One rain-soaked January afternoon a low murmur rushed from a crowded space at the back of a school in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hand-cranked Singer sewing machines thrummed as more than a dozen women worked, quietly chatting, the wood or metal crutches on which they relied within easy reach. Children twisted in between.
Mama Leki, a woman with an enormous, gap-toothed grin who quickly burst into raucous laughter, sat in the center of the group she had founded in 2006 for women with disabilities primarily due to polio or meningitis. Mama Leki was sick of the reports of women being sexually abused or beaten while at home alone or forced to beg on the street, which was more vulnerable to their situation. Isolation, misery, and isolation became part of their daily lives until she put them together to earn a little money by sewing brightly colored dolls, bags, and clothing.
While all the women had to make their way to school and back through mud streets on cheap crutches that were more pothole than road, they came because they finally had a place to put their troubles aside for a few hours.
“We have so many problems, we can’t even name them all,” Mama Leki said in an interview that day in January 2016.
According to her close friend and colleague Neema Namadamu, she died May 28 of what the doctors felt was the novel coronavirus. Mama Leki had gone with a severe cough to Bukavu General Hospital — which has no ventilators — even though many others with symptoms stayed home for fear of being ostracized. Diagnostic tests were sent to Kinshasa for analysis for about 40 suspected cases, among them Mama Leki’s. Nobody knew when they could be coming back. The next day, She died.
Celine Fariala Mangaza was born on 27 Aug. 1967 in Bukavu, in the eastern part of the country near the border with Rwanda, the activist who became widely known as Mama Leki.
She ‘d contracted polio when she was 3, her family said. She began schooling in 1974. Rarely have girls attended, let alone disabled girls.
She remained through sixth grade and went on to learn how to be a tailor, eventually opening her own training center for disabled people in Bukavu. She later founded the Association d’Encadrement pour la Promotion Integrale des Femmes Vivant Handicap community at the school, which can be translated as the Association for the Wellness of Handicapped Women. She was also the vice president of Safeco, a Namadamu-led advocacy organization in Bukavu that teaches digital skills to Congolese women. The name she acquired along the way was a sign of respect: in the Lingala language spoken in parts of Congo, “Leki” means “aunt”
In 1994 Mama Leki married Fidel Batumike. She got into trouble with his family early on — they didn’t think she’s disabled.
But, she said, “Love has no eyes.” It was a happy marriage and the couple had four children. She declared in the 2016 interview she was a “10 out of 10” with her in-laws by then.
