Print Issue: May 9, 2002

The Heart Of A Mom: Woman's Faith And Love For Her Children Inspires Those Who Know Her

By Rebecca Rakoczy, Staff Writer

ATLANTA - Mothers often go to great lengths to protect their children from harm. As a mother of seven children, Alphonsine Tshala Mfwamba knows this well. But then there are women who go to lengths to protect "forgotten children," children that are not their own. And Alphonsine Tshala Mfwamba knows this well, too.

"The heart of a mom is her children," Mfwamba says, clasping her hand over her chest. "Those who would throw away their babies ... they are not right in the head; the heart of a mom is for her children."

On the grounds of her northeast Atlanta apartment, Alphonsine Mfwamba, center, sits with four of the six children she recently reunited with after a two year separation. The children (clockwise from left) are Tshitshi, 18, twins Fifine and Fred, 16, and Bodry, 19.

For Mfwamba, "her heart" is blessed with the seven offspring she gave birth to. But her "heart of a mom" also embraces the children of war in her native country of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country torn by civil wars. There she was known as Mama Tshala to the boys and girls who, knowing nothing else but bombings and bloodshed, also came to know God and the Bible through her teachings and good works.

Then there are those here in Georgia, not children at all, but grown men and women, whose lives she has touched with her faith. They know her simply as "Alphonsine," and they are awed by her spirit.

"She is a blessing to us and a mom to each of us," says friend Lawrie Peyton. "We are blessed with the gift of her giving and her faith."

A political refugee from the DRC since 1999, Alphonsine Mfwamba spent more than two years trying to bring six of her children to the U.S. (Her eldest, a son, Pidgi, was already here, working and married.) It was during this time that many people, including Peyton and the women's Bible study at Christ the King Cathedral, as well as Greer and Andy Monin, grew to know her and love her.

'Every day, I asked God to watch over my children," Mfwamba says of the years she spent waiting for their arrival. She e-mailed them; she sent them money. And she waited. When they all arrived in Atlanta this past January, she cried in joy.

Now with her children around her, Mfwamba says she gives thanks to God every day for her good fortune and the good people that helped her. "God is very extraordinary. Coming here was a miracle."

But her life is nothing short of miraculous.

Severely beaten by soldiers, her jaw broken in two places, she was dumped by the River Congo and left for dead. A well-respected pharmacist and businesswoman, her crime was speaking against the government's policy of recruiting young boys and drugging them for service in the military.

At 61, she now cooks for the Gift of Grace House, run by the Missionaries of Charity. Her shattered jaw was replaced in surgery at Grady Hospital; a piece of her hipbone was used to repair it.

She watches the Monin's child; the couple was instrumental in helping her obtain visas for her own children's passage to the U.S.

Active in Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Atlanta, she is fluent in French and the Congolese languages of Swahili, Tshiluba and Lingala when she arrived here three years ago; now she is learning English alongside her sons and daughters.

But she cannot forget those she left behind.

"The situation for those left behind is so bad. We pray everyday for the country."

(L-r) Gail Tovrog of St. Brigid's Church, Alpharetta, and Linda Meyer of St. Ann's Church, Marietta, share a moment with Alphonsine Mfwamba as they celebrate the reunion of Mfwamba with six of her children from Congo last February among friends and fellow Gift of Grace House volunteers at the home of Andy and Greer Monin.

An independent and educated woman in a country that has been wracked by civil wars, she worked in the capital city of Kinshasa in the DRC as a pharmacist, traveling the world as president of the National Association of Pharmacists during the 1980s. A landowner, she also owned and operated her own pharmacy for six years. A devout Catholic, she also helped aid Caritas-Congo, the Congolese form of Catholic Relief Services.

She left everything behind.

The material life is not something she dwells on. But seeing the devastation of one's own country takes it toll.

"I see the situation of Israel, in Afghanistan - here, the terrible Sept. 11 tragedy in this country," she says in French-accented English.

"But in the Congo, there was bombing every day. The sick sleep on the floor of the hospitals. There is no money to live. The military come into stores, and the soldiers, they take anything they want. They come into your homes and just take things."

Since 1994 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly called Zaire) has been torn by ethnic strife and civil war, touched off by a massive inflow of refugees from the fighting in Rwanda and Burundi. More than one million refugees fled into the country in 1994 to escape the fighting between the Hutus and the Tutsis. More bloodshed and conflict came in the late 1990s, with the takeover of the government (once again) by a military dictatorship.

Mfwamba saw it all, but what hurt more than the soldiers looting her store, or taking her land, was the use of young boys in the military, she said. Fluent in several dialects of the country, she saw soldiers from another part of the country, some as young as eight, armed with guns. And they used them without mercy.

"I spoke Swahili, and I was able to approach some of the boys," she recalls. "I was so sad to see a boy of 11, he killed people, and I asked him why ... he said, 'they give us cigarettes ... they give us drugs."'

Incensed over the military's recruitment tactics, she became involved in politics. "I was nominated by a group of my people to participate in, how do you say, a congress," she recalls. "During the meeting there was a passage that said we must give weapons to everybody to protect the country, we must recruit young boys to the military. Well, I was against that ... I spoke out that while it is OK to have a military, that recruiting young innocent children, that that is no good."

Her impassioned speech resulted in her near death.

Receiving some help from a doctor, she was told to go to the country of Cameroon for her safety; there she waited for her visa to the U.S. Her children, the youngest who then were the 13-year-old twins Fred and Fifine, were given sanctuary in a city across the river from Kinshasa. There they waited for their mother to send for them.

"I went to immigration and asked for asylum for my children in the Congo," said Mfwamba. "I prayed for them. Every day I asked God to help."

When she arrived in Atlanta, her face was so disfigured from the beating that "I hid my hands over my face," she says. Within months after her surgery, she began seeking ways to repay those who had helped her in her journey. She attended the women's Bible study at Christ the King Cathedral, where she met Lawrie Peyton and the more than 100 women of the group. Her faith inspired them all, Peyton said.

"This woman who was essentially beat to a pulp, this woman radiated exuberance. She made you want to be more Christian. She depended on her faith in good times and bad. She has such a joyful spirit. You know that the love that she has comes from God."

During the two years without all her children, Mfwamba never stopped praising God, never stopped believing that she would be reunited with her children, said Linda Meyer, a member of St. Ann's, Marietta, who met her while working as a volunteer at Gift of Grace.

"Her family, they have such great faith. She has always wanted to give back. She told me, 'I owe God a great debt,"' Meyer said.

"Whenever you ask her, 'how are you?" she always says, 'I am blessed.'"