Is Life this Bitter?

My day started quite in the usual. Our daughter Rehema has gone to school, she is in Class Four. That means it is 7AM and I am still contemplating waking up. Our three year old daughter is awake and she is partly the reason I cannot go back to sleep. Though I am robbed of sleep, it is nothing compared to what I come face to face with at Acres of Mercy. This kind of robbery is not acceptable. Why rob an innocent girl of her joy and freedom after promising to provide this same joy and freedom? But I am getting ahead of myself.

One of the women from the community has just come in with her step daughter. The girl lets call her Marah aged about 15 years is an orphan. The father had two wives. The first wife passed on and later the dad also passed away leaving her with her step mother. As is sometimes the custom, Marah's maternal aunts took her in to take care of her soon after she completed her primary school education at class 8.

It was rather the opposite that turned out to be true. Marah was taking care of her aunts. She was forced to do all sorts of household chores beyond what a responsible child ought to do. At times she was physically abused. As we speak I notice nail marks on her face. She has scratch marks on her left hand probably sustained when she tried to cover herself from a stick blow. Her left hand is swollen right around the wrist.

I hold back my tears as I hear her narrate her ordeal in the hands of her aunts. My heart cries for justice...and my prayer is that justice is done quickly but yet the bigger question is how fast can she heal from her wounds, not just the physical wounds but the wounds of rejection and emotional hurts she has had to take. To help her know that life is not all bitter but there is something much better. We must do much more. For us it begins with ensuring new start for Marah. We will need to take her to another school.

We are reporting the matter to the authorities, we are encoraging Marah to attend counselling sessions and we are offering  a place of refuge and a new start. so she can build a future for herself and family when the right time comes. No! Her life should not bear the marks of bitterness but the marks of love. She deserves it . She deserves to know life is not all that bitter. My hope and I pray it is a shared hope is that Marah will enjoy the freedom to be a child much like our daughters enjoy their childhood freedoms..