{"id":6132,"date":"2020-11-09T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/combonimission.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=6132"},"modified":"2020-11-05T17:34:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T17:34:01","slug":"dr-congo-street-children-a-home-for-a-better-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/11\/09\/dr-congo-street-children-a-home-for-a-better-future\/","title":{"rendered":"DR Congo: street children, a home for a better future"},"content":{"rendered":"

A project that tries to return street children to their families. Stories that seem to come from the Gospel.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

It is early morning, but the sun is already hot. The streets of Kinshasa are already full of people. The large number of youngsters wandering about is striking. \u201cThe street is their home, their family,\u201d Kasongo, a lottery ticket seller on the street corner, tells us.
\nUNICEF estimates between 25 and 30 thousand children are living on the streets of Kinshasa, out of a population of eleven million inhabitants of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

However, most of them are not orphans. They have fled or were driven from their homes as their families were unable to feed them. In more dramatic cases, they were accused of witchcraft, under the influence of the numerous exorcist preachers in the shanty towns. The children suffer horrifying violence during police searches and, with increasing frequency, from the local communities which, exacerbated by poverty, see the street children merely as a criminal phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Tabby is ten years old, though he is not quite sure of that. His family lives in the Kasa-Vubu quarter to the north of Kinshasa. \u201cTwo years ago, I fled from my home because the man who lives with my mother beat me every day. We had nothing to eat and so I came to the Centre City where I can always find something good to eat among the rubbish.\u201d<\/p>\n

With him is Chilemba, who is twelve years old. \u201cI am from Goma in the north of the country. I came together with my family five years ago. We fled because of the war. First, we stayed with an uncle of my mother but things did not work out and one day we found our things on the street. I didn\u2019t want to be a burden on my family. I got to know Tabby and I came to live with him.\u201d The two boys spend their nights behind a shoe shop.<\/p>\n

In Kinshasa, an ecumenical Catholic community has been in existence since 2004 is the Chemin Neuf<\/em> that runs a project for street children called Ndako ya biso<\/em>. That means ‘Our House’ in Lingala, and has enabled 2,500 street children to return to their original families.<\/p>\n

We met Jean-Pierre Godding, a Belgian lawyer and sociologist who is in charge of the project. He tells us: \u201cthat which distinguishes Ndako ya biso<\/em> from other shelters for children is the aim of the project: not so much to provide the children with a place to live as to help them reintegrate with their original families.\u201d<\/p>\n

We therefore meet them, accompany them, and trace their families. \u201cIt is also necessary,\u201d Jean-Pierre Godding tells us \u201cto go through a process of reconciliation with the families. It is clear that poverty has played a part in their leaving home. We never tire of repeating: a child\u2019s place is in a family and not on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jean-Pierre is aware that the more time the children spend on the streets, the more difficult it is to recuperate them and the more likely they are to become drug addicts.
\nRegarding drugs, almost 75% of the children are drug users of one sort or another. The project head continues: \u201cWhat attracted our attention most was the consumption of glue \u2013 mixed with petrol or lacquer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of them go around with a small bottle in hand: this is the glue that they inhale throughout the day, girls and boys, all together. When we ask them why they sniff glue, they mostly say it helps them to be more lucid, to stop thinking of the shame of being beggars or to get the strength to work or endure the bad weather. Glue sniffing is addictive and brings all the problems of other drugs: the inability to control their use, the tendency to look for stronger substances, harm to the brain and neurotransmitters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent months, the Coronavirus pandemic has created further emergency situations in the welcoming community. Jean-Pierre Godding comments: \u201cBecause of Covid-19, we had to close the centre for boys which is usually open. We have had fifteen boys permanently with us since the start of the epidemic. On the other hand, the centre for girls, which now has twenty, is usually closed so as to further protect the girls who are more frequently subject to violence than the boys. We have had to stop receiving street children and we would like to start doing so again as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite so many difficulties, Jean-Pierre Godding believes in these boys and girls. He speaks of one of them: \u201cJeancy, 16 years old, who ran away from home after stealing some money that his father was saving up each month so that his son could continue going to school. After being received by Ndako Ya Biso<\/em>, Jeancy was finally convinced he should return to his father who had been looking for him desperately for months. I think also of Asnate, a small girl of sixteen. She lost both her parents and went to live with her maternal grandmother who could not afford to keep her or her little sister. Very soon, Asnate found herself on the streets where she immediately became a victim of much violence. One day she came to Ndako Ya Biso.<\/em> She was immediately given counselling and her grandmother received help to start a small business. She is now able to look after both her nieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cLastly, there is B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte, a little girl of ten who suffers from epilepsy. As her mother said, \u2018Many thanks to Ndako Ya Biso<\/em>: when I was worn out and had lost all hope, a light appeared.\u2019 Trying to help her niece, her grandmother spent a lot of money on cures, taking her to traditional healers and churches who promised miraculous cures. One day, tired of such a life, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte decided to leave the place where she was being kept. She was taken in by Ndako Ya Biso<\/em> where she was examined by an expert in epilepsy. Her condition improved and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte finally succeeded in going back to her grandmother who, having received some help from us, managed to start a small business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jean-Pierre Godding concluded by saying: \u201cAll of these and many others, are the stories we come across all the time at Ndako Ya Biso<\/em>. They are stories that sound as though they were parables taken from the Gospel, stories full of hope, and this is what we must give to these boys and girls of the streets\u201d<\/p>\n

(M.C.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A project that tries to return street children to their families. Stories that seem to come from the Gospel.\u00a0 It is early morning, but the sun is already hot. The streets of Kinshasa are already full of people. The large number of youngsters wandering about is striking. \u201cThe street is their home, their family,\u201d Kasongo, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}