2014-02-12 12:32:04

World Radio Day: Sr Angélique Namaika giving hope to women in DRC


(Vatican Radio) I am Lydia O’Kane. Over the years as a journalist I have had the privilege to interview many women whose courage, commitment and determination have been a beacon of hope in a world often beset by conflict and strife.

One of those women is Sister Angélique Namaika who received the 2013 Nansen Refugee Award for her tireless work in the remote north east region of the Democratic Republic of Congo with survivors of displacement and abuse by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The award was established in 1954, to recognize extraordinary humanitarian work on behalf of refugees, internally displaced or stateless people.

Displaced herself during the fighting in the country in 2009, she runs the Centre for Reintegration and Development, which has helped more than 2,000 women and girls who have been forced from their homes and abused.

On this World Radio Day 2014 which has as its theme, giving a voice to voiceless women, I have chosen Sister Angélique’s story.

She spoke to me through a translator not long after the award was announced, saying she knew that the Lord was helping her to help these women and it was he that gave her the courage to start this initiative.

“The experience of me being a displaced [person] was really not a happy experience, it was really a huge, a big trauma for me, all the stories, all the atrocities we were hearing [about] were not easy to hear.”
Sister Angélique goes on to say that because she was so scared she began singing a song, it was “Lord do what you want with me” This, she says “is also the song that gave me courage to go out of the bush and to go back to the town to identify the women who were displaced, the women who were traumatized ”
She explains that because of the trauma these women suffered, she accentuated her activities in terms of training and in terms of income generating projects, so that she could help them rediscover a happy life. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Sister Angélique Namaika RealAudioMP3








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