Aid worker's blog: Longing for home

Aid worker’s blog: Longing for home

Most of us will know what it’s like to be alone in a strange place. I’m far from home in east Democratic Republic of Congo, but a phone call with my parents over a crackled line quickly connects me with familiar things.

“I’d like to go home,” Kakule tells me.

“I hear my brothers are alive and are soon to return home. I haven’t seen my family for two years and I am lonely.”

He is 13 years old and alone since rebels entered his house at night and shot his father, mother and older brother. He ran, as the shooting continued through the village, and found his way to a displacement camp close to Goma, the provincial capital of the east.

A survey by World Vision and other agencies at the height of the crisis found that more than half the people displaced by fighting in October last year were separated from family members in the chaos of war.

I met Kakule at World Vision’s Child-Friendly Space – a safe place for children to play and learn in the camp. He was quiet, strong and sociable.

“Whenever I play it helps me forget they killed my father,” he said. “I have good friends here, we play the drums, and football or cards.”

I see the same resilience in Baraka, another 13-year-old who has lost his parents to the war.

“When my daddy died, I ran here,” he said. He has been eating, sleeping and going to school at Don Bosco’s Children Centre, Goma, for two months.

“I am an orphan. My mother died of malaria when I was nine and my father was killed by rebels. My father was a teacher and my mother a nurse. The rebels took my father into their barracks and killed him,” he tells me.

I feel stupid asking Baraka, brave and subdued, what it felt like to lose his father.

“I just cried,” he replied. “What else could I do?”

More than 3,000 children live or receive free education at the centre. Almost all are orphaned or separated from their family. It’s a lively, energetic place, which tracks down children’s families or relatives, caring for the separated children in the meantime. World Vision supports their work by providing school materials and temporary classrooms.

As conflict continues in eastern Congo, more parents are being killed by fighting and more children are left alone and largely dependent on aid agencies. Their courage helps them laugh, play and attend school.

Only a fraction of the children who have lost contact with their families in the region find their way to a centre like this, but those who do are supported with training, food and shelter. Organisations such as World Vision work to make sure they are safe and protected, but so many are struggling to come to terms with loss and loneliness.

What else can we do? Keep calling for an end to all fighting and keep urging all sides to protect the most vulnerable.

Anna Ridout works for World Vision in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)