FERN PRAIRIE — Jilma Meneses doesn’t claim to have an answer for the horrific violence that’s raged for years in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For more information, visit ourfamilyadoptions.org.
The Camas lawyer just knows that there are millions of Congolese children who need help — and millions of Americans who don’t know why.
“There are close to 5 million orphans in the D.R.C.,” she said, “and by the end of this year, there will be an estimated 7 million people who’ve died there in the recent past.”
Compared with the vastness of that suffering, a $20,000 grant that came in July from Chase Community Giving to Meneses’ nonprofit agency, Our Family Adoptions, is a drop in the proverbial bucket — but it will mean sustenance and survival for some hungry children who would almost certainly starve otherwise.
Plus, it will continue to strengthen the link that Our Family Adoptions has built between concerned Americans and desperate Congolese.
“Our main goal is to try to protect the children,” she said. “Another of our missions is to try to raise awareness of what’s going on in the D.R.C.. We are all dependent on the minerals that are extracted from the ground in that area. There has to be a way to get the resources we want without inflicting these horrors on the population.”
Vast mineral wealth makes the nation that used to be called Zaire one of the resource-richest countries in the world — while overlapping wars, corruption and chaos keep the population among the world’s poorest.
Trail-blazer
When Meneses joined a United Methodist Church mission in 2001 to the D.R.C., she said, she was overwhelmed by the appalling conditions there, and wanted to help — both by feeding hungry children but also by helping them join loving families in the United States.
She advised the director of an orphanage there to consider an adoptions program. The short answer was that there was no system in place to facilitate such adoptions — but that the Meneses family could lead the way.
“There were no entities working adoptions out of the D.R.C.,” she said. “There wasn’t a process. The country was at war, and there were certain political priorities — and adoptions wasn’t one of them.” When she and her husband, Nathan Reynolds, resolved to adopt a Congolese orphan, they had to work through the legal system and embassy of the neighboring nation of Zambia to get it done.
Legal authorities in the D.R.C. were a little amazed to learn that Americans were interested in adopting Congolese orphans, Meneses said, and excited about the good homes and range of opportunities they would have in the United States.
“We learned the process and we helped establish a process,” she said, “and then we started helping others.”
That led to the creation of the nonprofit Our Family Adoptions. It’s not an adoption agency or broker, Meneses is quick to point out, but an offer of pro bono legal assistance — that’s attorney Meneses herself — for families resolved to undertake a Congolese adoption.
By the end of this year, Meneses said, Our Family Adoptions will have assisted with about 100 such adoptions. Her own adopted daughter, Gracia, is a 14-year-old Camas kid today.
But the adoption trail that Meneses blazed may have caused a backlash. Adoption agencies interested in the D.R.C. have proliferated, and the Congolese government — which had no rules for adoptions a decade ago, and was willing to let religious groups like the United Methodist Church take the lead — now has generated a lot more red tape and constantly shifting requirements.
“We opened a door in the U.S.A. to do this,” she said. “Because there’s a growing demand to do adoptions, the country itself is becoming more strict.”
Meneses said her services are always entirely free — but attorney fees in the D.R.C. as well as other official costs, from government services to airline flights, can add up to a total adoption price of between $10,000 and $20,000 for an American family.
“None of that goes to OFA,” she said. “The day I’d have to charge to sustain the program is the day we don’t do it anymore.”
Given the higher in-country hurdles and the proliferation of adoption agencies and attorneys focusing on the D.R.C. now, she said, Our Family Adoptions isn’t taking any new adoption applications.
“The risks of a failed adoption are increasing, which may ultimately impact the ability of any organization to facilitate Congolese adoptions,” says a warning on the OFA website. “To families currently in-process, please be prepared for many more problems, delays, and disappointments.”
The $20,000 grant from Chase Community Giving — which was awarded after a round of Internet voting — will go entirely to feed, clothe and educate Congolese orphans.
“There are different conditions at the Congolese orphanages,” she said. “Some are very well run. The one run by our United Methodist Church has the resources to sustain itself. It has nice beds, good meals, education. Some of the others we’re trying to help do not have sustainable funding, and the conditions are horrific. You probably wouldn’t leave your family pets there.”
Some orphans are sustained on nothing but sugar water or rice water, she said, and don’t stand much chance of survival.
“They are lucky if they have anything,” she said. “Whatever money we get from Chase is going to food or formula and help for these children.”
Conflict metals
Underlying all this misery, Meneses said, is minerals in the ground — and a worldwide hunger for technology. The D.R.C. has vast deposits of cobalt, copper, industrial diamonds, coltan, tin, gold and other precious metals that drive modern-day devices, from digital cameras to laptop computers and drill bits to jet engines.
Many of the electronic gadgets in your life — the computer on your desk, the cell phone in your pocket — are driven by tiny capacitors and circuit boards that probably contain black-market metals with smuggling and violence in their wake, Meneses said.
The terms “conflict metals” and “conflict minerals” have been applied to the D.R.C.’s buried treasures — the ones that armies fight over and unarmed civilians die over. These metals are typically smuggled out of the D.R.C., Meneses said, and cannot easily be traced back there. The factions competing for these resources are notorious for atrocities against civilians like systematic rape and mutilation.
“The horrors unleashed against the population are unmatched in the modern world,” Meneses said.
A conflict metals ban was part of the financial reform package that President Obama signed into law last month. The law bans the import of numerous minerals from the D.R.C. by U.S.-based, publicly held companies, enacts strict reporting standards and implements a new labeling procedure.
You may soon see new consumer electronics bearing the label “D.R.C. conflict-free.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.
