Zanzimana Ellie: Story of parents who ask God for “abnormal child”

A story that looks like a fable. Zanzimana Ellie is a young Rwandan boy like no other. The 21-year-old still can’t speak and enjoys staying in the jungle. The young man also grazes grass and behaves like an African chimpanzee. He even became the subject of mockery by the majority of his comrades in the village. His parents asked God even for an “abnormal child as long as he or she did not die”.

Living in Rwanda, in a small village, Zanzimana Ellie navigates in another era, but is close to his family. His mother revealed that her son was born after she and her husband knelt before God and asked for a lasting gift.

She indicates that in her lifetime, she had given birth to five children who died one after the other from an early age, and this had really upset her and her husband.

For their sixth child, who turns out to be Zanzimana Ellie, mother and father asked God even for an “abnormal child as long as he or she did not die”. And nine months after pregnancy, the mom gave birth, in 1999, to Ellie, who already seemed mysterious from day one. A tiny baby with a smaller than average head and doctors said the mom would end up having a hard time raising the baby.

For his parents, they did not mind having problems as long as the child lived to adulthood. Doctors seemed to have predicted it well because 21 years after he was born, Ellie can’t speak because he can’t. His head cannot stand formal education, and he enjoys the jungle life and running around all the time.

His mother even revealed that she feeds him grass like an animal and will “always have to run after him to bring him home at dawn”.

He’s never been to class and would probably live that way unless he saw a Good Samaritan that will train him to deal with normal human life. In any case, Zanzimana Ellie is Rwanda’s new tourist treasure.