Soon after Gaby was born, he became an orphan. His parents were killed by members of a warring tribe in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

That day changed Gaby’s future. His father had multiple wives and one of them took Gaby and his sister in. The years they lived together were full of strife. Gaby says his step-mother was physically and verbally abusive.

But there was another consequence of becoming orphaned: he was stigmatized in the Congo and Zambia, where the family moved in 1993. His peers blamed him for his misfortune and accused him of being a witch who brought tragedy to others.

Children would tell him, “You have eaten your dad and mom. Do you want to eat ours?” Sometimes their parents would warn their sons and daughters, “Don’t play with him. He’s a witch.”

Because people avoided him, Gaby spent a lot of time alone. “It was torture,” he says. Lonely, bullied, and heavy with a sorrow of losing parents that he never knew, Gaby started to sing to comfort himself.

At the refugee camp in Solwezi, northwestern Zambia, he was discouraged from attending school. His stepmother tasked him with finding food.

The happiest part of his life was attending church. When the pastors preached, he felt they were talking directly to him. But one day, an elder summoned the members of the choir. According to Gaby, he said, “I don’t want to see this young brother. He has come just to bring the spirit of witches. He’s just destroying our prayer.”

Gaby was devastated that even people at church could be so cruel and intolerant. “I decided to end my life,” he says. He starting to think about ways he could do it, “like throwing myself into the Solwezi River.” But something stopped him. He says it was God giving him strength.

He kept going to church and the years passed by. Eventually, he parted ways with his stepmother—after a severe beating. A woman from church, a nurse, welcomed him into her large family. She gave him his first guitar and after he learned how to play, he brought it to the church for his first solo performance.

He played a song called “Lamentation” which he had written for orphans. “I have seen orphans like me suffer a lot. There was no one who could come to rescue me,” he says. The song was meant to give them hope and encourage them to follow Christ.

As he sang, Gaby says members of the church started to tear up. It was as though they were hearing his voice for the first time. They stopped seeing him as a witch.

“When people saw that I gave my life to Jesus Christ, they believed me,” he says. Even the elder who accused him of bringing bad spirits into the church in front of the choir asked for forgiveness.

“I pardoned him long before,” says Gaby.

In 2016, Gaby moved to Buffalo, New York. He wanted to start a new life. Today he washes dishes in a restaurant and is going to community college, where he is learning English. He aspires to be a doctor or to pursue a career in peace studies and conflict resolution. He says he’s happy.

He attends a church with a Congolese pastor and texts with a pastor from Zambia who now lives in Kentucky.

Gaby still sings and plays the guitar too. “My music is for evangelization and to adore God,” he says. And, “music helps me to forget.”