Little brother becomes dreaded “enfant de la rue”
It’s been too long since I updated on the kid’s life. He is not a kid anymore, for one thing. He’s 19. I can hardly believe the little urchin I once knew is a responsible young man — the head of a household and guardian of three younger children! There’s been a lot of news in the last few months. Congo had its elections. By reliable accounts, they were rigged. The kid and his compatriots worried about a civil war. Kabila “won” again, although his opponent, Tshisekedi, has also declared himself the President and inaugurated himself. But there is not yet a civil war. We’ll keep an eye on that. It does look pretty certain that man-child Kabila will have another term to play video games and mistake funds for Congo’s schools, army, police, and healthcare for his allowance.
Our hero, the kid, had his house washed away in a rainstorm. He and his siblings scattered to friends houses. During this period I had nightmares that he got sick from exposure and I worried that his little sister would be sexually molested by opportunistic men in the place they were crashing. I warned the kid that his little brothers could become street urchins and bandits now that they were homeless. And I quickly managed to persuade him that the solution was not to rebuild his house but to rent another one. Within twelve hours of that conversation, he had found a house to rent in the same neighborhood for $30 a month, begged $50 from a friend to pay part of the deposit, and installed himself and his two brothers and sister. Good work!
But alas, the homeless weeks took their toll on the kid’s smallest brother, a 13-year-old who used to be his favorite sibling. He started hanging out on the street with runaways, smoking and drinking. Once the kid rented the house, the little guy ran away to be with his friends on the street. He stopped going to school and became, in the kid’s words, a bandit. In quick and decisive action, the kid shipped him off to Granny’s house on the island of Idjwi. He has been living there for two weeks now, and returned to school. Apparently there are no runaway street children in Idjwi, and little brother thanks big brother for “saving him.”
Big brother is working hard in school so that he may pass exams to enter University in two years. As a result, he has delegated the gasoline sales business to his 16-year-old brother, a former bandit who is now a churchgoing student and apparently, the family breadwinner.
Little sister, whom I have so worried about — I can call her Cinderella after her evil aunt adopted her and made her toil away day and night without sending her to school — is thriving in school now that she lives with her older brothers and has her tuition paid by generous foreigners. She is in the top of her class, she sings, she recites poems, and she smiles all the time. Her older brother is very proud.
And to wrap this up, the kid is on Facebook. He just sent me a friend request. As an aspiring college man, he elected to fill in his education information with “pas encore” — not yet.
And that’s a wrap.
