© ICRC / VII / Ron Haviv. Goma. Noella Senawema took an orphan into her care and asked Mama Bona, a volunteer for the Congo-Kinshasa Red Cross, for help.
Thirty-seven-year-old Noella Senawema, a widow and mother of five children who lives in the village of Sake in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, tells how she found an abandoned child and took her in, even though she could ill afford it.
“I found the child on the road. Her mother had just been killed and a man had dug her grave, not a very deep one, and the baby lay abandoned. I could not leave the child like that, alone and abandoned, so I picked her up and went home.
This was a problem for me because I also have a baby and I do not have enough milk for two. I also do not have enough money to pay for food for all of us. So I went to see Mama Bona (see post about Mama Bona), who helps to find homes for lost children, and she gave me food and powdered milk.
Without Mama Bona’s help, I could not be useful to this child. When I found her abandoned on the road, I told myself this child must grow and, God willing, she will.”
