Optimism: See What A Barren Woman Abandoned By Her Husband 40-Years-Ago Did That Changed Her Story

Many a times, life throws some ‘garbage’ ones way and one is saddled with the task of either changing their story by turning it into ‘baggage’ filled with ‘gold’ or ‘heaps’ that churns out ‘maggots’.

The saying goes thus: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

The above is a proverbial phrase used to encourage optimism and to generate a ‘can-do’ attitude in the face of challenge or misfortune.

This story is about a 65-year-old ‘mom-to-many’ who was sent packing by her husband some 40-years-ago because she was childless.

The woman called Marie Charline Mutsuva, is said to live in a humble hut that has became a well-known soothing haven for more than a 100 orphaned children, who have found themselves in her care.

According to APNews, these children have been orphaned by rebel attacks in remote Democratic Republic of Congo.

Today, more than a dozen children, ranging from six months to 18-years-old, currently live with Mutsuva, whom they often call “mama.”

Information gathered reveals that Mutsuva, who has taken in more than 100 youths over the past four years, was abandoned by her husband 40 years ago. Resources are so stretched that at times she sells her possessions, but she carries on, saying: “I have family again.”

“I felt compelled to help them,” she said.

She feeds and clothes her makeshift family in her three-room mud home. She often finds it difficult to support them. Recently, she said, she had to sell the children’s mattresses to pay for medications.

Now they all sleep on banana leaves. She manages to cook them rice and beans. At least, six of the children attend school which costs her between $50 to $68 per year.

“Sometimes I have been forced to sell my clothes and pans to pay” for their care, she said. But she said it’s important to be there for the children, who make her feel a part of something bigger.

Mutsuva, despite the hardship, said her work will continue.

“I did not have a son and a daughter,” she said. “When they call me ‘Mama, mama, mama’ I feel comforted and I see that I have family again.”

At the age of 20, Mutsuva cared for her two younger brothers after her parents died. Her husband then left her, 40 years ago, because she couldn’t give him children. Later, she began opening her home to orphans.

She calls it her duty to help others who find themselves alone.

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People who know her bring her new children who can’t find their families. Every Sunday, Mutsuva goes to churches, or radio, or national TV to help the children find their or to see if anyone can identify them.

Many of the children eventually find relatives who can care for them, Mutsuva said, but as the regional violence shows no sign of ending, her devotion continues.

Her work is praised by those in Beni. One Josephine Kavira Mastaki called Mutsuva a guardian angel after she cared for her son in September, 2017; following a rebel attack.

“I had already mourned my child, believing he was already dead,” Mastaki said. “But something amazing happened. I heard on the radio that a certain Joshua was at the orphanage and looking for his family. I drove 30 kilometers (18 miles) on a motorbike to Beni.” She found it was indeed her son.

Mastaki said the government should pay Mutsuva for her services and ensure better conditions for the children. The Beni civil society organization, which has tracked the violence for years, says the rebel attacks have left more than 1,200 children orphaned.

One of the orphans, thirteen-year-old Gloria Saambili said her mother was cooking when rebels entered her home in the Congolese village of Mayi-Moya, with an ax and took Gloria’s father and two brothers into the forest. The teen escaped.

“I think every day about my family … I am alone in the world,” Saambili said, in tears.

She is among hundreds of children in Congo’s northeastern Beni region, who have lost family to attacks by Allied Democratic Forces rebels, who have killed more than 1,500 people since late 2014, in a region long-scarred by militia violence.