Orphan Concerns
The children who reside at Angel House have no place to live and no extended family members who are able to care for them. Typically these children have reached orphan status for the following reasons:
Disease – About 60% of the children at Angel House are HIV/AIDS orphans. At least one and usually both of their parents died of AIDS. The issue of AIDS is a very touchy
subject in Tanzania but the children at Angel House are being educated on this touchy subject.
Malaria – Due to the rainy seasons there is an abundant population of mosquitoes that carry the malaria disease. Combine the high mosquito populations with the lack of medication or the inability of many to afford medical treatment and you have a high mortality rate. In addition, some strains of the disease are not effectively treated by current medication.
Abandonment/Abuse – Some of the children arrived with the local police because their parents either abused or abandoned them. Sisters, Nossi and Bhoke, were left on a trash heap by their mother because she felt she couldn’t care for them. Sometimes neighbors inherited kids they didn’t want and so they were abuse. Matiko had all the fingers on his right hand burned off by a step-mother who was mad at him.
Lack of resources – Some of our children are being cared for by grandparents or other relatives who could no longer take care of them. So much of the economy in Tanzania is driven by manual labour and when someone gets too old to work they need people to take care of them, they can’t take care of others.
Chacha Yusef was one of eight grandchildren that his grandparents were trying to care for. They had three sons at one time, but two had died from AIDS leaving the grandparents to care for their children. When we took in Chacha his grandparents were struggling to feed all the kids and couldn’t send any of them to school. The situation was only going to get worse as the grandparents got older.
These are the reasons we have so many children and the room for even more. Life is hard in Tanzania, but opportunities can be provided for these children so that they do not grown up into the same hardships and problems that their parents and guardians faced.