Family History:

Gervas’ mother died in June 2006 and later in August his father died as well (both of HIV AIDS). He is the third born in his family and has got three brothers and one sister as mentioned above. After the death of both of his parents, their uncle Michael took them at his home. He has got a small café in Nyamikoma Village that helped him to run his family.

Gervas’ parents had a big house of six bed rooms that they had people renting three of them. That means, Gervas’s family lived in three rooms and the other three were for rent. When the parents died it was decided that the money for rent was to be collected by Michael (their uncle) and use it for the orphaned children. That was not the case because Gervas’s uncle collected the money and spent it on his business and on his own children. The orphans were just given food and a place to sleep (on the floor). No more school as Michale told them that school uniforms are very expensive so he couldn’t afford to buy them. He then used Gervas and his siblings as workers in his café and they made a lot of money to contribute to their lives expenses. After a year even the clothes they came in with were torn and had no shoes even flip flops but nobody cared!  They kept asking their uncle to keep them off the café and take them to school but he did not bother and he told them that it is not his responsibility to educate them otherwise they could have not let their parents die before they finished school. He went on saying: “your parents were ignorant so they choose to catch HIV and die instead of looking after you, who do you think I am to bear  somebody’s burden?”

The statements were repeated over and over again and the life situation got even worse. They were allowed to eat only one meal per day. No matter that they spent all day in café cooking and doing all sorts of jobs but still they were not allowed to eat more than one meal. From that, his brothers ran away and his sister was taken by their aunt Paskazia. It was only Gervas who was left there so he found it hard to live that kind of life and he also disappeared into the streets, stole from different people so that he can get some money to eat and buy clothes. One day, he decided that he would go to Magu to his uncle, whilst in the bus he spoke a lady who was very sympathetic and she took him to his uncle. His uncle was not prepared to take him in due to the fact that Michael was responsible for them it was not his business and he had some other important things to do than looking after an orphan!  That women could not believe what went on so she took Gervas back to the village were he had come from and the village leaders asked Bethany to look after Gervas as he would end up into being a thief  in the streets because no body else care about him – even his relatives. To this date he is settling ok at Bethany and he works very hard both at school and at home (he is very clever!).

Report by Eliada Bujiku