Feared and forgotten, DRC’s Ebola orphans work to survive

Since Ebola killed her parents in 2019, Congolese teenager Patience has done various jobs to provide for her three younger siblings, from warehouse work to washing clothes for neighbours.

Her mother’s dream was for all of the children to finish school, but the oldest three had to drop out and find work after their parents died during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak the country’s deadliest on record.

“Since our parents died, we don’t miss any opportunities to make money,” 16-year-old Patience said in the eastern city of Butembo, the epicentre of the Ebola crisis that infected 3,470 people and killed nearly 2,300 before it ended in June last year.

Patience’s 14-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother are also child labourers who carry sand and sell leeks at the market to cover the school fees for their youngest sister, aged seven.

“We try to eat only at night,” Patience, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said.

She earns about 30,000 Congolese francs (about R220) a month, which allows her to buy cassava flour to make the one meal the four siblings share each day.

About 2,770 children in eastern DRC lost one or both parents to the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak, the UN estimates, and have ended up living with relatives, in orphanages, or even on the streets.

Traumatised and shunned due to discrimination around the disease, many children must work to eat, according to local advocates, who said efforts to care for and educate Ebola orphans were falling short due to a lack of funds and interest.

Solidarity of Women’s Associations for the Protection of Women and Children head Zawadi Bisomeko said her charity had received money to set up play areas and help the most vulnerable orphans go to school.

“Funds have been limited ... without responding to the real needs of children who are suffering a lot,” she said, adding that free education and counselling should be provided to all Ebola orphans, and training to teenagers to help them find work.

Patience said she had been called “the girl who lost her parents to Ebola” and rejected by friends, as charities and officials struggled to deal with the effects of such stigma.

“We have seen children wandering the streets because their aunts or uncles could not take them in due to fear,” Butembo town council’s gender, women, family and children department head Dibi Odile Mabanza said.

“This is why most of them, despite their age, have become responsible for the household,” she said, adding that hundreds of Ebola orphans in or around Butembo had been forced to work to eat and feed their siblings.

And as in many nations globally, the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled a rise in child labour and hindered efforts to identify and help the most vulnerable children in DRC.

At the House of Compassion for Children in Need, an orphanage in Butembo, its head, Dorcas Mbambu, said she cared for about a dozen Ebola orphans, some of whose relatives could not be traced, others who were seen as disease carriers and abandoned.

“I consider these children as my own, I breastfed them with love, I gave them names,” the 49-year-old, herself an orphan who used to work as a nurse while running the orphanage, said.

Yet Mbambu said she was frustrated by a lack of support for the children affected by Ebola, and said the government should prioritise family reunification efforts and education for them.

“These children here are forgotten and abandoned by the government and charities,” she added, saying that officials had not visited the orphanage to inquire about the Ebola orphans.

Asked about the provision of care for such orphans, social affairs officials in Butembo and its province of North Kivu said it was not their responsibility and referred questions to the nation’s Ebola response team and UN children’s fund (Unicef ).

The now-defunct response team could not be reached for comment, but its former head of communications, Damien Mumbere Luhavo, also referred questions to the Unicef.

Unicef representative Medard Onobaiso said the agency had supported children affected by Ebola and managed to ensure most orphans were now living with extended family rather than in foster care.

For some families, taking in Ebola orphans has caused concerns over having enough to eat.

Francoise Masika took in seven nephews and nieces when her sister and brother-inlaw died of Ebola in 2019.

“I had to take in these children because I couldn’t leave them on the streets,” the 38year-old said.

Masika said she used to make some of the children help her do farming work in the conflict-hit Ituri province until attackers invaded the fields last year and killed her neighbours.

Since then, Masika and her husband have been selling charcoal in Butembo to support their extended family.