Every now and then, a question pops up for me – how did I join HOCT, and how did we grow up to this point? I met my colleague, Mugoya Swaliki, in 2019, and we immediately started to work for the welfare of the 28 children in our care. We got along well; I had the management skills and he had the practical life experience, being physically there with the children. We have been a good team from the very beginning.

Each day, every little second of spare time, we dedicated it to the care of the children. Mugoya would do fieldwork and case analysis; I would do payments, reports and tackle the many legal aspects that came our way on a daily basis, because our two countries (Romania and Uganda) are not linked through an embassy. We made papers, we hired lawyers, we legalized contracts, we exchanged a river of documents back and forth. We hired workers. We paid (and pay) salaries and tax. Our transactions go through the standard banking system, with the appropriate anti-money laundering checks in place. In all we do, we abide by the law. We pay an outrageous 35 euros per transaction, because that is the Swift system cost, and we do not go around it.

Each day, we have a schedule and a discipline of work. We check what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. We see if we made any mistakes (because we do) and we fix them. We lose people and we gain people. We work and fight and cry for each child. We are tormented by some cases. We receive death threats (yeah… because I refuse to work with bandits!). We continue to work each day. I go to therapy. 

Each day, each day I am very tired. My workload is huge – you must know that HOCT is not my job. I have a regular 8-hour-a-day job that is not HOCT. When I finish that, and before starting that, and during all my breaks, I work for the children. On Saturday, on Sunday, on vacations, I work for the children. It hurts? It hurts, because it matters. 

At the end of the day, you saved a life. There is so much meaning in that, there is so much bliss in knowing that a child is not hungry, because of something small you did. And not just any child, not a random child in the crowd – a child that you know, a child that thanks YOU, a child whose name you know, who is dear to you. It matters so much.

Mugoya and myself – we are tools. You, the long-distance parents, you are the true saviors, the ones who bring about a change in our wounded world, in which so much bad takes place. You bring safety and peace to one child in this world. And believe me, you saved the world.