WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT

Our Marc Yorinda was 12 years old when the genocide occurred in 1994 in Rwanda. The parents were killed and he and his sister walked for 2 weeks from Kigali to a refugee camp in Goma DRC. In 1997 war spread to Goma and they had to flee again. This time to a camp in Zambia, but in 2002 that camp was closed. They had simply nowhere to go. Marc managed to get onto a truck on its way to South Africa. On arrival, he slept at Park Station alone, unable to speak English, but found someone who could speak Swahili. This man helped him to trace a friend of his father in Germiston, who took him in. There he met SvdeP Mrs Marlene Ritky who helped him in countless ways. He started to learn English and heard about Mercy House. We put him into school where he did extremely well, then managed to get an Iscor bursary to study engineering at Wits University. After graduating in 2008 he worked at Iscor, then, in 2018 was offered a job as Managing Engineer at Entabeni Life Hospital in Durban. He is still there now as top manager controlling the electronics of their 4 hospitals in the Durban area…with several managers working under him. What a tremendous achievement! We congratulate Marc on his resilience, integrity and deep faith, which have got him to where he is today.

See below Marc on graduation day in 2008 with Mrs Ritky and on Sunday, 19 April 2026, when he flew up all the way from Durban just for the day, to meet up again with Mrs Ritky and Diana, to thank them you for all they had done for him. Says something about his character doesn’t it!