Nyundo orphanage stuck with grown-up dependants

An orphanage facility is meant to nurture and protect children without parents. However, some of the beneficiaries accommodated at Noel Orphanage De Nyundo in Rubavu District are adults with special needs.Nyundo is one of the biggest orphanage facilities in the country.The law prohibits keeping of adults in orphanages. The situation at the decades-old orphanage came to light during the tour by government officials and their partners to the facility. The tour was part of the ongoing campaign to phase out orphanages, while encouraging the placement of orphaned children in foster homes.According to the orphanage’s administrator, Augustine Twagira, the number of children under 18 years is 189, while those above 17 years are 254. Inside the orphanage is a group of 14 beneficiaries with mental disabilities some of whom are men and women.“We have students at university and other institutions of higher learning whom we are helping,” Twagira acknowledges. Before the Genocide, children used to spend less than five years, but after the war, some of those who returned had lost all their relatives,” he explains.From the age of six, females are separated from males. The orphanage also groups orphans in different age brackets (6-11, 12- 16, 13-17, and above 17 years. The adults living with disabilities also live separately.Twagira says men who have direct contact with children are four.“We have male support staff attending to only older boys above 16 years. Others are involved in outdoor activities.”Aloysius Bigirumwami, a Catholic Bishop established the orphanage in 1964 to take care of the rising number of orphans owing to a high maternal mortality rate then. The original vision must have been compromised due to overwhelming need.The adults with mental disabilities who looked clean but redundant are under the care of non trained caretakers. Managing discipline in the orphanage for adolescents is quite challenging to the women.“Managing adolescents is the biggest challenge we face here,” admitted one of the caretakers who preferred anonymity.The Director of the National Commission for Children, Zaina Nyiramatama, acknowledged that hosting of adults in the orphanage was a concern, saying she had raised it with Bishop Habiyambere of the Nyundo Diocese, who oversees it.She expressed hope that their meeting later this week would devise a solution.“I met the bishop. We talked and as for today, there is not much to say until Wednesday when he and local leaders will be here with us,” Nyiramatama said.The head of Programme Development and Advocacy at Hope and Home for Children, Deus Kamanyire, was against the idea of accommodating adults at the orphanage.“They should be supported and trained in confidence building to compensate for the inferiority complex acquired as result of institutionalisation. It is unfortunate that there is a reasonable number of university graduates, who cannot express themselves to compete for jobs on the market,” Kamanyire laments. “Even those that have attained marriage age seem not to know how to go about it; they have fears on how they can be independent because of the dependence syndrome attained in the institution, where they eat, sleep and drink free of charge with no hope of fending for themselves.”Kamanyire adds: “For those with mental disabilities, these are difficult cases; they can be helped to access rehabilitation services depending on individual assessment of each case. They too deserve to have the love of a family, their relatives should accept them to go back home rather than suffer from the effects of institutionalisation.”Government alongside its partners has embarked on a campaign to integrate children into homes and suspended international adoption.