A Child with a Big Worm in his Body

Samuel Rwasa is a Burundian child who was left alone when he was seven months old. His mother left him at her aunt, a widow raising three children. Samuel regularly fell ill and his health status worsened daily. People in the neighbourhood started advising Judith to take him to witch doctors. “Samuel had a big worm in his body that was eating up all what he ate and drinking his blood too,” they said. Judith discovered recently that the big worm was nothing other than hunger.

“I still find it difficult to feed him adequately because I am poor and do not have enough land to exploit, but at least I know what kind of food my child needs,” says Judith.

She recently brought Samuel, her nephew, to a World Vision intervention and training programme, and they both are learning how to become healthy.
Samuel lives in Gashoho Area Development Programme, in northeast Burundi. Even though he is 11, he appears to be only five. When he was seven months old, he was left alone by his mother who gave birth to him outside of a legal marriage.

“She came with Samuel, she said she had nostalgia of us and was coming to greet us. She stayed here for some days and one day left pretending to go to the market and never came back,” Judith recalls.

“When I talked it over to my brother, her father, he told me I should keep Samuel and raise him up so as to be sending him to collect water for me when he is grown up,” Judith continues.
Judith accepted to take Samuel in despite having already three other children she had difficultly fending for. Judith’s husband fell seriously ill and was no longer helping his wife to fend for the four children they had now. He had a big stomach pain and spent more than four years agonising, and he recently passed away. Even the modest house she lives in with her four children was built by Judith herself. Samuel was raised like a grown up child, he was no longer breast fed, he only ate food. Samuel’s health status did not take long to degenerate. He could not grow like other children and could not gain weight either.
According to UNICEF, 58 per cent of children under the age of five in Burundi are chronically malnourished. In some areas like Muyinga where Samuel lives malnutrition rate goes up to 71 per cent (UNICEF 2013).
Calixte Ndabumviyubusa, a World Vision project coordinator in Muyinga province, says that they came to know Samuel’s case when they were getting ready to re-launch a nutrition training project that had ended in December 2012.
“In partnership with the local administration and provincial health authorities, we were meeting parents and their malnourished children on their hills,” explains Leonard, a World Vision Burundi community development worker in Samuel’s area.
“For the first day he came, Samuel was brought tied on the back of Judith. He was so thin and so short that we thought that he was still a small child. We were shocked to hear that he was 11 years old," Leonard says.

When Samuel was screened, he was found to be malnourished. Judith and Samuel started attending a World Vision Burundi’s programme for rehabilitation. Judith says there she discovered that Samuel was not suffering from a disease that could be treated by traditional healers.
“We did not know that Samuel was suffering from malnutrition. People were saying he had a variety of diseases, the most difficult to treat being a big worm eating up what he ate and drinking his blood too,” Judith recounts.
“One of those people came to see me at home promising to give me a traditional medicine to kill the worm if I had 70,000 thousands [around 45 US dollars] to pay. That was too much money for me to get,” she says.
Now Samuel, who had missed two years of school because he was always sick, is now back to school and says to feel better. Judith has started to feed him as taught in the World Vision’s programme. She hopes that Samuel will keep on feeling better since the food used by World Vision to rehabilitate him is locally available.
Calixte says that World Vision is now working closely with the families of malnourished children to make sure they recover totally. World Vision Burundi has begun working with the families to start kitchen gardens to get more nutritious food, especially vegetables.