Orphans

Rwanda is a country of orphans. A country where older orphans care for younger ones, where orphans now young adults care for younger children. A country where new forms of family are being created, new forms of kinship groups based not in bloodlines but in an affinity of the heart. It is a country where older students attend parent teacher meetings on behalf of younger students, where deliberately created family groups of peers help the vulnerable.

It is a country where two young classmates, Egide and Oliver, (both now 23, one a medical student and one studying multi-media communications) found themselves friends of the heart and formed a group of age-mates to help orphaned and abandoned children who end up alone in hospital. Initially, they wanted to help HIV positive children but now they reach out to all. They call their little group ‘Save Them’ and they have delivered six children to a hillside orphanage in the Kigali district of Kimisagara.

Rwanda is a country where another group of young people established this orphanage under an NGO called Vulnerable and Orphaned Children of Rwanda. Emmanuel is one of these young people, a genocide survivor and a secondary school economics teacher who spends all his free time with the 45 children living in this orphanage. Anton, who runs a garage, also spends his free time here and donates the profits to the orphanage. It is from the small incomes of these two groups of people that the orphange is kept operational

Emmanuel and Anton

It is a steep climb to the orphanage, up dirt paths, stone steps, and narrow alleyways through poor neighborhoods to a small compound. In small rooms with small windows children sleep in bunk beds under mosquito nets, two to a bed. Some beds are empty because the children are boarding at secondary school and take their mattresses with them. In a girl’s room, some paper flower decorations on a wall, but the rooms are empty of possessions. There is a room with tables and benches, there is a table with upturned metal plates of various colours, there is a kitchen behind with a wood fire burning under a giant pot, and most surprisingly, there is a sleek black cow. Apparently it comes from the government’s ‘one cow per poor family program’ that has been a very well received initiative.

There are children everywhere, of all ages. They are sitting on the benches, leaning on the tables, listening to a conversation that moves between French and English, trying to understand. They are playing on the floor, wandering in the narrow external hallway. They can leave if they want to, some are from the streets and know how to survive, but they don’t want to. This is a family.

It is difficult for this family to stay together. There is no source of income other than what the caregivers and supportive friends give themselves. There is no government assistance, other than the astonishing fact that Rwanda is providing basic health care for a thousand francs a year (less than two dollars) and free AIDS drugs. This money for health cards has to be found. And forty-five children need to be fed two meals a day.

School uniforms and schoolbooks have to be bought. Another astonishing fact: Rwanda now has 9 years of free education and this has brought so many children into the classrooms that the entire national school system is double-shifted, one group in the morning, one in the afternoon. For secondary age students, school fees have to be paid. Toys would be a luxury, but they are yearned for.

Photo: Friends of the children: Cadette, Oliver, Eric, Anton, Phil, Emmanuel, and Egide who is holding one of the children he brought to the orphange

The open-heartedness of young people helping young people in this country is precious. It came of necessity, but it did not have to come.

If you are moved to make a small donation to support these children having a good holiday season this year, please send me an email at ziegler.maggie@gmail.com and I will send you info on how to do this.