I can’t recall exactly when Mama Grace and I met in Yei. I’m sure it’s been over 6years now. Her quiet and somewhat shy personality delayed a closer connection. When our common ministry interests necessitated an inescapable relationship early this year, her testimony blew me away.
Here’s one of my good examples of a “lion chaser”, like Benaiah in 2Sam 23:20. Her exploits speak for themselves. This space is too small to tell them all. As salt is to a sauce, invisible, yet packs distinctive savory flavor, Mama Grace is making a difference in a difficult place and in a different way.
As her ministry among women and girls, especially the traumatized and broken, soar to new heights, her story is a reminder that we all need to be wrecked enough somehow and somewhere in our Kingdom journey, to be eternally fruitful to God.
Mama Grace tells her story.
My name is Grace Kadayi Waiwai. I’m a widow, a citizen of South Sudan; a 56years old mother of four children, two boys and two girls. I got my primary and secondary education in Uganda, with a diploma in Business Studies too.
I had training in other fields like Counseling Psycho-social Mental illness and HIV/AIDS counseling and testing.
I started work as an Audit clerk in a company of Auditors after which I worked as cashier in Bus company also as a Secretary/Typist. But in 1994 I decided to change my profession to social work services because l felt I needed to influence my community positively and put its needs above mine. I saw that the lessons I learnt suffering and overcoming many traumas in my more youthful years could help impact many people around me.
I got a job to work as a psycho-social counselor, helping Sudanese refugees in Uganda in the camp in the process of trauma healing and reconciling the communities who have some problems as well as counseling and monitoring clients on mental health treatment.
Later, I got training on HIV counseling and testing which up to date is my major ministry alongside child protection responsibilities, resolving diverse kinds of conflicts as well helping the helpless and those who have lost hope in themselves.
I recently opened an office in Yei, South Sudan, where I render assorted community development services to women, young girls and children.
My childhood
Growing up as a child, I was sick with severe malaria which caused me to have fits and people said I had epilepsy. I was discriminated against and stigmatized just for malaria until God healed me when I was 5 years old. I suffered great physical and emotional pain. I was emotionally damaged and wrecked for 15years, eating alone and not playing with other children because they believed my sickness was contagious.
I also suffered discrimination being a girl child. I loved school but my father disliked girls and thus refused to support my academic pursuits. I worked for my school fees from an early age. For 19years, I endured stigmatization and discrimination on account of my gender from my immediate family and from our neighbors for fear of getting a sickness from me.
I’m the second child of my mother in polygamous family. The reason of my father had to marry more than one wife was because he was an orphan. His father was speared to death during one of the tribal wars. So my father on experiencing much hardship thought having more than one wife would make him have many male children to support and protect him.
Unfortunately for my mother who was his first wife, she gave birth to three girls in succession and this caused my father to lose hope on her and married another woman. He wanted male children. His new wife did not disappoint. Her first child was a boy and thus she was the beloved of my father.
My mother suffered untold hardships because of my father’s negative behavior towards her. But she didn’t leave him. After 5 months, the baby boy from the other woman fell ill and despite many efforts to save him, he died.
This brought big tension within the family. My father had to go to a witch-doctor with my step mother and the witch-doctor said the cause of the death was from the home and of course, my mother was the primary suspect. Many rituals were done, including giving my mother grave soil to eat so that she would die, if she was responsible for the death of the baby boy. But nothing happened to her.
It was at the peak of this very difficult time for my family that I got saved and accepted Jesus as my personal Savior. I then led my mother and father in forgiveness process. I was 20 years then. It was tough, very tough for my mother but she listened to me. She loved me.
This was how I fell in love with this kind of work of protecting children, working to reconcile people in conflict and helping the vulnerable to speak out their issues so that they can be helped.
My Ministry and return to Sudan
I self repatriated back to Yei, then in Sudan in 2002 from the refugee camp in Uganda after the death of my husband. I arrived Yei with great enthusiasm, hoping to see my friends who also lost their husbands and those whose husbands were still in the war front. To my shock, their lives were worse than mine.
I went to my house and noticed that soldiers had removed all the roofing sheets and were breaking down the walls of the building. I could not understand why. I was surprised to discover that these soldier were harvesting the bricks and selling them. Others were using it to build or rebuild their own homes.
The situation was seemingly uncontrollable and I thought over and over what to do to stop them from selling secondhand bricks. It was then the idea of producing bricks myself came to me. My plan was to make the bricks to create a source of income for my family and subsequently encourage other women to do same. This approach would also help stop the business of destroying the walls of people’s houses to harvest the bricks for sale.
This was a huge success. It further created a platform for me to talk to youths and women and show them how they can became self reliant by introducing business which can involve both men and women also giving them information about HIV/AIDS. Our people were very naive those days.
We formed a group and began to teach on how to make bricks. We were mocked and ridiculed for a while but our dedication paid off. We were the first people who started making bricks in commercial quantity and it blazed like wild fire. But my greatest joy was the opportunity to teach people in my group about the terror of HIV and subsequently lead some to Jesus.
As a counselor in the camps in Uganda, people knew me very well and they started referring people to me for counseling which I mostly used occupational therapy and it worked very well. Today, some of the clients especially youths who attempted suicide back then, now own big shops in Yei, others are now in Yambio, Wau, Juba etc. Praise the Lord!
Many women were doing business of brewing alcohol and in teaching them about the effects of alcohol most of them changed to other businesses.
Women whose husbands died started narrating to me how their husbands died but there’s little knowledge about HIV/AIDS. Most of them believed their husbands were bewitched and they too, as they grew sick, wasted their money visiting witch-doctors until when I became a HIV/AIDS Counselor and began to provide counseling for many of them.
I had 8 widows whom we started the group with, unfortunately 6 where found positive with HIV, this stressed me so much and caused all of them to fear and lose hope in all the activities we initiated. I had to start afresh with a smaller group of women without involving their children in order to give them strength to come openly and also work out a way of making them forgive their husbands and fathers, some of whom actually forced them into marriage at gun point with men who were positive with HIV.
Many women were and still are very bitter about these things. Good enough, some were able to accept living positively with the virus and through our work Yei became the first place where women made their status public.
I’m glad some of the women who were very ill then recovered and are caring for their families now. Most of the men could not accept being in the group, they died because of shame. Few of my women died too but most of them are alive now because we have access to information and medication in Yei.
At first, our group was called HOPE FOR PEACE and the smaller group of the people living with HIV was called NEW LIFE. Now, the whole thing has become a Community Based Organization called WIDOWS ORPHANED AND PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS (WOPHA).
I’m working on the big issue of Trauma Healing and reconciliation as I realize women are still living in bitterness and are not really happy of the forced marriages and unfaithfulness of their husbands.
In order to attain total peace in South Sudan, I’m strongly persuaded that Women need to be involved in leading peace projects in trauma and reconciliation, beginning from the lowest soldier up to the top generals. Our children, especially the girls must have a “place or person of refuge”. There is need to help children be accepted by parents. Many are victims of circumstances, wondering about with an orphan mentality.
I pledge my life and ministry to the service of God and humanity and will gladly do this work without charge.
This is my story.
God never wastes our pain. See how He’s used and is still using this ordinary woman, a widow, to make extraordinary difference in her community and beyond? Her wreck has become the shelter many depend on today!!
He can use yours too, if you release them to Him.
Here’s another opportunity to be an extension of Jesus’ hands in a place like South Sudan. Seize it!!
We solicit the partnership and support of ministries and ministers with common passion in these heart matters, hoping someone, somewhere could join Mama Grace and change the story of some unknown woman, girl or child, here in South Sudan.
Contact Mama Grace: Tel :+211-955-27-3720; e-mail: gradayi@hotmail.com
Kingdom Exploits With Uche 