In Congo, superstitions breed homeless children

An Italian priest named Father Guido talked of having taken in 132 children in a shelter in Matete, a rough neighborhood. One aid worker said he barely has enough food to feed the 20 children in his center, let alone take on more. Another worried that taking in unknown children from the street may cause discipline problems among the children who have been receiving training for months.

At the Sante Famille Center, a Catholic-diocese-supported shelter for children, nearly 150 children are crowded into a tin-roofed classroom, while torrential rains fall outside. One worker blows a whistle and gets the kids to singchants to keep their spirits up. Inside, Heritier Ifaka, the chief educator at the center, struggles to adjust his programs to deal with the influx.

The Sante Famille Center provides children with rudimentary education – reading, writing, and arithmetic – and regular medical checkups. It also provides one-on-one counseling for children who must live with the trauma of war, and worse, the trauma of family rejection.

"This country is a disaster," Mr. Ifaka says. "Parents are abandoning children, and the reasons involve money and food. When we get in touch with the family, they say, 'Look, I already have children here to take care of, and you want me to take that one, too.' "

Many of the children at the center are like Frida Tshama. Orphaned at the age of 1, taken in by her grandmother and later, an aunt, Frida is a typical 13-year-old: bubbly, rambunctious, talkative. But when asked why she was thrown out of her house, two months ago, she gets teary and quiet.

"I was staying with my aunt, and one day I was cleaning the house, and a glass that was on the table fell and broke," she says. "My aunt asked me to get out of the house. If I stay, she will poison me."

For months, Frida survived by selling oranges in the Matete market, but came to the center a few weeks ago. An attempted reunification with Frida's family failed. Frida's grandmother said that Frida had stolen from her aunt. Her son-in-law said that if she took Frida back, the entire family would reject both Frida and the grandmother.

Like Frida, Ntumba Tshimanga will not be going home soon. A shy 16-year-old, wearing a tattered white T-shirt and shorts, Ntumba moved to Kinshasa with his mother because of fighting in his hometown. Ntumba's father stayed behind. After Ntumba's mother died of an illness, he remained in the care of his grandparents.

Even though Ntumba worked on the street to bring food home, his presence was resented, and soon the family started to accuse him of being a witch. If he was late from an errand, they claimed that he was performing witchcraft on the streets. If there was an illness in the family, it was because Ntumba had cast a spell. Five years ago, Ntumba left to live on the streets.

Now Ntumba's family are young street kids like him. "We look after each other. We sleep in a warehouse of a school, and sometimes at the market where I sweep. If I am sick and have no strength, my friends bring medicine to me." Sometimes he thinks of joining an older sister, who, like him, was thrown out onto the street by their grandparents. But she now has children of her own, fathered by another street teen.

Ifaka hears these stories and shakes his head. "Yesterday, the African family would fight to keep their children," he says. "Now, they are throwing them away."

Page: 1 | 2