Noelle Nadar Vuvu doesn't remember much before she turned four.
Yet there are some memories from that time she'd rather forget.
"Every time we heard a big bang, we were all sent into this room. I'm not sure if maybe it was a bomb or something. We were never really allowed to look; we were never really allowed to ask questions," she says.
Noelle was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2006 and spent her earliest years in an orphanage in Kinshasha.
At that time, the country was still recovering after being ravaged by the second Congo war, and the subsequent disease and starvation.
More than 5.4 million people had lost their lives since the war began in 1998.
One of them was Noelle's birth mother, who died when the little girl was just a baby.
Today, the now 16-year-old Noelle lives a very different life.
When she was four, she was adopted by an Australian family and she now lives in Melbourne.
"It's taken me a while to understand that family is not just by blood, but you can grow into a family," Noelle says.
"I think that I'm really lucky to have found a nice family that have accepted me, and I have accepted them."
But she still often wonders what her birth mother would have been like.
"It's kind of weird, but I do sometimes dream about her and what my life would have been if I wasn't adopted," Noelle says.
A new start
Jess and her former husband Nadar first heard about Noelle 14 years ago when they were working in Dubai.
A colleague told them about a orphaned baby girl in the DRC and, after struggling to have another baby, they decided to adopt her.
Jess first laid eyes on Noelle in the middle of the night after Nadar brought her back to Dubai .
"He woke me up and he said, 'Here she is'. And he was just standing shadowed in the doorway with this tiny little thing," Jess says.
"She was almost four, but she was a size of a one-and-a-half-year-old. She was just so tiny. We had to go out and buy all new clothes for her."
When they adopted Noelle, they didn't know much about her birth parents.
All they knew was that her mother had died on the streets of Kinshasha when Noelle was six months old. A passer-by went to check on the woman and realised that she was holding something. He quickly realised that something was a baby, wrapped in her arms.
"None of us knew Noelle's mum so we don't know what she was like," Jess says.
"But what we do know is that she loved Noelle fiercely because [she] wrapped her up in her body and protected her up until the last moments of her life."
So Jess made a promise to Noelle's late mother that she'd look after the little girl, and make sure she reconnected to her Congolese culture when she was ready.
Searching for a sense of self
It took time for Noelle to become accustomed to her new home. The little girl didn't speak English and she'd left friends who had been like family in the orphanage.
But within weeks, she was happy and laughing, and had settled in with the family.
It wasn't all plain sailing. For example, it took years for Noelle to grow out of her fear of not having enough food. Sometimes Jess would find food that she'd hidden in unusual places.
"I'd find it at night when I was brushing her hair. You'd find bits of bread and chunks of food that she'd saved to eat later," Jess says.
When she went to school, Noelle was often one of the only black students. Other children weren't shy about asking confronting questions.
"When they used to say, 'Why do you not look like your parents? Why are you darker?' I would always say, 'Oh, because I ate too much chocolate," Noelle says.
"I would always come up with these excuses. But I knew that I wasn't Mum's biological child. I just didn't know how to tell that to people."
This sense of being an outsider prompted her to explore her own identity and culture.
Remembering her promise, Jess contacted Jean Marie Mupenda, the president of the Goulburn Valley Congolese Association. He's based in Shepparton, Victoria, which is home to many of Australia's Congolese migrants.
She organised to visit him and his family with Noelle. And in July, Jess, Noelle and her sisters Matilda and Eden drove to Shepparton.
The Mupenda family welcomed them all with open arms. They served a traditional Congolese dish for dinner, which sparked memories for some of the family members.
"When Noelle was really little, she would often ask for something called foo foo. She'd hold out her hand and say foo foo, foo foo. We never knew what it was," Jess says.
Now she recognised it immediately.
"Noelle says, 'That's it, mum. That's fufu. … It was like a steamed ball of semolina and you tear bits off and dip it into the sauces," says Jess.
The following night, the local Congolese community commemorated their national Independence day with traditional food, dancing, and educational speeches on their history and culture.
Noelle felt a strong sense of belonging within the community.
"Seeing that family, I looked at everyone [and] I thought, oh, like these are my people. Feels like I can actually connect with them," she says.
For Jess, just witnessing Noelle making friends in the community was worth it.
Yet it was a conversation with Jean Marie before the family left that struck a chord.
"He was asking me about her background, and I explained we didn't know because she was found with her mother and her mother had died and no one knew who she was – she has no family," Jess says.
"And he said, 'Yes, she does. She has family. She has us. We're all your family now'.
"It sounds cliché but he really meant it and it felt like finally we have an avenue to explore Noelle's birth family in the broadest sense."
What's lost and gained
Since returning to Melbourne, Noelle has tried her hand at making fufu.
"[It] was a huge fail … I think I accidentally burnt it, and it was a bit too dry," she says.
"I think I need to go back to Shepparton to get some recipes from the Congolese community. But I really hope that one day I can get a lot of the recipes and make them really well for my future kids."
Jess often thinks about how Noelle has been impacted by her adoption.
"You still can't ignore what she's lost, in particular, the opportunity to know her birth culture. So meeting the Mupenda family and [being] so warmly welcomed by the Congolese community has been wonderful, because it gives us that chance to connect," she says.
"Although, I still think it's funny that she's connected with her culture via a country town in regional Victoria.
"But perhaps that's what Australia is all about."
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