Ilunga, a Short Story (The Yale Review)
by
“It was the image of this tiny but indomitable twosome, neither of whom had contracted AIDS, that stayed with me. Every morning the nine-year-old girl would lead her baby brother to the treacherous coltan mines, where he’d work for hours at a stretch running his small hands through mud, searching for colombo-tantalite ore. She’d go back to their hut and try to coax some yams and cassava from the land, find enough sticks to light a fire, wipe the forehead of their mother. In the early evening before dusk could fall and the para-military could pass looking for every-younger recruits, she’d return to fetch him.”
In the short story, “Ilunga,” a Paris-based female war correspondent agrees to adopt a little boy in the Democratic Republic of Congo after his mother begs her to “save” him. But their life together turns out differently than she expected.
To read the full story, please click here: The Yale Review
