Hope

There is a girl here called Nelli (not her real name). She is 17 and absolutely remarkable.
She looked after her younger sister and nursed her mother who was HIV+ till she died in 2006, she then went to live with her father who died in 2007. She then lived with her older sister who would often leave her alone at home for days on end to be with her boyfriend. Nelli said that the whole community knew she was home along and it wasn't safe for her. She would often sleep on the floor, afraid of thieves or people who were trying to hurt her.
Through all this she was going to school. Since grade 8 she would walk a long ways through a forest everyday to get to school. She said it was very dangerous and she would pray all the time and God kept her safe.
She said that she was in a very bad situation (no food in the house, wasn't safe at home, friends who wanted her to do drugs.. ) and that she knew she couldn't live like that and needed help. She heard about MOP and was hoping that they would help her, though she didn't know how. She walked 3 hours to MOP, gave a hand written letter to Gavin, the man who started MOP in KZN, and 2 days later they sent a social worker to her house and now she lives at MOP. She is incredibly intelligent and beautiful and is going to finish high school this year.
I'm telling you her story because she is one of the most mature 17 year olds i have ever met. She is 17 going on 50 and her life experience is enough for several lifetimes. She is incredibly disiplined, right and wrong is black and white to her.. her moral compass, for what she has been through, is a gift from God.
For all her virtues, she's been giving a hard time at MOP by the older girls because she is such a threat to them. She has gotten into a physical fight with one of the more violent girls who attacked her, seldom leaves her house on the MOP property because she doesn't want to provoke the other girls to gossip or stir up any trouble.
It makes me sad that she can't fully participate in the community, but she says she puts up with it because anything is better than her situation at home.
I can't talk to the older girls for her or ask them why they act they way they do because they will accuse her of using me.. teenagers all over the world, no matter what country they are in, are all the same haha.
So I've been going to her house after school everyday just to hang out, to be available to her to talk you know?... getting her to come outside with me to play with the other kids, going over to her house for dinner almost every night and sleeping over sometimes.. I don't think I'm doing much, but we are great friends now and that is something.. right?

She is such an asset to MOP and a great role model to the younger kids.

But then there are people like Sara (not her real name). She has come in and out of MOP 3 time in the last year. She comes from an abusive household and is extremely willful. She's 15 and uncontrollable. There have been a few intense fights between the older girls in the last few months and Sara is always involved. She dominates through terror and swears like a sailor. It's difficult to deal with a case like her's because you know her behaviour is the result of her being victimised and she should be reprimanded, but you just can't treat her the same way as you would other kids.. not that any of the kids here can be treated like "other kids" anyway.

Then there's Cindy (not her real name). She is a child who has been raped countless times, is HIV+ and on ARVs and has been living at MOP for 2 years now. A few months ago she was told that her birth mother (who comes to MOP to visit her often) was very sick and while Cindy was preparing to go to the hospital to see her, she was given the news that her mother had died. She cried for a whole day and couldn't be consoled. But then word came from the hospital that there was a mixup.. that 2 people with the exact same first and last name were sick in the hospital side by side and Cindy's mother was still alive. So then she went to the hospital (and by that time her mother was deathy ill).. Cindy was so traumatised by the confusion and seeing her mother in such a state that she was too scared to get too close to her hospital bed.
Her mother's death brought Cindy a 2 week old baby half-sister and because her house at MOP was full, and because of the policy that they don't seperate family members, Cindy had to switch houses. The thing is, she was so close to her housemother whom she's lived with for almost 2 years now, so this adjustment was and is still hard on her and her housemother.
Cindy is only 7 and the world has wronged her.
She is as strong as they come and I feel privileged to be in the presence of such greatness as Cindy, Sara and Nelli .