stories...

She aged at least 15 years as she continued to tell her story. Each sentence she spoke was another step carrying a heavy burden that seemed to be getting heavier. I hadn’t seen her without a smile, without her playful glee and high-pitched squeals, since I met her. She was child-like almost, although she’s a grown woman. But as we sat out there on the balcony and she revealed the truth about a life desperately shameful to have lived, I found my heart filled more and more with the burden she spoke, the burden of truth. That she had actually walked the path she described. That she was a survivor.

The story is not new. The story is not uncommon. It is a story that I thought has lost its shock value to me, a story that once would make me cry but now has become common knowledge. But sitting there, face to face, with a woman I have grown to love already — the story became alive. Her story of survival, God’s story of redemption. The story became alive.

***

Maka’s small, frail ten-year-old body seemed to fold up into itself as he sat on the couch next to me. That is, until I brought up football (soccer). At the very mention of the game, I saw the sweet bright-toothed smile I knew had to be in him all along. “I play center mid,” he said proudly. “Me too!” I told him. And from then on I knew I had a friend.

But Maka doesn’t play much football anymore, or any rough and tough games kids his age love. If he gets hit in the shoulder where a blistering burn has forever scared his skin, “it hurt so much.”

Maka was a victim of child labor trafficking which led to an accident that will never let him forget this. The woman he lived with forced him to do hard house work, much too hard for a mere eight-year-old. And when he would forget what all she had said to do or took too long to do it, she would beat him.

One morning, two years ago, Maka awoke to the harsh sound of her yelling that he should not still be in bed at 5 am. But when he stumbled out to light the fire for the stove, the candle flame caught his shirtsleeve and lit up in flames. Maka suffered from severe burns across his left shoulder and chest.

He lifted up his shirt to show me the scar. We are sitting on the couch at his parents' house where he has been reunited with his mother, father and four brothers and sisters. His littlest sister is climbing all over him, before she decides I look like I might be more responsive.

“A glady fo de wit mi fambo,” he says as he smiles at his sister. He is glad to be home, glad to be back in school, glad to be a boy again. But his scars will always tell, they will always remember and never allow him to forget.