Support children forced to flee

If you too had met the twelve-year-old schoolboy, Sadiki, you would have sensed the weight on his shoulders. It must be from what he has seen. Far too much.

 Sadiki was forced to flee from Jomba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in February 2022:

“The war came to our village. We heard BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I saw the soldiers. Mum and Dad said we had to leave immediately. We saw many dead bodies along the way.”

The boy I met was sitting outside the school, swinging his legs in his school uniform: a white shirt, blue shorts and a pair of worn-out sneakers.

“I like going to school. I’m in Year 5. But there are many children in the class – 70.”

The overcrowded classrooms are also being used to provide shelter for displaced people. Photo: Beate Simarud/NRC.


Sadiki lives in Kanyaruchinya camp, where 600,000 Congolese are struggling to survive. They have been driven from their homes. Driven from the fertile land they relied upon.
 
Now, they have nothing.

Our humanitarian aid workers in Kanyaruchinya have distributed tents and water to thousands. Photo: Beate Simarud/NRC.


Among our efforts, NRC has constructed toilets and showers near schools, repaired school buildings and built classrooms. But the conflict rages on. Desperate people continue to arrive, and the violence escalates day by day. For humanitarian aid organisations, resources are stretched thin.

“We’ve lost everything. Everything just gets harder and harder. But I have managed to ensure that all six of our children can go to school. That’s the most important thing for me and my husband,” says Sadiki’s mother, Antoinette, 40. Photo: Beate Simarud/NRC.


Just hours before I met him on his way to school, Sadiki saw a person who had been murdered:

“They say someone killed him with a knife. He was covered in blood,” says Sadiki solemnly.

At school, the children feel safe. Amidst the chaos of the world, the school remains a constant. The school is their lifeline.