We are warning you now, this post is not for the weak of stomach or the faint of heart. It is one of the worst stories we've heard so far in Congo but it holds such a picture of the current state of Congo, it's a story that begs to be told.
Yvette's mother was 13 when she was raped in the alley behind her house and left impregnated and without a means of caring for a child. She mustered all of her skills and began cooking food in the town square in order to provide for her growing family. At 16, Yvette's mother married a man of promising future and gave birth to a newborn baby girl.
Yvette's mother came home from the market one day to find a crowd around her house and her 3-year-old child bleeding profusely on the ground with life-threatening injuries all over her body. The young Yvette was raced to the hospital where the doctors had to give the grave news to her frightened mother that Yvette had been so brutally raped that flesh had given way and her internal organs had been left exposed. The child would face 5 hospital transfers and months in intensive care to try to save her life. With things so difficult financially, the new step-father fled and left a 16-year-old girl caring for her humiliated and traumatized child and a newborn baby.
This is when the orphanage was founded. Its purpose was to give refuge to the broken-hearted, heavily-burdened girls in Goma, Congo that were the living faces of the growing number of sexually-violated women in central and eastern Africa. These girls represented the innocent bystanders of the power struggle between rebel forces, armed government officials and broken men acting out their own trauma on young girls.
Yvette is now 12 years old and continually struggling with the implications of her rape. We can give her water, education, food and protection all day long but she will always struggle with the venomous effects of her trauma without proper care. For those of you continually supporting eXile international with your thoughts, prayers and finances, you are adding an essential piece of healing for girls so very desperate to loosen the chains of shame that engross them. And for that, we sincerely thank you.
Thank you for supporting us from across the world!
Sincerely,
Quincee and Alaina
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