By chinenyeh ozor

Nsukka:—Opi, a community in Nsukka Local Government Area, Enugu State, has attracted international attention with the arrival of an American couple and missionaries Rev. and Mrs. Joseph Starling, who came to care for orphans and the physical challenged people in the country.

Dr. Starling spoke to South East Voice at Ibeku Opi, his residence with about 50 orphans in his ministry. The orphanage home was established eight years ago by the couple. Among the children at the orphanage were those born with HIV/AIDS, epilepsy and other deformities.

The orphanage is being managed through donations mainly from United States. Some Americans do visit the orphanage from time to time to assist both in cash and kind.

Starling told South East Voice that he planned to have about 2, 000 children in the orphanage even as he also planned to establish more of such orphanages in other parts of the country.

The missionary disclosed that his wife was brought up at the Temple Baptist Church   Orphanage Home in the United States, adding that, she only discovered her biological mother, precisely five years ago.

Biologicalmother

According to him: ‘’Nigeria records about several million orphans, according to UNICEF figures.” Rev. Starling explained that after visiting tsunami victims in Thailand, Siri Lanka, India and Myanmar, he planned to visit other countries in Africa where they could help orphans and the lot fell on Nigeria, Nsukka and Enugu State.

According to him: ‘’My findings showed that there are several millions of orphaned children in Nigeria. So, we became so much interested and we started looking at various organisations, which were doing what we determined, we realised that this is the place -Nsukka.

“After looking at organisations, they did not fit our model; they did not suit our religious beliefs and other things. We are from United States and we started off the ‘Place of Hope International,’ we started fund raising in United States.

“We came to Opi, to live in the village, children can be taught here to farm, so we decided this is the place we wanted. Some of the local people made land available for the project and so, we spent four months, initially, learning the culture, learning how people behave and interact, learning Igbo language.

The Igbo language that we speak is Nsukka, we did not learn any other dialect than Nsukka. After some time, we were given some children their parents died of HIV/AIDS and we started raising those children. “We met the local chiefs (Ezes), the elders (Onyishi) to inform them we have not come here to take their children from them, unless on agreement.

“Today, we have up to 50 children. We have children from different tribes and states. We have children from Plateau, Kano, Edo, Benue states. At present, we have five children with HIV/AIDS. We have volunteers, they come from the United States; they come to join us for a week, a month, two months.

“They raise money and come here; we have a Nigerian staff here who manages the children and trains them. “These children are African children; they need to be raised in that context. However, there are some positive things we can bring from the Western world to help them in their lives here in Nigeria.

“Most of all, we are not teaching them American culture, we are Christians and our concept is that the Bible has enough guidelines on how truth and honesty should be upheld.”