Friends and neighbors of Marie Ngalula, 14, stand around a fire to warm up at the end of the day, next to Marie's house in Tubuluku, Kasai Central Province, DRC.
Play
This is where Marie looks most happy and alive! There are lots of children in Tubuluku. About 40 of them gather on the grass of the school across from Marie’s house. Marie leads the singing as the kids hold hands, move in a circle and sing loudly. Sometimes they all collapse into a fit of giggling. For the first time since we’ve met her, Marie smiles widely. She sings. She dances. For a time at least, she can be a kid again.
Marie lives with her father, Alexandre Tshimanga, her mother, Ntumba Kalombo Antoinette and her brothers and sisters:
1-Kena Tshimanga, 12
2-Kankonde Moise, 10
3-Munamba Angel, 8
4-Musungayi Andre, 6
5-Mubuyi Tshimanga, 4
Marie lives in a small village outside of Kananga, Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, called Tubuluku, which means antelopes (plural). Her house is a two-room hut with a thatched roof. Handful of wooden chairs are the only furniture. She lives here with an extended family of 13.
Home Life
Marie is a bright girl but there is a sadness in her eyes. Marie’s mother is in the nearby health clinic with a staph infection that has caused a huge abscess on her right side. It has become very serious. As a result, Marie has assumed many of the household duties. She’s forced, at 14, to assume the duties of an adult. Besides cooking for her brothers and sisters, she sweeps up the husks from palm nuts she crushes. She saves the husks to use as kindling for the fire.
Marie and her siblings all sleep together in one room, huddled together for warmth and cover by an old and torn mosquito net.
School
Marie’s father laments his inability to send her back to school. “Marie is intelligent,” he says. “She could help me very much someday. I’d like to send her back to school but I can’t afford it. I’d like if she could further her studies even as far as university so that she can help me take care of her brothers and sisters someday.” Marie and her friends often play on the grass in front of the school they can’t afford to go to.
Hunger
Marie’s family is desperately hungry in the days we visit them. Because her mother is sick and his father spends his days tending to her in the clinic, there is no money for food. Because there isn’t any cassava flour and cornmeal to make fufu, a bread-like dish that’s a Congolese staple, Marie and her siblings pick potato leaves from the garden. Marie sharpens a knife on a rock and uses it to chop the leaves into small pieces. She holds a bunch tightly in her left hand and runs the knife through them. Her cousin, also named Marie Ngalula, pulls some wood from a pile and arranges it between three rocks that will hold the pot. She yanks some thatch from the roof and uses it for kindling. Because they also have no oil or salt, the recipe is uncomplicated.
The greens are stuck in a pot of water and boiled until they become soft. They look very much like spinach.
As luck would have it, a kind neighbor sends a few drops of oil which Marie mixes with the water. Her grandfather sends a little fufu, a huge treat for the 6 nearly empty bellies that share the small pot of greens. Later Marie will tell her mother during a visit to the clinic, “We’ve gone three days without eating anything but potato leaves. We have to endure the hunger. The hunger never kills someone.” Unfortunately, she’s wrong.
Marie and her siblings also go to the CFS where, thanks to a newly introduced feeding program gives them each a bowl of porridge made from soy, maize, peanuts, maringa and sugar.
Economic Development
Marie’s father makes and sells charcoal to earn money for the family. He gets about 6,000 Congolese francs p/bag and can do about I per week. It’s not enough to support the family so Marie helps by selling palm nuts. Marie sits on the ground next to a pie of palm nuts she’s collected. She places one on a rock and pounds it with another rock separating the woody husk from the soft nut inside. When she has enough she’ll take them to sell. The buyer will have them mashed and pressed into oil for cooking.
Marie walks the main road in front of the airport with her bowl of nuts. She squats in front of a local market, just across from the main gate. A woman with a small, green bucket stops. Money changes hands and Marie fill the woman’s bucket about halfway. It’s all the nuts she has today. Marie gets 800 francs for the transaction. That’s about 50 cents. She needs about a thousand francs to buy enough cassava flour to last the family for two days.
Water
Marie walks about a half mile down a steep, narrow embankment to a capped spring that provides the community water. She carries a cast iron pot on her head. When the pot is full she climbs the smooth, hardened clay of the path that leads home. She does this several times a day often with a friend or a cousin.
Health
Marie used to go to the health clinic when she got sick but since there isn’t any money now she is usually treated with some traditional medicine made from the leaves of local trees. Now she goes to the clinic almost daily but only to visit her mother. Antoinette, Marie’s mother sits on a straw mat in a nearly empty room at the clinic. A small bamboo cot off to one side is about 6 inches off the floor. She does not look well. Marie sits next to her and they talk. “I don’t know if I’ll be here to help you grow up,” Marie’s mom says. “Pray that God heals me.” The nurse tells me later that she is being treated with antibiotics and that her chances of recovery are good.
Worship
Like many people here, Marie is Catholic. She says that when she has clean clothes, she goes to church at St. Celestin right here in Tubuluku. She loves to sing and sings us a little song from church. “Glory of the saints who dwell in heaven. Everyone must bow down to you. We owe to God everything we have because all things come from Him.”
