Congo

Quick Facts about Congo
- 71 million people (Kinshasa has over 8 million)


-Congo has world's second highest infant mortality rate

- At war from 1998 - 2003, yet militia fighting still continues today.

- 1,500 people die per day in DRC because of the conflict

- Deadliest conflict since WWII

- Over 5.4 million people have died since 1998 due to the war


- 37% of population (approx 18.5 million people) have no access to formal health care.
- Life expenctancy is 46-50 years

-over 5.2 million Congolese children receive no education

-over 1.2 million people are infected with HIV-almost 60% of those infected are women

-Malaria kills 400 children a day, medicine to save these children can cost less than 2$.


-54% of the population is below the African national poverty line of $1.25 a day (456$ a year), many rural families live on less than 0.18$ per day.


-There are more than 10,000 child soldiers. 15% of combatants are under age of 18, a substantial number are under the age of 10.


-800-900,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS


-over 400,000 children have no access to education.

-issues like child soldiers and children sold into sexual slavery are rampant.

-the sexual violence against women and female children is the worst anywhere in the world, children as young as 2 are getting gang raped by militia men or by their guns. It is some of the worst war crimes in the world.


Please read this post for a snapshot of orphan life in kinshasa from a lady who adopted from there a year or so ago.




Kinshasa is home for our kids, Congo will forever be a part of their history.  The facts are hard to read. Sometimes I wonder why I have been given so much. Just to think that 35 million people in Congo make less than 456$ a year... a year... America has often missed it.  We so often, especially around this time of the year, complain of what we don't have, can't afford, or wish we had.  We go in to debt to buy unnecessary things. And these people aren't even living in a year on what many people make in a week or two here. 


Please pray for Congo today.  Just this week, there is violence springing up around  a controversial election that occurred this month where two men are claiming to have won and some corruption in voting and power is going on.  The government offices are somewhat closed lately (which remotely affects adoptions) and people are at risk of violence already breaking out in the cities. Please pray for the orphans of Congo, for God to do big miracles in this country.