My Daughter in Africa - Five Years Later

Groggily, I answered my cell phone from my bed. It was 6am on a Saturday morning and the ringing had abruptly awakened me. I knew who was calling. Only one person’s ringtone was set to be audible at all hours. It was my nineteen-year-old daughter calling from Nairobi, Kenya. It was not a scheduled call.

Her first words were, “Daddy, I’m fine.” I shook off sleep and snapped to clear thinking. She told me that there was a shooting at the big mall near her apartment, but she and her classmates were all safe. She had called early because she knew it would be all over the American media soon and she wanted to talk to her mother and me before we saw news reports.

That was five years ago today. I have written about what it was like to send her to Africa. When she finally got back, I wrote about being finally able to breathe again. Even as I reflected on her time in Africa and how we felt when we heard about the terrorist attack (it was far more than a shooting), my heart starts to race and I must blink back the tears. It was one of the most stressful and difficult times I have ever experienced; my child was in a foreign land where bad things were happening and I was helpless to assist her. All I could do was occasionally talk to her and wait.

As I reflect on this anniversary, two things come to mind: the easier and more straightforward is also the most obvious: our children must be able to take care of themselves. I knew my daughter was savvy and capable, but her skills were developed even further, and my faith in them was tested. While every instinct in me was telling me to fly to Africa, I could not do that, and I had to let my child take care of the situation.

We all grew from this experience. It was far more than an exercise in letting go, it was an empathy experience. This taught me how so many other family members feel when they cannot help their loved ones. Whether in a hospital, worrying about a child in the military, or watching someone fumble in horrible darkness, I got a small taste of the limits and pain of crisis parenting.

So I imagine the parents at the border, whose children have been taken from them, living in that crisis mode. My nineteen-year-old took care of me as the crisis began. She stayed in touch and reassured us, back home! These parents are separated from far younger children and most have no way to communicate with them at all.

Like my daughter, they are caught in a terrible political storm in a foreign place. Like me, they must wait and are powerless. While I am so grateful to the many individuals and organizations that are helping them, I feel helpless to help them.

And this makes me angry, furious!

Terrorists in Africa used my child’s well being as a political power play. She was not a player in their game, but merely a tool for achieving their ends.

And now, this administration and my country are similarly terrorizing children and their families for political gain. They have turned families into pawns of their power. My daughter was nineteen! These children are infants, toddlers, and far younger than my college student!

It takes my breath away. How could anyone use children in such a way?

They must not understand. They must not have had an experience of having a child lost or in jeopardy. This must be a failure of empathy, of compassion, of vision.

I was reunited with my child on December 24, a little more than two months after the attack on the Westgate Mall. I can feel that moment as if it was happening now.

When will the parents on the border hug their children again? When will they be reunited?

Now is not soon enough!