About St Kizito
Three Sisters work at the Orphanage: Sister Immaculate as coordinator, Sister Renelde Taabo in Logistics and Sister Angesi Uchida. Many other women work in the kitchen and caring for the children. There are also three women who are responsible for medical care.
Two women are employed in identifying whether the orphans have some relatives who can bring them back and take care of them after they are over the age of three. Only the three health care workers are paid, everyone else is voluntary - because the organisation is not financed but run by individual gifts.
As of January 2009, the orphanage currently has 97 children aged from newborn baby to 14. Of these, only a few are between 10 and 14, the majority are under 10 and 20% are babies. Additionally the orphanage staff have placed 33 other children with families and individuals in the community. Due to lack of accommodation they are only foster children but the orphanage provides food, school fees, clothes and medical care.
Most of the children are boys and girls whose relatives are not identified yet; many of them are confirmed orphans. Some were taken from among dead bodies during the great Ituri ethnic war in 2003 and 2004. Others escaped while their parents and other relatives were killed.
Running the orphanage is not easy, with lack of funds a constant problem which leads to less food and milk. Sister Immaculate, the coordinator, will sometimes have to beg people in town to provide funds at these times.
There are times the children of the orphanage face malnutrition and sickness because of lack of food. However, they do have a garden and in the right seasons they plant Cassava, sweet potatoes and beans. Some people make donations to provide soap, clothes, salt and sugar.
Epidemics like diarrhea, meningitis and malaria are common and recently four babies died from these diseases, as the orphanage has not enough space to keep the children apart at these times.
Sister Immaculate's Story
By 1999, during the beginning of the Ituri ethnic war that caused the death of thousands, I was in Bambu orphanage. Kilo Moto Mining Companies supported Bambu orphanage since the Belgians left, under the leadership of Catholic Mission. But we did not have a great number of orphans.
Our orphanage was attacked several times by militias who came to tell us to give them the children from the tribes in conflicts to be killed. We had around 20 children from different tribes.
Due to that security situation we left Bambu to go to Bunia in 2002 and the number of children increased to 56. By 2003 Bunia became a battlefield again. We fled from Bunia to Goma. We were provided air transport by UNICEF and a catholic priest named Mario, who got a support from his European missionaries’ organisation.
I came back from Goma after the war. People who knew of my work, and the local Red Cross, started sending orphans to my house with the knowledge that I had an orphanage.
I started gathering babies again. The Catholic Church gave me accommodation to continue my work and since that time I have received in total 221 children. Some died, some are adopted and with some we discovered relatives and families and took them back. 97 are still here.
It is not easy to keep the children away from the fighting as local militias came many times to kill the children who represented the wrong tribes. Thankfully, none has been killed."
