I don’t even know where to start…I struggled with whether to blog this or not, especially since it’s unresolved. I decided it’s ultimately a story worth telling, and hopefully people reading it will pray fervently for God’s loving hands to guide this situation.
In South Africa sometimes you find yourself doing things you never imagined you’d do. Today I made a phone call to a mortuary, asking if a nine-year-old boy had been brought in. The answer was no.
At 9:30 this morning I got a phone call from Rick. “I just got a call from Brother Mdu. It looks like we have an adventure and I know how much you and Matt like adventures.” My phone cut out then, but I got him back a few minutes later to hear the details.
Mdu, a brother from the Clermont township, had texted Rick saying his nine-year-old son had been missing since Tuesday night. It was now Thursday morning. None of us knew that this brother – a very active member of the ecclesia – had a child.
He told Rick the boy was deaf. “He can’t hear?” Rick asked. (You would think that question might sound redundant, but apparently it wasn’t.) “No, he can’t talk,” was the answer.
It turns out the boy is mentally disabled and doesn’t go to school because “there’s not one that can accommodate him,” as his father told me. From the description, I wondered right away if he has autism.
He lives with his mother, Mdu’s girlfriend, and was playing outside Tuesday evening when he disappeared.
The details before we arrived weren’t entirely clear, but apparently the police were notified Wednesday morning but hadn’t done anything. The neighbours searched the first night and the second day, and today his father texted Rick to see if he could bring the truck to help look in some of the back areas. Rick called us, we loaded up some towels and first aid equipment, I was once again deemed the most medically-qualified, and we were off.
In a less serious situation, the following events might be considered a “comedy of errors.” We spent 8 hours trying to get a process started that in the US would have taken ten minutes. It was infuriating, heartbreaking, and exhausting in every way.
Rick, Matt, and I picked Mdu up and went to the police station. He had already been, but we thought a “white presence” might speed things along. It turned out they had not yet completed the missing persons’ report because they couldn’t get started until they had a picture…
The only known picture of this little boy was on his father’s phone. The phone had no Bluetooth or email, so Rick took a picture of the picture with his iPhone, emailed it to Sonya, and she began working on a flyer.
I can often spot a kid with autism walking through the grocery store just by the look in his eyes. Mdu didn’t know what disability his son had, but just from the picture I would bet money this kid has autism. He’s an adorable child, and I immediately wished I had known about him earlier. I would have loved to have gotten involved.
Mdu mentioned that there was a councillor’s office nearby (like the city council – not a “counsellor,” as I wrongly assumed). These people were much more helpful than the local police. They called the metro police (with a bigger jurisdiction than the locals), who were there by the time we were finished talking to the councillor.
At one point we were sent from the councillor’s office down the hall, where a lady was trying to help us print off the picture. As we waited, I whispered to Rick that the odds of finding a kid alive after 24 hours go way down. “We need to call the morgue,” I told him. He and I went back to the room to talk to the councillor privately, but he was gone. Rick asked his receptionist where the nearest mortuary was. They told us, but didn’t have a number for them. They also suggested we check a closer police station to where the boy lived (we were currently closer to where his father lived). She mentioned one “just across the bridge” from the area he lived in.
At the word bridge, my ears perked up. “Is this bridge over the interstate or over water?” I asked. Water. Not what you want to hear when looking for a missing boy.
We went back to the other room, were finally able to get a few pictures printed, and the father went with the police while we went to get the other flyers from Sonya.
First we stopped by the clinic where we give out food once a week. It’s the closest clinic to his house. Matt and I were sent all over the building – looking for one person after another. I took that opportunity to peek into every treatment room we passed, hoping to see a little boy. We finally found the social worker’s office, left a picture with her, and went back to meet Rick, who had taken one of the pictures back to the police station to officially get the ball rolling. By now the little boy had been missing about 40 hours.
Then we headed back to Rick and Sonya’s. And I made the call to the mortuary – undoubtedly the strangest phone call of my life.
It gets so much weirder from here. I’m going to stop – not to intentionally leave a cliff-hanger, but because I’m exhausted and just want to pray and cry and sleep. I’ll update tomorrow. Please pray for this little boy, NDumiso.
Next Comes Africa 