General Reading 10.3

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Foster Families in Rwanda

A. Sperantia Nyirantibenda vividly recalls the night she was unceremoniously turned into a foster parent by soldiers who brought her five children and two sacks of maize. [Crack IELTS with Rob] They came knocking at her door in the town of Gitarama as the civil war in Rwanda was winding down. Nyirantibenda, a 34-year-old school teacher, nervously opened the door and immediately recognized the smiling faces before her. ‘I have brought you, children,’ one of the soldiers told Nyirantibenda this time. ‘I will see you later.’ The maize the soldiers left behind did not last very long, and they never came back. Nyirantibenda is still caring for the children. She says she will gladly keep them so long as she receives some assistance.

B. Food for the Hungry International (FHR, a US-based voluntary organization supported by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has come in to help the school teacher. [Crack IELTS with Rob] In Rwanda and Zaire, FHI supports families which have taken in orphans and lost children, as well as unaccompanied minors who have formed into groups to live together. Over 7000 people receive blankets, shelter materials and a regular supply of corn, beans and oil.

C. FHI originally began the program to help children separated from their families at Mugunga camp, near Goma in eastern Zaire, one month after more than a million Rwandan refugees flooded into Goma in July 1994, fleeing victorious troops of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

D. An estimated 95000 children were separated from their families during the war. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Nearly half of them were inside Rwanda and the rest were in refugee camps in Zaire, Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda, which together hold more than 2.1 million refugees.

E. At the outset of the refugee influx into Goma, conditions in the camps were appalling. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Thousands of refugees were dying every day of cholera, dysentery and other diseases. Youngsters were being picked up beside bodies lying along the roads. Starving parents were abandoning their children or sending them to centres for unaccompanied minors in the camps.

F. Rachel Poulton, an FHI spokesperson in Gitarama, said that during a visit to a tent for separated children, a 5-year-old girl followed her and asked for help. [Crack IELTS with Rob] She said her parents were dead. The girl kept glancing over her shoulder at a woman who Poulton subsequently discovered was her mother. The woman later told Poulton she could no longer feed her daughter.

G. Poulton said that, over a four-day period, 184 children arrived at the tent and 16 others were brought by elders. ‘There were also a lot of people fostering-mostly grandmothers and aunts. [Crack IELTS with Rob] And there were sibling groups,’ she said. She said that a system was developed whereby FHI supported groups of unaccompanied children.

H. The challenge was to support these children in the community rather than in institutions. ‘This shows another way of caring.’ Poulton said. She said that it was preferable for children to grow up in a family setting rather than in orphanages. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Myra Adamson, a 63-year-old nurse, born in South Africa to American missionary parents, works with caregivers and foster parents living in bombed-out houses in Kigali. ‘These separated children in communities need food. They need someone to give them stability. They need someone they can turn to,’ she said. ‘’His family would be destroyed if the children were brought to orphanages.’

I. While a large proportion of children - about 60 per cent - are with foster families or ad hoc groups, a large number of unaccompanied minors also turn up in orphanages, such as the redbrick compound of Saint Andrew’s church at Kabgayi. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Run by Abundant Life International - an organization of former Rwandan exiles from Uganda - this orphanage was started 3 months ago and it now houses 536 children. The youngsters were either brought to the institution or fetched by workers who had been informed of their location.

J. ‘Soldiers would come to us to tell us where we could find children and we would go and pick them up,’ said an official. [Crack IELTS with Rob] He said to be himself had packed in his car 30 children he had picked up from nearby Kibuyi prefecture where camps for displaced people had been closed. ‘We get groups of 60, 70 children,’ he said. Throughout Rwanda and Zaire, the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and several other relief organizations are not only supporting various programs for unaccompanied minors, but also pooling resources to help track missing relatives. As of March, over 7000 children had been reunited with their families.

Questions 28 - 32

Which paragraphs contain the following information?

Write the appropriate letter, A-J, in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use each letter more than once.

28. The situation in orphanages.
I
29. The situation in refugee camps.
E
30. The number of children who have lost their families.
D
31. The kind of help which is given to foster families.
B
32. The story of a woman trying to give her child to someone to look after.
F

Questions 33 - 37

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your correct answers in boxes 33-37, on your answer sheet.

Location	Person/organization and activities
Gitarama	Nyirentabenda - looking after five children
(33)	FHI - started helping lost children

MUGUNGA CAMP

(34) Rachel Poulton - working for FHI

GITARAMA
Rwanda and Zaire (35) - finding relatives and reuniting families

UNICEF
Kigali (36) - nursing

MYRA ADAMSON
Kabgayi Abundant Life International - (37)

RUNNING AN ORPHANAGE

Questions 38 - 40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

38. FHI prefers to put orphaned children into orphanages.
FALSE
39. Nyirantibenda’s own children were killed during the war.
NOT GIVEN
40. FHI also supports groups of children who are looking after themselves and not in the care of adults.
TRUE