In December 2004, an unknown woman delivered a baby boy and dumped him in a drainage culvert in Gikondo suburb during an evening rainstorm. The neonate survived being washed away by the rain.

He was found by a woman who lived in the neighbourhood, taken in and later handed over to Mpore Pefa orphanage in Gikondo where he lived with 50 other children for three years before he was adopted by an American family of Jimmy and Carrie Lakey.

The boy who was only known as Kazungu, was later renamed after his adoptive family; he is now River Lakey.

At the age of three, River was flown to the US, joined his foster family and started a new life.

The Lakeys, who say they wanted to adopt a child from Rwanda, say when they first saw the photo of the toddler, they suddenly loved him and knew he was to be their son and started the process of adopting him.

"He quickly settled in but we kept wondering what we would answer the day he asks about the lives of children he lived with at the orphanage. We made a promise to him that we would take care of his earliest friends,” says Jimmy.

The family couldn’t adopt all the 50 children in the orphanage so they promised to make sure that each child remaining there had the chance to attend school.

To do that, they started a non-profit foundation called the "River’s Promise” as a mechanism to keep the promise they made to their son.

However, in 2011, government started a new programme of phasing out all orphanages and started with Mpore Pefa, a privately run orphanage with 51 children.

By May 2012 the facility had been closed and all the 51 children were reunited with their families, placed in foster homes or adopted.

River’s Promise was already facilitating the children’s education and welfare but keeping up with the promise was difficult since children had been scattered in different families across the country.

"All the children had been moved to well-off families, they were living a good life but the promise had to live on. So we had to identify three villages of historically marginalised people where we could help,” says Jimmy.

The villages identified are in Muhanga and Kamonyi districts.

The fruits

Today, the Lakey family has facilitated the construction of four houses for the needy in the identified villages, education for about 100 children and providing nutritious food for them.

"We facilitate these children acquire a good life because we believe they will do great things for their country in the future. Today, it’s an honour to see widows smiling children, feeding well and going to school,” says Jimmy.

Meanwhile, River Lakey, who flew back to the US yesterday, had returned to Rwanda for the first time in seven years with his parents to visit his country of his birth and meet up with his childhood friends.

On Friday, the family hosted to a dinner, children who lived with Lakey in the orphanage and the beneficiaries of River Promise at a colourful event held at Urban Hotel in the upscale Kiyovu neighbourhood.

Speaking at the event, the young River, who only speaks English now, told his fellow children that his life principles are circled around ‘loving people, education and God.’

"I like American football. My dream is to be famous and it is very possible, I am already famous anyway,” River told The New Times.

River met with his childhood best friend, Aime Kwizera during his visit to Rwanda; although the two faced communication difficulties since River does not speak Kinyarwanda, they connect well and understand each other.

During the dinner, the two boys, both aged 10, were inseparable. They shared a meal, played, laughed and at some point proposed to take the flow and dance for the attendants.

The survival of River that cold evening in a drain has now inspired a movement and seen hundreds of children and the needy helped and living their dreams.

Adella Nahimana is one of the historically marginalised people who recently got a new house constructed by River Promise.

"The family has sacrificed a lot for us. I am a widow of two children I had no house, I lived in a terrible condition, the small house I lived in was leaking and we got rained on when it poured. I had no bed eating and feeding my children were the hardest things to get,” said Nahimana.

Dieudonne Kubwimana was a street child who has benefited from the River Promise. Today, he is in school and has hopes of getting a professional job upon completion of his education.

Many of the beneficiaries have moving testimonies and according to the Lakey family, the cause is continuing with no plans of ever ending it.

edwin.musoni@newtimes.co.rw