Street Children in Kinshasa, Congo

Grace Lambila works at an ORPER shelter (Oeuvre de Reclassement et de Protection des Enfants de la Rue), an organization that provides aid, and sometimes a home, to street children in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Founded in 1981 by a Catholic priest, ORPER runs “open” centers where children are free to come and go, and “closed” centers where they are watched more closely.

Some of the boys who stay at the open center include:

Fundi, a 13-year-old boy, was brought to Kinshasa a year ago by his mother, along with his sister, where she planned to join the children’s father, but they discovered he had taken another wife. Fundi’s mother returned home, leaving the children with their father, but after being mistreated, Fundi’s sister went to their uncle and he ran away to live on the streets.

Kape was abandoned by his parents, and lived on the streets until he was taken in by ORPER when he was 10. Kape now brings other boys to an open center, where they a place to shower, to eat, to sleep, and to learn.

Christian takes remedial classes during the day and works in a parking lot at night. He makes around $3 a day, enough to buy extra food.

Ariel, 13, still goes to the main square to beg. On most days he makes around $1.50.

Other children at ORPER earn money by reselling plastic bags they found in the trash, or work as prostitutes. Some drink alcohol or dissolve Valium in Primus beer, shake it, drink it, follow with cannabis, and repeat the sequence.

Annette Wanzio, who has worked with street children for 20 years, says, “In Africa, children belong to everyone—an uncle, an aunt.”

She and others at ORPER work hard to place children with their extended families, which can sometimes take years or fail entirely; of every 100 children who come through the center, only 40 return to their families. “Sometimes families say, ‘Well, they’re doing well, so why should they return to us?’ ” she adds.

[Christian Science Monitor]        ….continued

Street girls’ success stories in Democratic Republic of Congo

Sister Stella Ekka was born near Calcutta and has worked for 17 years in the Congolese capital at a girls’ closed center, Home Maman Souzanne, where she supervises 23 girls, ages 6 to 15.

A few of the girls at the center suffered from physical or sexual abuse and had run away from home. Some were abandoned by parents too poor to support them.

The girls have few possessions—a change of clothes, a school uniform. They share 30 books, some crayons, a doll, and a game of Scrabble. One room has a TV.

Sister Stella takes great pride in the girl who got a job in a bank, the one who married a doctor, and a young woman who went to another country. “That makes me happy. That encourages me,” she said.

Another girl who is now at the center also gives Sister Stella reason to hope—a girl who barely said a word when she first arrived. T. lives at the center and goes to the afternoon session at the Lycée Kasa-Vubu, where she studies French. She is in 10th grade but is unsure of her age. She came to the center on her own four years ago after some other girls on the street told her about it. After T. came to the center her mother died of AIDS. Her brother now also lives in a closed center. They do not know who their father is.

When T. lived with her mother she was accused of witchcraft and often beaten, sometimes for no reason and once for breaking a porcelain plate while doing the dishes. In the evening her mother would leave her and her brother alone, giving them both medicine to make them sleep so that she could work as a prostitute.

At Home Maman Souzanne, T. helps prepare the food for the girls, and she goes to the market to buy vegetables and fish. She washes clothes and takes care of the young ones. “I want to be a TV journalist,” she says, “so I can report on my country’s living conditions.”

[Christian Science Monitor]

Read more on the subject

Pakistan’s Impending Famine

Pakistan’s Thar desert, in the southeastern Tharparkar district, is home to about a million residents, and is a harsh landscape in which to eke out an existence in the best of times.

Media reports have revealed that dozens of people—many of them children—have died from malnutrition over the last three months in the bone-dry desert region. And things could soon get much worse.

Local residents say that while there is not significantly less water than there usually is during this dry winter season, the 30 percent drop in rainfall over the monsoons has significantly affected them. Residents live on the edge of survival, and the smallest pressure from the climate can push them into extreme poverty or malnutrition, says Zaffar Junejo, the chief of the Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP), which has been working in this area for the last 18 years.

Tharparkar is one of the country’s most food insecure districts, with the WFP declaring residents to be in a state of “severe food insecurity”. Health is another major concern, with 47 percent of Tharparkar’s children categorized as “malnourished”.

Since March 7, relief goods have been streaming into the area from all over the country, in the wake of a widely reported “drought”.

Nearly half of Pakistan’s 180 million people lack access to safe water. No other nation has a higher infant mortality rate, and only a few have more cases of tuberculosis.