A short story about one of our girls.

Hello again from Nairobi. Charles will blog tomorrow with a wrap-up of our week here, but we've all been touched by so many of the girls' stories this week that I just had to jot one down. Most of the girls are in the Girl Guides and many of them live in orphanages. When we first saw them on Saturday, I thought, "Wow. Look at these girls in uniform! I wonder what their stories are like?..." After we introduced them to the Sara program and had them read the books, they started to write the narratives for their movies. It quickly became clear that there were some deep wounds in these emotional girls. One girl, Mary, started filming her narrative and quickly broke down. We pulled her aside with one of our counselors (thank goodness for the counselors), and it turned out that she was talking about things she'd never told anyone. In the story of Sara and The Trap (the book she was making a movie about), Sara almost falls into the clutches of a man who promises to pay her school fees. Mary fell into a similar trap, and have never talked about it. Over the next few days, it came out (with all of us and the counselor) that Mary had been abandoned by her mother at 2 months. She was forced into child labor by her caretakers, then her father came to get her. As a young girl, her stepmother abused her horribly. She made her sleep outside in the trash, burned her, forced her into labor on the streets, and wouldn't feed or clothe her. A neighbor boy saw her plight and eventually forced her to give up her body to him in promise for food...as she was starving. She had never talked about it. She was determined to tell her story so that other girls who were going through the same thing could feel some hope. She filmed and filmed, but it was so emotional that we couldn't hear her story through the crying. The counselor handled it well and today, Mary filmed the entire thing with pride and candor. At the end of her narrative, she said, "I have felt filthy and dirty for three years. But now, I am forgiving myself. I did nothing wrong. I was just surviving. You (she's speaking to other African girls here), can forgive yourself, too. I'm going to prosper, and you can too." It was a magical moment. The best news is that our hired counselors have agreed to give all of the girls free services for as long as they need them. It has been an emotional week, and we're all happy that these girls have had the chance to tell their stories, and also help other girls all across Africa. More from Charles tomorrow.

P.S. In keeping with my kidney stone and salmonella poisoning, my ankle was run over by our taxi driver yesterday. I have a slight sprain, and I look ridiculous with my crutches, but I have another story! It feels much better today so I'm convinced it is very slight.