we could be helping

not only THESE kids, but kids in sudan (and elsewhere) as well as RIGHT HERE. we have spent billions on killing, how about spending billions on the living. education for a start. how horrid this story is.


Accused of witchcraft, children kicked to the streets in Congo

By Shashank Bengali McClatchy Newspapers
KINSHASA, Congo - When Mando Mengi was 5, his mother died and his father remarried. His stepmother, a tall, mercurial woman with two children of her own, saw Mando as a burden and gave him endless chores while the other kids did nothing.
One day, Mando refused to sweep the dirt floor of their home. His stepmother found a sinister explanation for his stubbornness: He was practicing witchcraft.
She began to withhold food and sometimes beat him, saying it would purge the evil spirits. Finally, she gave his father an ultimatum: "You've brought a sorcerer into this house," Mando recalled her saying. "Either he leaves or I do."
Mando didn't wait for him to decide. He ran away, joining tens of thousands of children who live on the streets of this broken-down African capital - most of them, aid agencies say, rejected by families who accuse them of witchcraft.
In Congo, where belief in the power of spirits and black magic goes back centuries, boys and girls as young as 5 are bearing the brunt of witchcraft allegations that once were reserved for rural women and widows. Aid workers blame the social toll of decades of economic depression, disease and conflict, which have torn apart countless families and made daily life desperate for most of the country's 60 million people.
With 4 million Congolese thought to have perished mostly from illnesses and hunger since a civil war began in 1998, and with eight in 10 surviving on less than a dollar per day, children are sometimes seen as encumbrances, just more mouths to feed. For some parents and guardians, calling a child a sorcerer offers an easy explanation for their troubles and a chance to rid themselves of a dependent. ..........

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