Try to reconcile this

This is an email I received today from Janine Maxwell, who is currently in Africa leading groups. She is the key point person for Heart for Africa, an organization that exists to bring HOPE (Hunger, Orphans, Poverty, Education) to children in sub-Saharan Africa. What is Jesus saying to you through this email? I would love to hear. I'm wrestling with knowing HOW to respond.

Trying to reconcile what I saw vs. what I thought ... (a short version of a long story)

I have been to a juvenile remand home twice before in Kenya. Both of those days were unquestionably the worst two days of my life. Juvenile remand is a holding cell where arrested children (age 5-18) wait to be tried for their crime. They stay there for three to nine months depending on the court system. Yesterday I went to a juvenile prison, which is where the girls are sent after they are convicted of such heinous crimes as stealing bananas, loitering on the streets of Nairobi, or even the prostitution of their pubescent bodies. I expected to be overwhelmed with grief as we arrived at this home for 95 girls, but I knew that we might be able to get the youngest (a nine year old) released through the court system to the custody of the Tumaini home.

Once there we were told that they don’t keep young girls there, only girls age 10-18 (!), but once we were able to sit with the girls and visit them quietly we discovered one who was as young as age seven and several others who looked that young too. Their crime? They are orphans. They have committed no crime other than having parents who died and left them without care. Once they are committed to this institution they stay for three years and go to school there so that they are “reformed” when they leave? After quiet discussion with the girls we learned that they have one class of school per day and then spend many hours doing hard labor digging in the field.

If that weren’t enough, they have no toilet paper, no sanitary pads, no underwear and sleep on foam mattresses that have been soaked with urine from the night terrors the girls have suffered over many years. So I looked for this one young girl who we had heard about and were hoping to intervene for. While I looked I had was given a tour of the facility (highly unusual for this to be allowed) and had a 14 year-old girl with her arm wrapped around my neck on the left, another holding my left hand and a little 11 year-old (so she says, I think she was 8) holding tight to my right hand, never letting it go. This little one is named Lydia.

“Lydia doesn’t speak, she just cries all day long”, I was told by the older girls.

Lydia has been at this place for almost one year. Her father was murdered in a home robbery, her mother died of Tuberculosis (a.k.a. AIDS), her 4 older siblings went to find other family to live with and Lydia and her one year old brother went to live with her aunt and uncle. The uncle didn’t like Lydia so he sent her to the local government school for boys. And guess what? (I ask with a huge heaping of sarcasm). The boys all abused her so she ran away. Police caught her, told the uncle she was going to prison, the uncle didn’t tell the aunt, the girls is locked up now and doesn’t speak, just cried.

Another reason Lydia doesn’t speak is that she was badly beaten by a 14 year-old girl named Purity. Purity is a tiny little thing and would hardly be suspected of being a bully, but she is. She pushed Lydia down off the top bunk bed and smashed her face into the old steel bed frame. Lydia’s front tooth is broken, her gums are bleeding and both sides of her face are swollen. “Why did Purity do that?” I asked the bigger girls and they explained that she has lost her mind. Purity was eleven when she first was sent to prison for loitering, again, an orphan. She ran away and as she left the premises she was captured by a gang/cult of men who were lurking in the bushes (apparently they live just outside the girls prisons to catch any runaways). They men gang raped her and then inserted a full size glass Coke bottle in her and left her for dead. When she was found she was taken to hospital and the bottle was removed surgically. She was returned to finish her sentence and is now an understandably unstable and violent young woman. I asked how the girls knew all this if she was not friend with anyone and they continued with her explanation. One day Purity (can you believe that is her name??) was in class and was being unruly. The teacher reprimanded her and Purity started throwing rocks at the teacher. The teacher started to beat her (as is normal in African schools) and she laughed at the teacher and assured the teacher that there was nothing he could do to her that would harm her more than she has already been harmed. She then blurted out to all the story her attack and sat smugly in the corner while the class remained silent.

Girl after girl came up and pleaded with us to take them away. One promised to give us three years of her life when she was finished school if only we could give her a chance. Another said she had no hope because her mother came to the prison and denied that the girl was her child, right to her face. When the girls finish their three-year sentence the government attempts to find the parents to whom they would release her to custody. Most of the children we met yesterday were double-orphans, meaning that both parents are dead. What does that mean? It means that they have noone to be released to. Some will stay in the prison until they are 18 years old and they will be “free” to go … but where.

So here I sit trying to reconcile what I saw vs. what I thought. I thought we would see THE girl that we were to rescue and bring to Tumaini, but I must say I am frozen by the memory of the girls and their stories from our brief 90 minute visit. Does the Lord have one girl who is to be saved? Is it Lydia? Will someone provide sponsorship fees so that we can get permission to bring her to Tumaini. My head is numb and I ask for your continued prayers for wisdom, discernment and peace. This is not right and Jesus wants us to fight for His children.