Community & Business
16 August, 2021
Pittsworth woman’s African adventure
Pittsworth’s Maddy Mulungi (née Uebergang) has recently returned from Uganda, Africa where she has been volunteering at Kyampisi Childcare Ministries (KCM) - a faith based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has a mission to end child sacrifice - and she has quite the story to tell.
KCM was founded in 2009 in Kyampisi Sub-County within the Mukono District of Uganda with the vision of creating an educated and just society that brings hope and empowers individuals.
KCM responds to a number of child-related issues in Uganda, including cases of abuse and neglect, but its main mission is to tackle the issue of child sacrifice, and as it’s one of the only organisations in Uganda that specifically focuses on this, they’ll respond to any case in the country.
For many, child sacrifice is likely an unknown concept because, as Maddy explained, it is something that is largely unheard of by Australians and is simply unfathomable in western culture.
“Child sacrifice is not really something we know much about in Australia, but essentially there are a lot of witch doctors in Uganda and there’s a lot of witchcraft,” Maddy began.
“So, what people do is kidnap children and then undertake ritual based mutilations to essentially create different potions and charms to try and better people’s lives.
“For example, someone might go to a witch doctor and ask how they can become rich and the witch doctor might tell them to get the head of a child in exchange for 30 million Ugandan shillings.
“People might take a child out of their own community or they’ll go to another district where they’re not known and kidnap a child.
“It also happens within families, so father’s will sacrifice their own children.
“The extreme levels of poverty drive people to totally switch off their sense of humanity, it’s unbelievable.”
Despite the shocking levels of poverty and high crime rate, Maddy said she loves living in Uganda.
It’s vastly different from Australia, but the hospitality of the people and the laid back way of life is what she finds most attractive about the country.
Maddy first travelled to Uganda to volunteer at KCM in 2018 and again in 2019 for a month each time, before returning in January 2020 to take on a full-time volunteer role as Director of Development.
As part of her role, Maddy aims to improve the organisation in a professional way, looking at what changes can be made to how the staff work and how the organisation operates, with a focus on partnerships and networking.
During her time volunteering at KCM, Maddy met Diamond Mulungi who is a Worship Pastor and Music Director at the organisation.
Maddy said she and Diamond connected really well back in 2018 through their mutual love for music.
Two years later in July 2020, Maddy and Diamond were married despite the challenges COVID-19 threw their way, including Maddy’s family being unable to attend in person.
The couple have been happily married and living in Africa together while they organise Diamond’s permanent visa, which Maddy said has been a long process.
Despite this, it was with much excitement that Maddy and Diamond recently returned to Australia for the birth of their first child - a little girl.
Their daughter, Mia, was born on July 5th, a day after their first wedding anniversary, and they have been soaking up time with Maddy’s family.
Maddy, Diamond and Mia will return to Uganda at the end of the month in the hope of being able to come back within the next year and call Australia home.
To find out more information about KCM or to donate, visit the website https://kyampisi.org or look them up on Facebook or Instagram.
