Images of the Everyday: A Lesson in Gratitude

Cooking

Cooking is almost always done on a charcoal stove making meal preparation a time-consuming and tedious task.

Dishes

Dishes are, of course, always done by hand.

Laundry

Hand washing clothes is painstaking and annoying. Laundry machines are nonexistent so washing is always done by hand.

-

And always hung to dry... drying clothes seen everywhere.

Security

Nice homes, as in not of mud and plain brick, must have barred windows...

... and high, secured walls.

ADA

This lucky man received a donated wheelchair; most of the disabled lean on large sticks to move themselves around or literally crawl on the ground.

Drainage

Without a modern sewer system, drainage and waste is a part of life.

Trash

Trash, trash everywhere. Kids play in it, livestock and poultry eat from it.

Play

Except for the occasional flimsy soccer ball or cloth doll, most kids play with what they find.

In the Comfort of Children

Mama Mzungu TB, this is my full name to the children.

It started really with the cough that rattled Sylvia’s body when we first got her, which took weeks and a few rounds of treatment to finally cure.

“We keep giving you drugz, but it’s not going away,” Ester had told her.

Sylvia became wide-eyed and silent.

“Don’t scare her,” I said to Ester. I turned to Sylvia, patting her back.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be okay.”

Sylvia’s cough finally cleared, but then Beatrice, B2 or Ajambo as named by her siblings, developed one. The threat of TB was gone, but lingered in the backs of their little minds.

“Ajambo TB! Ajambo TB!” Sylvia shouted to Beatrice.

B2, forever gentle and sweet, responded merrily bashful; her dark lips trying to cover her easy bright smile. Rachel saw that I was slightly amused and was encouraged to continue teasing her sister. I looked at the little one.

“If she’s Ajambo TB, then you’re Baby TB.”

The kids thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard. I pointed to each of them: Sylvia TB, Ogola TB, Agnes TB.

I patted my chest: Mama Mzungu TB. They lost it.

“Mama Mzungu TB! Mama Mzungu TB!” Rachel cheered falling over herself with uncontrollable laughter.

The kids are unrecognizable superstars of their former ill, neglected selves. And my experience in helping with their transformation has confirmed what I always knew to be true, being a parent, or at least attempting to be a good one, is, besides maybe being the President, the hardest job imaginable.

The feeding, bathing, schooling, tutoring, treating, supervising, disciplining, coaching, guiding, and loving is as rewarding as it is challenging; made all the more difficult in a developing country without running water, without two parents, with uneducated, little minds and a language and cultural barrier.

I will tell them something and hear, “Yes, mama,” but it’s not done. Did they misunderstand me, or are they just doing what they please?

“You bring Rachel’s medicine in the morning to jah jah’s on your way to school.”

“Yes, mama,” Agnes politely replied to me.

The next day, the drugs never arrived. Probably lost in translation. But.

“You be at jah jah’s after you get up – by nine. Get there right away,” Ester had told Richard one morning. It was quarter to ten and we needed to be at the hospital. Where was he?

Tired of waiting at jah jah’s, I fetched him at the children’s home in Namengo, about a 15 minutes’ walk from where I stay. The boy was not ready; for some reason he decided to clean his uniform after he was supposed to leave. I knew he understood Ester speaking to him in Luganda, so what was he thinking?

Another day I found one of the Balaza’s forks hidden in his book.

“Why did you take this?” I asked him as we stood by the road. He muttered something about Sylvia. I told Ester.

“Yeah, they are picking things from their jah jah’s. The other day he hid a hanger in the back of his shirt and I found it in Namengo,” she said vaguely discouraged as she twisted a client’s hair in her shop.

I was concerned, but understood why they were taking the trivial and mundane. They had nothing before. A fork was a big deal, to own a hangar unthinkable.

And there were mild mendacities slowly emerging like sly fungus.

Agnes had come to jah jah’s one afternoon for lunch. Stephen sat at the table watching her eat and asked her why she wasn’t taking food as she normally did at school. She said they didn’t have lunch that day; a thinly veiled, sophomoric lie.

Ester, the Balazas and I decided it was time to have a chat with the kids. We set the boundaries now.

“I don’t want you children lying and stealing! You listen to your mamas and jah jahs! And you need to keep this place clean! Do you hear me? Look at this mess! You behave or I do to you what I did to little Jennifer!” Stephen directed them one night in their tiny home; beatings and their threat standard African child discipline.

The children, thankfully, seem to have heard jah jah’s words. We haven’t noticed things going missing in the house, I haven’t caught the children being untruthful; their teachers say their behavior is improving.

“Yes, Rachel is well behaved now. Now that she has motherly love,” the headmistress told me recently as I fetched the youngest of the clan and her report card, the school term just ending.

Rachel’s marks were the best of her four older siblings as to be expected since her simplistic schoolwork basically involves matching pictures and letters. The others are far behind.

"Oh good! Good, good, fairly good, good, good, fair, fairly good. This is good, Sylvia.” I congratulated the second youngest as she hung on my lap smiling with gapping teeth. I was looking at the first page of her report folder, handwritten reviews of the girl’s performance in areas such as letters, numbers, and verbal English. Behind the report card were pages of her work. But it was virtually all wrong: insequencal letters, incorrect addition, misspelled words. I laughed to myself shaking my head. The headmistress wanted to promote Sylvia to P1, the first level in primary school after next term since she was already too big for nursery school. She wasn’t ready. None of it was good.

Richard and Beatrice were doing fair at best in P2 and Agnes was totally failing P5. It’s not that they weren’t trying. Their teachers acknowledged their desire to learn. At least they try. Only Agnes could spell her name when they came to us after all. With school out for three weeks now was an opportunity to play catch up. I needed for them a private tutor.

“Yes, I will tutor Agnes and we’ll get another for the other three. It’ll be 50,000 for each teacher. They will go to school from eight to three for the big one and until after lunch for the others,” Agnes’ English teacher had told me.

I agreed enthusiastically. Fifty dollars for three weeks of almost a full day of private schooling was a good deal for me and the extra money welcomed by two lucky teachers.

The Monday after their regular classes ended I brought the kids to the school. The teacher for the three little ones wasn’t there yet. Agnes entered the regular class held during holiday, sitting with the other children; her private lessons apparently not starting promptly. This is Africa, I calmed myself.

I came back at eleven to give the children some food; they only took porridge for breakfast and I knew they would be hungry by late morning; they needed nourishment for concentration. The kids were out of class lounging under a tree. I went to find their teacher.

"They are taking a thirty minute break. We go back to work then they’ll be home for lunch at one,” the teacher assured me. Okay.

The kids entered the house at quarter to one. As usual, Beatrice proudly showed me her schoolwork without my asking; a page of math, two pages of English.

“Where’s the rest of it?” She looked confused. I called for Ester’s sister, Carole, in the kitchen to translate.

“She says that’s all they did.”

“WHAT?”

Carole repeated herself.

“What about you, Richard? You show me what you did today and you too, Sylvia.”

Richard opened his exercise book to one page of math and one of English. Sylvia had only a matching letters exercise; I had rage.

“This is what they do with a private tutor for five hours!”

Carole chuckled smugly.

I tore back to school, walking with the exercise books in hand, recalling Margaret’s warning that she would locate a tutor because people are funny and will take your money and they won’t help the kids; fiery Irish temper making my head swim.

I greeted the headmaster and stuck the pages under his nose, showing him the pathetically small amount of work. Like Carole, he laughed, and asked one of this staff to walk me to the woman who was supposed to be mentoring my children.

“It’s the first day. We can’t do much the first day,” she said with a big smile on her face.

“You only did one page here. This is not ‘not much,’ this is nothing!”

The woman said something about the children playing.

“I am not taking them here to play. If I wanted them to play I would have kept them at home. I am paying you to teach them!”

“Okay,” the woman still said grinning, not getting why I was mad, probably also amused by the silly, angry mzungu. “Tomorrow we will do more.”

“Yes, you will do much more or I am getting my money back!”

I walked back home and slopped matoke and gnut sauce in my bowel. I chewed not tasting the food; Agnes came through the door.

“Hi Aggie. How was school?”

"It's good."

“Can you please show me what you did?”

She pulled one exercise book from her bag and flipped it open to the first page half-way filled with neatly written math problems in ink.

“Is this all?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do English?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

I called for Carole again.

“She says that’s all they did,” Carole translated for me even more amused than before. She, a former teacher, was undoubtedly well aware of the ethics lacking in the profession.

I could feel my blood rising past simmer.

“Ask her if she was alone with the teacher or if she was with the rest of the class?”

They spoke. Then:

“She says she was with the other kids.”

I threw my hands in the air.

“Can you believe this? They are stealing from me! People here see mzungu and all they want is money. This doesn’t happen in America. If you pay somebody to do something, they do it. I was afraid this would happen.”

I looked at Agnes. Her face was sour.

“I’m not mad at you, Agnes. I am mad at your teachers.”

I stormed out of the house again, this time to confront the Agnes’ teacher, the one who called me friend and asked why I hadn’t brought him back anything from Rwanda, the one who had suggested that he tutor the kids in the first place. He wasn’t at school or his home across the street. I went for the headmaster again.

“Hi, sebo,” I greeted him friendly, but agitated. “Will you look at what Agnes’ tutor did for five hours today?”

This time he wasn’t amused.

“This is not good. And this is bad for me too,” he said concerned; the first I’d seen the jovial man humorless.

“Yes, I am sorry to bother you, but this is not what I am paying them for. They are not serious.”

“No, they are not serious. You gave them 100,000? 50,000 each?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You get your money back and I will have two teachers who will tutor the children tomorrow. Be here at eight.”

“Thank you, sebo. Seba burrungi.”

I strove towards home, blood pressure slowly lowering, relieved by the headmaster’s rightful alarm and intervention, but still irritated; after months of acclimation, of living with Ugandans, of becoming familiar, my surroundings and experiences were losing their novelty and I was fraying under Uganda’s corrupt culture. Where are the morals? Can I trust anyone?

Within there is a growing disturbance, I am endlessly questioning virtually everyone around me; my relationships are inextricably compromised, my relations defined by my having infinitely more; I am a have, and they have-nots; the have-nots assume with the wave of a magic mzungu wand I can extricate them from poverty’s absurdity and mire; I, the have, come from a society dazzling rich with money and transparency and truth, and they, the have-nots, have developed in a culture poor in every respect, wrecking their country and minds; I am never quite sure what someone is asking of me, never certain what one is prying from me, never clear of the intentions behind the mask; I, the have, and they, have-nots, all of us are all aware of what I have they not; my relationships with almost everyone, both those close and distant, those common and strangers, rests on this. It is tiresome. Very.

My oasis from this stress, from walking the streets harassed by passersby, from acquaintances pushing their items or services, from familiars lamenting their financial problems, from street children trying to swindle my shillings, are my own children: Agnes, Richard, Beatrice, Sylvia and Rachel. I don’t worry about what their attempting to squeeze from me, or what their kind actions conceal, or what they are covertly asking, or what their intentions are in saying this or telling that. They just love me and appreciate me, as well as each other. They quite simply are refreshingly themselves: happy, healthy, sweet little kids relishing their second chance at life.

Rwanda Rising

Welcome to the Unexpected

"It’s so clean here. The streets are so nice. The air so fresh.” I gushed constantly the first three days to Chiba, my Ugandan cousin and travel companion; I think she was starting to get annoyed.

I felt a world away from Uganda. Rwandan roads are neatly paved unlike the pot-holed abominations of their northern neighbors. There are actually sidewalks lining most streets, a piece of trash can’t be seen for kilometers, cars and lorries don’t choke the air with exhaust, uncountable loitering people don’t fill the walkways and clearings; I didn’t feel like I was in Africa.

Rwanda is patient, organized, disciplined, somewhat boring; even Kigali shuts down by nine. Vehicles behave well; driving in their well-marked lanes, not speeding and overtaking; the bodas all have helmets. The land without trash has banned caveras, plastic bags, and the law’s actually enforced. When we crossed the border, Rwandan authorities checked our baggage and politely took the cavera Chiba had tucked behind a pair of shoes. We don’t have these here.

I could sense right away that what I had heard of Rwanda was true: they don’t tolerate corruption. I could actually see foreign aid and domestic investment going to work: paving roads, stocking clinics, building schools, not lining fraudulent pockets. The discipline and honesty inspires and gives hope to the continent. And it makes the corruption in Uganda even more blatant, elucidating its negative effects. I would look around Rwanda and think, Look at what Uganda could have if the government served its people like this.

Mass grave at Kigali Memorial; 250,000 buried below

Traveling through Rwanda today, it’s difficult to believe the genocide occurred here. The people are as soothing as their air; only a couple of children’s calls: Mzungu! Mzungu! In Uganda nearly every child tries to greet me and oftentimes boisterous young men do the same; occasionally harassing, usually friendly, but always loud. Rwandans are as gentle and reserved as their traditional dance, a series of gliding gestures, soft and friendly, the woman moving with arms spread to their sides bowing and sliding, nodding and smiling like swans in flight.

“They are a humble people,” Chiba had assured me when we arrived in the capital.

The capital, Kigali, rests nearly in the country’s dead-center. It spreads itself over a series of steep hills; fresh streets, shiny structures and pretty parkways climb and descend the sleepy city. The atmosphere reminded me at moments of a Southern California mountain town; the dryness, terrain, flora and calmness not what I expected. I anticipated the densely tropical, thickly hot and African chaotic. Instead, a mountainous breeze swept past my skin and through the peaceful valleys, gently rustling the lazy eucalyptus and pines overhead; soothing equatorial heat.

The current political wind pacifies the land too, attempting to blow away the country’s infamous tribal tensions. Decades of hatred between the Tutsis and Hutus coalesced in an apocalyptical slaughter fifteen years ago, leaving a stain on the country, the region, and the world’s conscious. It lingers, but has become an impetus for change.

“There are two tribes here, right? But you speak one language?” Chiba had asked a Rwandan, trying to grasp the region’s unusual historical sharing of a single language between tribes.

“No. There is one tribe,” the woman said firmly, holding up a single finger. Chiba and I exchanged a glance; we understood what the woman was telling us.

As explained to me by a Rwandan close with the Balazas whom I met in Kigali, tribal differences remain, but are conducted secretively as they are acknowledged to be amoral and are even illegal. Tutsi parent’s may not want their children marrying Hutus and vice versa, but preferences are not always enforced, and if they are, are generally done covertly. One tribe may have a bar that is a hang-out, an area that is known to be theirs, but boundaries are mostly unsaid and the society is working hard to erase their divisions and nightmarish past. Hutus and Tutsis work and live side-by-side, they sometimes inter-marry; they are fighting for justice and forgiveness despite decades of animosity percolating below the surface unseen by visitors, but divulged in cover of darkness, in the confines of friendship.

Beyond Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Des Mille Collines. Hotel Rwanda. The famous hotel. The famous movie.

It is still an operating hotel in the center of Kigali and is actually larger than it seemed in the film. The movie communicated to the world a story very much deserving to be told, the actions of a courageous Hutu who risked death hiding over a thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the hotel. Larger than art, the film has metamorphosed into more than cinema; it is now how the world understands the Rwandan genocide, how the public seems to relate to all of Rwanda. But Hotel Rwanda, despite its paramount artistic integrity, is not the complete picture of the holocaust, and certainly not all that is Rwanda past and present.

As historical background to the genocide, the Belgians colonized Rwanda and exacerbated the differences between the Hutus and Tutsis by issuing identity cards and favoring the minority Tutsis, offering them better educational and employment opportunities. Upon the country’s independence in 1962, the Hutus assumed power and enacted revenge against their brother tribe through subjugation and smaller, lesser known genocides. Many Tutsis fled their home during these decades to neighboring countries, including Uganda. These Tutsi refugees as well as some moderate Hutus came together to form the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which grew in power in the early 1990s and sought to overthrow then Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana.

Then, on April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down over Kigali airport. It is still unclear who shot it: the RPF, or extremist Hutus who wanted to blame the RPF as an excuse to begin the slaughter, most believe it the latter. Regardless of who killed the President, it was an impetus for mass death.

Beginning the night the plane was shot down until mid-July of 1994, nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered while the world largely stood and watched; nearly 20% of the nation’s population; 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute. It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsis survived the genocide, including thousands of HIV-positive widows, many of whom were subjected to genocidal rape by men known to have the virus. The genocide also left about 400,000 orphans with nearly 85,000 of them becoming heads of households.

Visiting the genocide memorials and speaking to Rwandans creates a vivid picture of those horrifying weeks. My previous impression of the genocide, namely through the movie, was that innocents were murdered quickly by machete and bricks, but in reality the killings were much more ruthless; they were horrifyingly gruesome. Killers would torture victims, entering neighbors’ homes to maim the parents, cutting off legs and arms in front of the children, leaving them to suffer and returning a few days later to finish off the adults and kill the young. They would even crucify and impale, bury people alive, dump victims into pit latrines stacking them until they died under the weight of falling bodies or the thrown rocks, only stopping when the cries ceased.

Wreath and flowers at mass graves at Kigali Memorial

The Kigali Memorial is a museum dedicated to the country’s dark past. The bottom rooms describe the historical context, and contain some footage of the massacre as well as interviews with survivors. The upstairs contains countless pictures of the deceased, photographs donated by their living relatives. A section is dedicated to the children. Larger than life photos of children line the walls with a placard describing them underneath: their names, their likes, their last words, how they died: an infant burned to death in a church, a four-year old liking spaghetti, a two-year old murdered by being thrown against a wall, a seven-year old last heard saying “UNAMIR will save us,” a ten-year old tortured to death.

The survivors will say they have no idea how they endured; it was mere luck, an act of God. Few were blessed with a courageous Hutu that hid them, chancing his or her own life to save another, but most fled. Families would part and run for cover, generally unable to hide together as the roadblocks strategically placed around Kigali and the entire country prevented it. As such, the youngest were destined to die, unable to run through the bush by themselves. My Rwandan friend tells me the youngest survivor running alone that he heard of was seven.

I close my eyes and imagine April 1994. Cries fill the night around you. Your neighbors are being slain by other neighbors gone mad, carrying machetes and stones and bricks. You sit in your dark home surrounded by frightened sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins gripping each other awaiting death. You hear the murderers closing in and you flee, but you must go in separate directions. You don’t know where you are headed, you have to move undetected through the bush that night and for many thereafter, dodging killers, avoiding roads, eating and drinking whatever you find. If you survive vigilant, murderous eyes, and starvation, dehydration and disease in the bush, you may stumble upon another country or the army’s advancing line and end up in a refugee camp to languish there not knowing the fate of loved ones. The situation would soon be made worse when your killers arrived as they ran from the army they feared would enact revenge, or when cholera swept through the population, attacking the poorly-managed, deathly destitute camps.

The killers were virtually everyone and anyone. Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. Children even killed. My friend told me of a survivor in the Mille Collines watching children raping and killing a woman from his room. Placards at the memorial describe a child attempting to murder a neighbor, one he played with every day, one like a brother to him. Families would kill their own, especially in mixed clans. The two Tutsi-looking children of a mixed marriage were slaughtered by aunts and uncles, while the Hutu-looking kids might be lucky enough to survive; fortunate enough to grow up with the guilt of outliving their siblings slaughtered by their own caretakers.

skulls at Murambi Memorial


As I walked the streets of Kigali and drove through the villages, I would look at people and wonder where they were during the killing. Were they here in Rwanda? Or were they already seeking refuge in a neighboring country? The people my age would have been about 15 or 16 years old during the genocide. What did I do at that age? School dances, soccer games, getting a driver’s license, going to parties, sleeping in class. While I danced, played, drove, partied and slept, the Rwandans my age whom I saw in cafes and the fields, at market and the bus stop, might have murdered or been hunted, watched their family members kill or be killed, walked around bodies littering the ground or buried the dead. What had I done with my life since my mid-teens? University, jobs, love, friends, birthdays, Christmases. I think of the thousands of lives lost before they could experience this, before they really lived.

I considered this too at the Murambi Memorial in Gikongoro, a former technical college resting alone on a hill just outside the nondescript town. Chiba and I reached Gikongoro via bus from Kigali in the late morning, and asked a boda to take us the memorial; a creeping eeriness descending upon us as we fell down the dirt road and peered through the eucalyptus at the striking countryside, not knowing where we headed, unsure of what we would see. A white jeep passed us with a mzungu in the back, staring out the window, a memorable expression on her face: regret, forlorn, shock, hurt.

A brick building lay before us. In front of it a small sign and a large clearing. The scene was empty and alone, save the white fence on the far sides where dozens of children hung and watched. Were they looking to see our expressions as we left? An enormous military helicopter was parked in front.

The memorial was off the path traveled by most tourists making it a somewhat obscure destination. It lacked the sense of a formal remembrance center besides the entrance sign and reception desk; it felt like an abandoned set of buildings lying to waste on the hillside forgotten.

As we approached the entrance, a woman spoke in hushed tones to Chiba, joining her by hand as we wound around to the back side towards a series of smaller brick buildings, beyond us the flowing, terraced mountains of Rwanda; austere beauty.

The woman walked us to the first block, stood back and raised her hand slowly for us to look into the room. It was maybe fifteen feet square with wooden grated tables about three feet high occupying almost the entire room save a small walkway in the middle. On the tables lay dozens of white decomposed corpses partially preserved in lime. The bodies resembled the work of a macabre artist, moldings of paper mache, twisted frames of powdery pale cake; some were big, some were babies; some still sprouted brittle hair, some still swaddled in decaying cloth; some recoiled in hopeless defense, others memorialized in grotesque torment; legs were hatched off at the knee, heads blown wide open, torsos missing appendages.

We moved silently from room to room, the unique bitter odor filling my nostrils, the sight and smell forever seared into my mind. We came upon the only other group of visitors, distinctly British. The older woman’s eyes and lips pulled downwards vaguely, her hands and eyes fluttered; the stoic’s attempt at hiding sorrow and regret. An older man snapped photos with a click-and-shoot; I glanced back at the guide to ensure taking photos was permitted, wanting to respect the dead and grieving. She nodded and swept her arm encouraging me.

Room after room we took in the dead on display. Approximately 50,000 people died at Gikongoro’s technical school, only a small fraction, about two hundred are preserved in the memorial, most buried beneath the ground forever. All of the children and staff at the school perished as well as the nearby villagers who ran to the blocks for safety.

We entered the old dormitory block, a huge empty space save a wall filled with the dead’s crumpled possessions: mattresses, blankets, clothes, shoes, bowls, cutlery. I believe it was here that our guide whispered to Chiba. Two of my children died here.

She walked us down the slope towards the far side of the property, about 50 yards away the first set of houses lay below us, two children ran up to me from them and asked for money. I looked at another placard before me, The French played volley here. I didn’t fully grasp the purpose.

They walked us down another 15 yards then I saw a series of other placards: Mass Graves of Victims. I now understood the placards.

On June 22, 1994, with no end of the blood-shed in sight, the UN green-lighted the deployment of a French peacekeeping troop to secure areas in southwestern Rwanda as safe zones for fleeing Tutsis. The operation is now generally regarded, except for by the French, as a move to provide haven not for hunted Tutsis, but instead for the murderous Hutus escaping retribution from the advancing RFP; the French were giving protection to the Hutu militia groups they had been covertly siding with and arming all along.

There are assertions that the French were actually at the technical school in Gikongoro watching as Hutus slaughtered 50,000 of their fellow countrymen. Whether the French were there as it happened, or arrived immediately afterwards remains difficut to determine, but regardless, the extent of French culpability in the genocide was eye-opening: arming the militias that roamed the country killing hundreds of thousands, harboring those same murderers in Operation Turquoise under the guise of peacekeeping, and denying their involvement to this very day.

Chiba and I filled out the visitor’s guide solemnly. Dark children still lined the bright fences outside. We joined them in watching the Brits board the military helicopter parked in the clearing, staff and members from the House of Parliament flying back to their lives in London; returning to a place far from the hills of Rwanda where death rots in the soil. I looked at their notes in visitor’s book. I am sorry we didn’t do more.

To Clementine

Clementine is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. She is married with three children. Like many rural Africans, she is very poor, can’t read or write, lives in a hut without water or electricity, and barely farms enough to feed her family. I have known Clementine for almost one year. She is my sister through Women for Women International.

Women for Women International is a fantastic organization based out of D.C. that offers holistic services to women in war torn countries. For one year the woman receive lessons twice a month on issues such as health, sanitation, women’s right and domestic violence. They also group the women regionally into co-ops, which produce goods sold for profit, such as a piggery or craft-making. Through their co-op the women learn marketable skills and how to manage money, some funds going back to the group and a portion lining each woman’s pockets every month. When I signed up to sponsor a woman last year, I requested to sponsor a woman in Rwanda. Clementine and I had written each other once; she didn’t know I was in Africa.

The day I arrived in Kigali I was determined to find the WWI offices. I researched the internet, it wasn’t listed, but I found a photo. It was a picture of the Rwandan office’s sign, and it had a phone number. I called and called, my cell phone not connecting to Rwandan landlines. The next day I finally got through.

“I am a sponsor from America and I was hoping to meet my sister,” I told the receptionist.

“Berra, the country director is not here now, but let me get you her phone number.”

I called Berra. I wasn’t sure how she would react to a stranger calling her cell phone asking spur of the moment to find her sister somewhere in the country. She was more than welcoming. Can you be at my office in thirty minutes?

Chiba and I arrived at the office and I was immediately impressed. It was a gated compound filled with groups of women dressed in bright African clothes sitting in circles along the lawn. I peered through the cool garage, ladies sitting happily behind buzzing sewing machines. We walked around to the office. The staff were exceptionally friendly, extremely inviting; on a shelf near them lay decorated cloths, baskets, table napkins, African kurios; on a wall next to them hung beautiful African jewelry; all made by WWI participants; I filled my arms with gifts.

Berra entered the room, a source of light, the woman exuding compassion and inspiration. We took photos with the staff and went up to Berra’s office for a long chat about the program, the import of building nations through assisting women, the significance of ethical leadership, Rwanda’s battle for justice and growth, and the burning passion and drive within to serve others. Berra spoke of herself as a young girl trying to help an old woman and the refugees and destitute around her, coming home and crying to her mom about them. She laughed looking back on it. She didn’t’ even see how poor her own family was.

Chiba and I left her office rejuvenated and inspired. We were invited to return in a few days time to travel with the staff doing a workshop with Clementine’s group.

That Friday we met at WWI’s office and boarded a van, which drove about two hours south of Kigali. We stopped just off the main road near the top of a mountain. Above us a large group of women, a few hundred, standing, pacing, looking eagerly into our vehicle.

“They are excited you are here. They never get to see their sponsors. This is very rare," one of the trainers explained to me as I watched them watching me.

I sat in the vehicle for some moments. I got out. I stood and waited a few more minutes unsure of what was happening.

Then a trainer to my side smiled broadly, gestured behind me and said, “Here she is.”

I turned around and recognized Clementine from her picture. I opened my arms to embrace her and she pulled me flat against her, beating her arms against my back, resting her head on my shoulder. She held me for several moments muttering excitedly in Kinyarwanda.

“She says she is so happy to meet you,” the trainer translated beaming.

Clementine let go to look at me then held me again. She introduced me to her husband shyly standing next to her wearing a huge grin. He hugged me timidly and happily, thanking me in his language.

We walked to a shaded area away from hundreds of prying eyes and whispering lips. We spoke through an interpreter for some time, talking about each other’s families, our general lives. She apologized her children could not come; it was a two and a half hour walk and they were young. No, she hadn’t received my letter yet. I was a bit irritated; I had sent it last November.

Then Clementine offered a gift. In her hands lay a small green and white beaded box and a pink and black beaded necklace. I thanked her profusely. Her husband and she tied the jewelry around my neck. I wore a half smile, touched by the gesture, but anguished with guilt. She had sacrificed several dollars, probably as much as she makes in as many months to give me a present and in my haste I had brought her nothing. Others later assured me. It was a gift you coming to see her. It inspires.

She also offered to me two pictures of her family. I looked at them guessing they were the only ones she owned. I can’t take this.

“She wants you to remember her always,” the interpreter said. I put them in my purse appreciatively.

We embraced again and said goodbye. She asked if I could come for dinner. I said I couldn’t today, but maybe another. It was possible I would be in Rwanda again.

Clementine walked back towards the others as they broke off into the groups for the day’s lesson on nutrition. The women around us draped in bright colors, some shielded from the sun under rainbowed umbrellas continued to talk.

"Do you know what they are saying?” the trainer asked me.

“I have no idea.”

“They say it is a miracle. You coming. Her meeting her sister. They are very happy for her.”

I was humbled.

WWI participants and landscape


After the exercise the trainer boarded the van and smiled at me.

“I delivered your letter to Clementine today.”

We sat in silence.

Then Chiba muttered under her breath, “It is a miracle.”

I remained quiet; stared out the window; reflecting on an unforgettable day.

See all Rwanda pictures here.

Rwanda Awaiting

I went to Rwanda for a week before my Three Days of Deborah. I am still drafting the post about this incredible experience. In the meantime, below is a memorable moment.

Three Days of Deborah

Day One ~ The Little Orphan

I was hanging my clothes up to dry out back. I had spent the better part of two hours hand-washing some underwear, sports bras and a couple of tank tops in basins on the floor of our shower room; washing machines a continent and ocean away. Standing with parched hands under the wire behind our building, I faced town and the long trash strewn lawn, watching small boys kick a deflated plastic ball; I sensed the collapsed excitement from yesterday’s Presidential visit celebrated on the clearing stretched before me. A girl caught my eye. She was chewing on a bag of Ugandan doughnuts, watching me with big brown eyes, slowly walking towards me, but staying a dozen yards away. I continued with my chore; I was accustomed to idle observation.

“Hello,” I casually greeted her.

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“I am fine.”

“What is your name?”

“Deborah.”

Conversations with strange children usually end here, but something about the girl struck my interest.

“How old are you?”

“Eight.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

She stopped walking. I anticipated no school fees.

“No mama, no dada.”

“Oh.”

The answer was unexpected, but not surprising. Orphans litter Uganda like the waste in the grass at my feet. Most end up with other family members: aunts, uncles, cousins, jah jahs. Still, even now, I can’t say why, but I was curious about her. Her wide expressive eyes were quick and inquisitive.

“You stay with your jah jah?”

She shook her head.

“Who do you stay with?”

The conversations lulled; my words stretching beyond her English. I summond the teenage girl who emerged from the door to our right; she was our neighbor below.

“Can you translate for me?”

The neighbor tried her best, but the story sputtered like a dry tap. I asked for her mother.

The mother greeted us and asked the young girl a series of questions then relayed to me:

“It appears she was staying with her jah jah because her mother and father had passed. The jah jah died and she is alone. She has been sleeping wherever and getting food from people who take pity on her. She doesn’t remember where she first came from. She’d been with her jah jah for some time. Her jah jah’s village is past the forest. She walked all this way. Bambi.”

Some of the rough town children lie for attention, to get something from sympathizers, maybe set up a youthful heist, or just because they are compulsive liars; but I didn’t sense this from the round face filled with a beautiful smile.

“How long ago did her jah jah pass?” I asked eying the shorn hair and muscular arms, signs of care and feeding.

She asked and replied, “Just last week.” It figured. The head could very well have been last shaved a week ago, and surely several days of a poor diet wasn’t time enough for emaciation.

“Okay Deborah. You come with me.”

She happily followed me around the building where we ran into little Rachel running out of the house to see why Mama Mzungu took so long hanging clothes. I grabbed my little one up and she squealed. Into the house we went for lunch with an additional mouth to feed.

Deborah greeted the kids comfortably, repeating their names as I introduced them as if she had been to the house many times; she acted like a child from a good home, at ease, happy.

She entered the kitchen and began doing the dishes. The water was back on and I scrambled to fill the jercans before the amazzi deserted us again. I fed the little ones and as I gathered plates I noticed Deborah filling a basin with amazzi.

“What are you doing?”

She made a scrubbing motion towards the concrete floor with the rag in her hand. I nodded approvingly. She was a hard worker, a child used to doing chores; a girl that surely had been living with a jah jah too old for household labor.

Margaret returned in the late afternoon and I told her of the child I had found. She sat at the kitchen table peppering the girl with questions for many minutes. Deborah responded quietly, eyes dark, fidgeting.

“You know. I am being somehow stern with her to see if she is telling the truth. She says someone was supposed to look after her after the jah jah died, but the person disappeared.”

I nodded.

Satisfied with veracity, Margaret leaned back in the chair and promised to return with the car in an hour to seek the house of the deceased grandmother. Maybe there a neighbor could give us more information.

We left at six; the sun would be setting in about an hour. We wound off the main road after twenty minutes and onto a dirt path that lead through the villages lying near the banks of Lake Victoria.

The girl stalled when we entered her village. She said she attended the school to our left, but claimed she didn’t know the way from there.

I scoffed.

“She walked to and from that school every day. How could she not know the way?” Margaret assured me that she explained to the girl that we wouldn’t abandon her; that we were returning to the home to track her family. The sun faded; we would have to come back the next day.

Along the dirt road in the foreign village, Margaret had Sumete stop the car to fetch food from the local market. The girl continued clinging to me in the back seat.

“It’s dangerous moving with a strange child. We [should] talk to the L.C., but madam has refused,” he said in stilled English after she left.

“What? Margaret won’t talk to the local counsel?” I didn’t share Sumete’s fear of driving with the child, but notifying the local authorities of the girl seemed reasonable.

Margaret returned.

“Are we going to talk to the L.C.?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

We continued driving.

“Do you know where he stays?”

She nodded and waived ahead.

“Oh. We tell the L.C. in Lugazi, not here.”

“Yes. You know it is dangerous to move with a strange child.”

I nodded. I knew.

Child sacrifice is a serious, horrible, vile problem in Uganda. Children’s bodies are discovered in clearings, abandoned buildings, ditches, anywhere, around town or the city with missing heads and other lost body parts. The ignorant and superstitious, incredibly the educated and not alike, believe witchdoctors’ fantasies of such brutality bringing wealth.

Mob justice is also problem in Uganda. Runners exercising can be mistaken for crooks, and pummeled by mobs, oftentimes killed. Suspected thieves, murders and certainly child abductors, guilty and not, are targets of vigilante attention. Mobs rule because justice does not. Authorities apprehend suspects, but enough cash unlocks bars with or without trials, regardless of the severity of the crime. The people know that the guilty are usually extricated, so they seek their own retribution.

I watched the villagers’ homes pass in the twilight, thinking of the man killed by a mob a couple months back thought to have stolen a child and hiding her in his vehicle. I was assured by the gossiping women at the salon that his intentions were evil, but Stephen told me the following day that the victim was a fellow parishioner whom he saw many mornings at mass, he certainly didn’t do anything wrong; an innocent slaughtered, and his mass of murderers to disappearing back into the crowd never to be punished.

We arrived back in Lugazi and sought the local counsel around the corner from our house. We sat on a small couch in the small room across from the slight man. He smiled and spoke gently to the girl, then turned to us. He maintained the girl was lying. She was spoiled.

“You know I found one like this sometime back saying she was without parents from a far off village. We took her in, gave her my children’s clothes, fed her and the next day we were moving through town and her friends recognized her and started calling to her. She had parents.”

“I am not sure, but if she is lying, she is a very, very good liar, sebo.” I responded.

“We shall take her to the authorities,” he pronounced.

They returned me to our house and left for the police. After an hour I heard Margaret’s high pitched giggle coming through the door. She was very amused by the girl.

“She told the police they can’t catch her. That when they go for her, she goes that way, and out runs them and hides,” she said maneuvering and imitating the girl.

I didn’t understand why she feared the police. I was inured; accustomed to African life, but occasionally I still encountered the culturally unfamiliar. I was still thinking American where a homeless child would want to encounter police; the police would help.

“The police, you know, they come and chase the street children away. They sometimes run together and the police are after them,” Margaret explained to me. “She may have met some street children and they told her to fear the police.”

Months ago it would have taken me some time to get my head around small homeless children being chased by police, not finding a proper home, the state not doing its best to look after them; now I just nodded. It made sense.

Between bathing and eating dinner Deborah wrote in an exercise book we kept at the house for our own orphans to practice their writing and math. Deborah eyed Beatrice’s work in the front pages of the thin book of lined paper and said something that made Margaret laugh.

“She says the girl is stupid. She says she wrote chair, but drew a snake.”

I took the book from the Deborah’s hands and looked at the page filled with Beatrice’s small drawings and childish handwriting. Yes, there it was: a squiggly snake with the word chair beneath it. I smiled, understanding her amusement, but slightly irritated it was at my daughter’s expense. I handed the book back to Deborah.

“You go to school. You are bright,” I said to her.

She smiled broadly and said, “No school fees.”

“No problem.”

I was determined to see the girl’s natural intellect not go to waste. She instantly understood the words and lessons I was dictating to her, and told Stephen stories from earlier that day in great detail; recounting moments I had already forgotten. Her eyes and ears picking up everything, she was constantly searching her surroundings, her eyes darting around the house.

She knew a lot about Lugazi; more than one would surmise for a girl staying here less than a week. She insisted to Margaret and Stephen that she knew the town well because “she moved all day. You wouldn’t believe how much I moved. The days were as long as the nights.”

She was quick and funny, despite her depressing life story, which was unfolded seamlessly to me, Margaret, Ester then Stephen; details emerging and fitting together. On our way back from her village Margaret asked her to point out where she had been sleeping the past week. She drove us near the middle of town, a network of shop fronts lit up in the fresh night, townspeople walking from store to store chatting and preparing for the evening meal. We stopped across from a large dark building, unfinished, just walls of bricks with no doors and no roof.

“She says she was staying here.” Margaret told me. “She says that she would wait for everyone to leave then she would sneak in to sleep.”

Margaret asked her if she feared someone snatching and sacrificing her while she slept. Deborah said she would pray before she fell asleep.

“If I live through the night, I see another day. If I don’t, then I go to God.”

Day Two ~ The Big Pretender

The next day we stopped by the police station, Margaret and Deborah entered and after sometime they called for me. Deborah stood at the policewoman’s desk defiantly in tears.

“She is refusing to have the police come with us,” Margaret explained. The enormous woman fitted in a khaki uniform and black beret spoke deeply and emphatically to the girl in Luganda.

“How can we help you if we don’t know where you come from?” I asked Deborah. She sunk to the ground.

After some time she acquiesced and all of us ventured to the remote village: Margaret, Sumete, the policewoman, Deborah, my two little ones, Sylvia and Rachel, and myself. As we navigated the back roads the girl became unhelpful. Stating she attended a school that none of the locals on the roadsides heard of, describing wearing a uniform none had seen. No, there are no yellow and blue uniforms here.

We changed course and made way to the school we had seen the night before, one the girl claimed to have attended the previous year. Three staff members greeted us under a tree. They brought us a bench to sit across from them in the shade. They asked the girl questions in Luganda.

What class were you in here? What was the name of the headmaster? Which classroom was yours?

She didn’t correctly name the headmaster. She pointed to the far side of the plain block behind her. There were only a handful of doors leading to each of the classrooms.

“Ehh-ehh. She says she was in that class, but the P1 class is here,” the teacher said pointing to a door close to us.

They continued to talk in Luganda. She sulked and offered rude answers.

“Maybe you ask her what her P1 teacher’s name was?” I offered.

“I already did. It is not the one.”

“You know the P1 teacher?”

She raised her eyes, a Ugandan sign of confirmation. “It is me. And I don’t recall the girl.”

It was decided that we go the village’s local counsel.

Ten minutes of circling the dusty roads we arrived at a partially built home. We entered through a series of walls without a roof and emerged into a single completed room. An elderly couple greeted us. The children sat on the ground as customary and the adults in chairs. They discussed the girl in Luganda while I sat in silence waiting for an explanation. I turned to Margaret.

“What is going on?”

“Her parents’ are there.”

“What? Her parents are alive?” I said raising my voice.

“Yes. And the jah jah too. The parents are away, but she stays with her jah jah in Lugazi.”

“She doesn’t stay in the village? She stays in Lugazi?”

Margaret nodded her head. I looked at the girl. She sat near my feet playing with Rachel’s dislocated, tiny black shoe; agitation squeezed her face. The adults continued to speak in Luganda.

Maybe the jah jah had passed and these people didn’t know. I searched for truth in the girl’s testimony from that day and the one before.

“They are certain the jah jah is alive?” I asked Margaret.

“Yes. This is the jah jah’s brother,” she said pointing to the old man; we had serendipitously entered her family’s home. “And her jah jah somehow has money. She rents out property in town.”

Small pieces of information were skewing my entire mental image of the girl; I pursed my lips.

“You see her,” Margaret continued. “Her head is down. She is pretending as if she doesn’t know her own jah jah,” she said gesturing again to the old man.

“Yes! You see! She is just an unruly girl!” The policewoman blasted shaking the black tassels framing her shoulders; a statement of vindication, confirming her insistence from the beginning.

“I am furious that she lied so badly, but what makes a child choose to live on the streets rather than in a home?” I asked aloud to the room.

“We shall go to the jah jah’s to find out,” the policewoman replied.

We drove back into Lugazi, entering a community on the far side of the massive Catholic Church. The girl tried to grab my hand in the car, but I pulled away. I sought to show disapproval, but maybe the jah jah was not properly looking after her. Maybe there was a reason for her unruliness. Maybe she still needed help.

The girl picks everything. She takes clothes from lines. She steals all the time. She is a thief. She goes to the disco in town. She even wants boys. She disappears for days. She has many nice clothes at home, but she wears whatever. I pay for school fees, but she doesn’t go. Just recently I gave her five thousand for food at the market and she didn’t return. The police come here all the time. She disappears, then they return her, or they come looking for her because she has stolen.

Her jah jah and her jah jah’s mother, the girl’s great grandmother, clucked away as Deborah’s older sister sat to the side listening in sad resignation to the truth about her bad younger sibling. We sat fixedly in the small dark room of the matriarch’s home. The family was outraged by the girl, but not abusive; they seemed reasonable.

“What shall we do? She will only run away again. She has even said so,” I said to the policewoman sitting next to me. Margaret told me the jah jah in the village refused to take the girl, she already had ten grandchildren in her care and this girl would spoil all of them.

“We shall take her to the family unit at the police headquarters,” the big woman announced standing to leave.

Back into the car we went and to the other side of town, the sunlight growing golden. As we arrived, I said to Margaret, “I am sorry you had to miss work for all of this. Everything this girl has told us is a lie except for her name.”

So profoundly good, Margaret characteristically replied, “It is not a waste if we can somehow help her.”

We entered a stand-alone, round room of tin. The muscular policewoman on the bench recognized the girl immediately.

“We detained this one yesterday, but she got away pretending to urinate,” she said eying Deborah. The police headquarters were but a few hundred yards from our home, I must have met her just after her escape.

We sat down at the benches with the other police officers and Deborah’s older siblings soon appeared behind us to see their sister; they were all clean, all well dressed, all knew English; she did come from a good family and the jah jah did know how to care for children. There seemed to be no rationale for the child’s utter wickedness.

I stared at the girl as she was interrogated by the police. The jah jah barked on about the girl’s thievery and lies and bad manners and vanishing without word; painting a picture of an incomprehensibly incorrigible girl. I felt sorry for the jah jah trying to care for the seemingly uncareable. I watched the girl’s complete lack of remorse; she sat on the floor, her face drawn, eyes dancing, trying to remove herself from the surroundings. She was silent during the line of questioning. She had bragged to Margaret the day before about feigning dumbness to the police. I can even trick them.

I absorbed her, thinking about how she excelled at lying, she told detailed, thoughtful fabrications to everyone: neighbors, policemen, local counsel, family, strangers; I recalled how charismatic she was, how funny and bright, how she won people over, coddling and clinging to them, how all of us, Margaret, Ester, myself were attracted to her charm; I considered how confident she was, how she bragged about alluding the police, so self-assured she attempted to deceive countless adults undetected for days; I imagined how steadfastly sinful she was, weaving delusions and seizing items at will, constantly disobeying authority, respecting no one, wholly selfish; and I observed how guiltless she was, her total absence of regret at the sacrifices a room full of adults made on her behalf all the while she sought to swindle money and steal valuables. I felt a twinge of guilt as a word, rightfully or not, swam into my mind: sociopath.

The portrait of the little girl had not reshaped, but was altogether re-sculpted.

I looked at Margaret. She sat slumped, face drawn; as if she were an inflatable doll that had air let out; her mouth puckered.

“It seems she is impossible,” Margaret said to me.

“Yes,” I agreed softly.

Day Three ~ The Sad Tomorrows

The following morning I awoke from a strange sleep, dreaming of the troubled child. We talked about her at the breakfast table. She was so cunning! So clever! You could tell someone about her and they would just think you were lying!

We discussed her at Ester’s shop. Eh! That girl! You can’t believe!

I saw the neighbors below us; they asked about the girl. Oh my goodness! What a child!

I told the four lounging nurses watching the doctor tend to Richard, apparently with nothing to do in hospital full of patients. Oh my! And only eight years! You can’t believe!

I told Ester’s sister, Carol. That girl is dangerous.

I came from town, after taking Richard for dressing and buying supplies for the kids, I crossed the clearing to our home. The grass slightly slopes down to the foot of the building. I recognized the partially obstructed small, but sturdy figure; the clothes were familiar. I took my sunglasses off in amazement.

“Deborah! Is that you! What are you doing here?”

The neighbors below us were near the girl laughing and shaking their heads, disbelieving her brazenness. My children heard my voice and came around the corner to greet me, throwing hugs and smiles. Beatrice had an ice pop. My little ones asked for some, Deborah reached for it aggressively. I pushed her to the side. My hostile reaction was not one the girl desired. No, really, Deborah, why are you here?

“She says her jah jah told her to stay with you,” the neighbor translated.

“Ah! It’s a lie!”

“I know,” she agreed laughing.

I received a call on my phone. It was Ester.

“What is the problem?” She could see us from her shop.

“She’s here! Deborah is here!”

“Oh no! You bring her to me.”

I grabbed the girl’s hand and walked her across the grass; she half-heartedly tried to peel her fingers away. Unsure of herself, she wanted to be with me, but didn’t anticipate my reaction; she didn’t know where to go. She was confused and trapped.

Ester sat at the threshold of the shop in a plastic chair, a customer at her feet, her fingers quickly moving, weaving together the plaiting. The women in the neighboring shops eyed the girl severely, shaking their heads, clucking away.

Alice, Ester’s boss, was the loudest. An imposing African woman with creamy coffee skin, an enormous, intimidating frame and a solid, booming voice, she railed the girl, her head and large buttock bobbing and swinging.

“She is a thief! That girl is dangerous! You take her to the police!” She cast her hand off as if throwing the girl from its end.

I lead the girl through the taxi park and along the main road, her face becoming tighter. A few men stopped out of curiosity, a mzungu clutching a dirty, shoeless, anxious child by the hand. One man told me the girl needed assistance.

“I see her loitering around here,” he said circling his hand towards the huge tree and restless townspeople, mostly men, taking shade beneath. “You know. She could be raped,” he said with genuine concern.

“I know. I am trying to help her, but the girl is very bad. She has parents. She has a jah jah that cares for her well. She’s not an orphan. It is just the girl’s mind.”

The crowd talked around us for some time offering suggestions, asking questions, thanking me for my care then we continued on our way. One man followed us trying to coach the girl as we walked. She started crying.

“She says that she stays in an uncompleted home, how do you say? Maybe just a shelter. And she is with her auntie who doesn’t care for her,” he relayed to me.

“It’s not true. She stays with her jah jah and it is a finished home. The girl is sick in the head. She is lying to you even now.”

He frowned.

“I know. I was at the jah jah’s house just yesterday!”

His face contorted into disbelief and he looked down at the child who exuded sincerity. He realized he was duped. He waived us to the police station.

The muscular police woman with the long thin braids we saw the day before made a face at Deborah.

“She just showed up at my house. She says her jah jah sent her, but I know it’s a lie,” I exclaimed to her.

The policewoman and Deborah spoke in hushed Luganda for some time. The girl staring at the railing she leaned against, sputtering her explanations.

During a long pause I said to the lady, “You know. The jah jah says the girl was fine until she went with the mother for a holiday about a year ago. Maybe something happened to her then.”

The policewoman was expressionless, not getting me.

“Maybe the girl was defiled. I don’t know how a child could suddenly act like this.”

“We will get it out of her eventually. We will be coaching her. I will give her picture to all of the police for when she runs off again,” the woman assured. She looked at the girl and sighed. “I will take her personally to her jah jah’s and make sure she doesn’t bother you again.”

I thanked her and returned home. I was surprised to see Margaret in the house. She looked at me, her eyes wild with amusement.

“I tried to not act surprised when they told me,” she said laughing.

“Can you believe it? That girl coming here again!”

“Richard said, ‘Mama Mzungu took Deborah to the police.’ I just kept quiet.”

“I told the policewoman to tell the girl that we couldn’t allow her into the home because she had lied to us. Everything but her name was a lie. If she had just told us the truth, that she had a jah jah, that she had parents, what, we would be her friends, but we can’t trust her.”

Margaret’s eyes darkened. Her face fell. I could tell that she wanted help the girl, but she knew she couldn’t. I felt the same.

“Mummy, it’s just like you said. She liked it here and wanted to stay with us, and she would have been okay for maybe a week, but she’s spoiled and confused. She would have run off with our things.”

“Not even a week,” she said sadly. “She would have disappeared after maybe a couple of days. It must have been her that stole the key to the backdoor that she blamed Rachel for losing. You know I found her looking in corners and cupboards.”

I shook my head, just incredible.

“I’ll check in with the police periodically to see how she is. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be interacting directly with her. I can’t believe an eight year old girl would behave this way.”

“Yes, you see it at twelve, thirteen, what, and it’s usually boys. But this one…”

I nodded looking at Margaret; I could feel myself wearing her expression. We were astonished, still reeling from the shocking child; we clung to hope for her, but were realistically saddened envisioning her future; one only slimly normal or bright; rather, very likely grim and destructive, clouded by apparent debilitating mental illness.