My introduction

Richard Nyamanhindi on the back of a motorcycle, headed to a village near Kitgum, Uganda to conduct interviews during the recent writing and photography workshop. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Before I came to Uganda for the writing and photography workshop, I went to collect a success story in Mutare — a border town in southern Zimbabwe where Mercy Corps is implementing a number of programmes. These include cash transfers, youth protection, vocational training, home-based care, water, sanitation and hygiene among others.

However, this day was extraordinary, because I was going to meet Chipo (not her real name) a 16 year old who has been living with HIV her entire life. Chipo is an orphaned and vulnerable child who is a home-based care client getting primary care from Mercy Corps-assisted facilitators.

It’s usually very hard to meet and talk with people that are living with HIV, especially if they are young children such as Chipo, but I always try to put on a smile. Chipo’s parents died while she was doing Grade 7 and since then, she has been leaving on her own without knowing the cause of her ill health. To add pain to injury, her sister deserted her two years ago — when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation took its toll on household income — to look for greener pastures in neighbouring Botswana.

Chipo currently stays with a care facilitator — 67-year-old Jane, who is also taking care of four other orphans. Chipo tells me that Jane is now her ‘mother,’ as she has been taking care of all her needs including bathing her during times that she is bed ridden.

Chipo has not been to school since 2008 because of her sickness. She adds that other school children laugh at her because she is living with HIV.

As we discuss, blood trickle from her nose. I hand her a tissue and she thanks me. She is, however, quick to say she has had this problem since last year and it does not want to go away.

She recounts her story to me and it’s an agonizing one. As she traces the steps until she went for voluntarily counselling and testing, I feel my heart sinking for this young girl.

Finally, I ask her want she wants to be when she finishes school and her answer is the most touching thing that will live with me for the rest of my life. “I want to be a doctor so that I can be able to help other children like me who are living positively, for I have endured more than anyone alive,” she says.

Before we say our goodbyes she says looking me in the eyes, “I do not understand what I did wrong, and why I have this disease.”

I have no answer for her, and I wish I had. As we go our separate ways, I have a heavy heart — what can I do to help this young girl who has faced so much hardship in the few years that she has been on this earth?

This is one of the stories that I see and hear about in the field on a daily basis, I only try to put these stories to paper, hoping to fulfil the adage that the "pen is mightier than the sword." At times when I capture their stories, I would like to believe that I give them hope to live as I capture whatever they have to tell the world.

However, on many occasions I also meet with stories that bring tears of joy on my face — stories that I would want to share so that they can encourage others to follow in the footsteps of those that have succeed. I enjoy dancing, ululating and celebrating with communities that are working with Mercy Corps to change their situations — it always brings a satisfaction that I can never express in words, and always helps to dilute the tears brought about by the stories such as that of Chipo.

In the two years that I have worked with Mercy Corps, it is the above scenarios that have been the driving force behind my waking up everyday with my camera, pen and note pad — armed for the battle of communicating change.