Comfort, Ata, Afia & Adua

Top row (L to R): Comfort and baby Bright, Afia and 4-year-old Comfort

Bottom row(L to R): Adua and baby, Ata and baby Vanessa

They told me that I was the answer to their prayers. I almost started crying when they said that to me. I’m not any better than them. They work harder than me, carrying babies on their backs and heavy loads on their heads for hours a day. They sleep on a hard concrete floor in a small shack with all of their babies. They do not have running water, and often eat one meal a day. Their babies have one pair of clothes each. They drink out of dirty containers and go to the bathroom out in the open. Their belongings are few and their lives have been hard and most likely will continue to be hard. All four of these girls are 20 years old. They are my age, and yet I can see in their eyes that they are much older. I have never gone hungry so that my child may be fed. I have never slept on a hard concrete floor or known what it is like to live in a shack that crumbles each rainy season. I have spent my years growing up going to school, and not just primary school but secondary school and college. Only one out of the four of them can read (although not very much); the others are illiterate. I have a world of opportunities at my feet and they do not. It is not fair. They want to go home to their rural villages for a number of reasons, one of which being that the government is about to bulldoze their slum in order to build a high-rise hotel.

I was first introduced to these girls through Rebecca, one of the social workers who works at Street Girls Aid. Two of the girls, Comfort and Ata, lived at the refuge house for several months until they had to leave because there needed to be room for other pregnant girls at the house. The other girl, Afia, is 20 years old and has a four-year old daughter. She has been on the streets for years now, and has gone home once, only to return to the streets in Accra because she could not make a living in her village. The Bible study I’m in on campus, which consists mostly of international students from Canada & America, has decided to send these girls home and try to help them have a sustainable life at their home villages. Ata is going to have a hairdressing and manicure/pedicure business, Afia a hairdressing business, and Comfort a manicure/pedicure business. To do this, we are providing them the money for the structures of the shacks where there businesses will be, as well as tables and chairs for inside and the necessary supplies (nail polish, hair extensions, etc) to enable them to run their businesses. We are praying that each of them will be successful and that they will be able to support themselves and their children through their businesses.

My heart breaks because their story is not the exception, but the norm. Most of the 60,000 street children in Accra come from poor rural villages where they have no access to education or any means of generating income with the perception that they will have a better life in the city. One-sixth of the world’s population - 1 billion people - live in slums just like Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua. One-half of the world - 3 billion people - lives in poverty. Statistics like this often don’t faze us anymore because we hear them all too often and they don’t affect most of our everyday lives. Or maybe they do pull on our heartstrings, but we don’t know what to do about it because the problems are just so overwhelming. When I come into contact with such dire poverty, when I walk into the slums where these girls live, my heart is heavy. Often I wonder where God is in any of this. Many verses in the Bible promise that God is on the side of the poor and the oppressed, that He hears their cries and is working for justice for them. A lot of times I doubt that any of that is true. The suffering in the world just seems too great, almost unbearable. But then I think back to the fact that they told me I was the answer to their prayers. Things like that fill me with hope because then I see that God is working through people. The fact that you or I could be the answer to someone’s prayers is humbling and amazing. I think all it takes is our hearts being open to God and the needs around us.

Ata and Afia are going back north to their villages this coming Thursday. Comfort is waiting to sell the last bit of her candy before she leaves, so she will probably be leaving in about two weeks. We are praying that they will be able to support themselves and their children when they go back to their villages. Please join us in praying for these beautiful girls and their children.