Meet Ramatoula

The little girl in this picture is three year old Ramatoula. This is what she looked like when she moved noiselessly into my door frame, after dark, on the evening of April 30, 2011.

That day had not started off well for Ramatoula. As daylight was stealing across the Guinea Bissau landscape and the roosters were about done with their morning announcements another song was heard in the house of Ramatoula’s care giver. It was the voice of her aunt who took custody of this child from Ramatoula’s mother three weeks earlier. The aunt was singing a ditty about a little girl who again wet the bed and needed to be punished. The song and the accompanying ruckus awakened one of our missionary co-workers.

When he heard Ramatoula’s screams he was quickly leaped from his bed and dashed out to the veranda where the goings-on sickened and angered him. There was this little half-pint being held inside an empty rice sack. Around her was the rest of the household doing a mock lynching on her.

“Bring a machete” said her aunt, “We need to cut her up.” A machete was brought and one of the men began sharpening it on the cement blocks.

More screams and wailing from the rice sack.

“We will throw her down the well” said one of the men, laughing at the Ramatoula’s anguish.

My co-worker began challenging the group telling them it is child abuse and they needed to stop. The aunt became angry at him saying him he should not interfere with their disciplining of the child. “This is the only way African children can learn to stop doing things they shouldn’t do” said the aunt. I have heard that reasoning many times in West Africa.

As she stood in my doorway that evening, Ramatoula’s troubled eyes were pleading for affection and security.

Seeing little children suffer is one of toughest parts of being a missionary in West Africa. On several occasions I have told people that when the child is ‘flogged’, as they call it, he learns only two things; one, that the guy who hits the hardest is the winner and two, violence pays.

Ramatoula is one of millions of unwanted, uncared for, abandoned children in this part of the world. Her father is a witch doctor with multiple wives and partners. Her mother is pregnant with another child and unable to care for Ramatoula. That is why she dropped her off at the aunt’s house.

I’m not telling this story for the shock value, I am telling it to help us be aware of the great challenge before us as the church emerges and grows in West Africa.

The perpetrators in this incident, specifically the aunt, are professing evangelical Christians. She even labels herself a ‘missionary’.

This incident reminds me of the challenges we face as EMM missionaries in West Africa. We have our work cut out for us.

1.    I would like to help people view the world and others the way God sees us/them. Psalms 82:3 tells us God expects His people to- Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

2.    I would like to help people find the way of peace as they live with each other; that violence and forceful coercion only give birth to more of the same.

3.    I would like to teach parenting skills enabling parents to raise children to know they are loved and valued and start a revolution in the way we do family.

4.    I would like to help people to know that the little Ramatoulas are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven and to be a part of that Kingdom each of us needs to become a Ramatoula.

Beryl Forrester,
EMM Guinea Bissau
July, 2011

Would you like to help children like Ramatoula?
Since writing this story we have created a budget line to solicit funds enabling us to respond to the needs of children in crisis such as Ramatoula. From time to time children come into our lives clearly needing the intervention the mission staff can provide. If you would like to participate in the care and emergency treatment of children we find in villages where we minister please send your gifts to EMM clearly marked for ‘Guinea Bissau, children in crisis fund’. Your donations will be used to provide at least short term care for children needing medical attention or to be temporarily moved to an appropriate care giver. bf