Responsible to Tell

I’ve realized I have a tendency to downplay the situation in Africa and the children we work with. When I talk to people about what I’m doing it is very matter of factly. We tell people that come to Africa, “now that you’ve seen, you are responsible”. Seeing the children, the poverty, the death and the hopelessness in Africa demands a response. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be posting short blogs that tell the real story, explain my passion and challenge you.

Here is the first, Imagine with me this often faced reality.

I am a little 12 year old girl, I am sick, I have HIV. The other children at school see that I am sick all of the time. All of the children begin to talk about me, they talk behind my back and say that I have HIV. The children say that I must be having sex with older boys. They accuse me of being stupid for doing such a foolish thing. Little do they know that when I was 6 years old, my uncle raped me. My own mother won’t believe me, how will a whole group of classmates. My mother, that’s another thing. She doesn’t know what to think. She sees that I go to church every week and knows I am a good girl. Yet, I have HIV, she won’t believe that her brother (my uncle) would rape me. I feel dirty, I feel unloved, I feel like I am a burden, I feel misunderstood. I have no friends, the other children have been told to stay away from me. I feel like I have no future, like I have no hope. My life is horrible.