once those myths were put to rest, he eventually stopped fighting with other kids and began attending his classes. The school was very patient with Peter. He says, “Simply removing someone from their source of trauma does not heal the mind, soul, or the spirit…love must be dispensed with patience and kindness over long periods of time, and even then, we may never completely heal from trauma’s effects.”

Peter worked hard and pushed himself at the boarding school which opened other opportunities for him. He went on to Makerere University in Africa, Oak Hill College in England, and Master’s University in California. In California, he began sharing his story and the doors continued to open for him. He says, “People today ask me how I got to where I am now. I look back on this crazy journey, and after all the years of reflection and wrestling, I have only one answer: God.”

FORGIVENESS

In between high school and college Peter was offered a job with an international child advocacy ministry whose Ugandan operation James led. The opportunity was in Rwanda where 800,000 people died over the course of one hundred days. He said, “All around me I saw the evidence of how when hate fills the heart, anything is possible.”

As he visited refugee camp after refugee camp, he saw orphaned children with emotional and physical scars. He listened to each of their stories and cared for them. Fearful that he too could become a victim of the genocide, Peter prayed, “God if you will allow me to live and return home, I will be an advocate for these children for the rest of my life.” As an international child advocate, Peter has helped over ten thousand children get sponsored through his work. He too had sponsored many himself. 

During his trip to Rwanda, Peter realized he needed to let go of the past to be free from the bitterness. Although he went to church, acted the part of a good Christian man, and even taught Sunday school, Peter still struggled to forgive his father for all the abuse. “With God’s help, he turned loose of the debt of pain my father owed me. This marked the beginning of my life of faith, and through the lens of faith, I finally saw my father for who he was: a lost man in need of hope, just like I had been,” shares Peter. To this day, Peter and his biological father still talk, but he considers James his actual dad.

“All through my life, I have struggled in relationships because I have always felt that love is something I must work to receive it. If I have to earn love, I can never relax and enjoy it. What I do today to earn someone’s love may not be enough tomorrow or the next day. I think that is why I have never married,” shares Peter. He did not want to inflict his brokenness on someone else.

FATHERHOOD

After living in the U.S. for fifteen years Peter met Jason Johnson, a foster dad. His baby was black, and Jason was white. Jason’s love for the vulnerable children got Peter thinking about how in America the richest country in the world there are families who do not care for their own babies. He had dedicated his whole life to helping hurting children who were just like him when he was a boy, but he wanted to do more. He wanted to become a foster dad.

Peter decided to leave his job since he could not be gone thirty weeks or more each year and raise a child. He traded his Infiniti for a van. He decided to move to Oklahoma City to buy an affordable house. He called the foster care family network and said, “I’m a single man from Africa who has never been married and never had children.” They assured him with a few classes he could still be a foster parent. Peter learned what a father was supposed to be from James and wanted to show the same love to children who would come through his door.

Five months after becoming a licensed foster parent, Peter had his first placement, a five-year-old Native American boy who stayed with him for six months. More foster children followed in rapid succession with some staying months, and others only weeks. Peter grieved each child when they left his home. There were two children he came close to adopting but the judge made a ruling and they went to live with a relative. Peter did not think he could keep fostering because the pain was more than he could bear. He told his social worker he needed to take a break. 

Four days later, she called asking him to please think about another placement. There was an eleven-year-old child that had been left at the hospital. Peter agreed to let the boy stay with him for the weekend. The boy came into the foster care system at eighteen-months-old. He had been placed with a family since he was four. For years, they were the only family he knew until they dropped him off at a hospital and never came back. His adopted parents signed away parental rights and left without telling him goodbye.

When Peter learned of his story he told the social worker that he would adopt the boy. A year and a half later, the adoption was complete. “Anthony was now officially my son, and I was simply a father, without the word foster in front of it.”

Today he works in Charlotte, N.C. and continues to make it his life work to help others realize, “They are loved, they are chosen, they are heard, and they are known.” Peter continues to be a foster dad to many and hopes to adopt more children in the future.