Lessons from Zama

Siteki, Swaziland
09/05/09
05:30

I am a firm believer that children, in their innocence, resilience and love have so much to teach those of us who have turned into ‘serious adults’.

I once thought of writing a book called, ‘The Tao of Ice cream’. The first page would read “Live now. Live well. Taste the moment.”

Nowhere are the lessons we can learn from our children more readily apparent than here in this little mountain country where 10% of the population are orphaned children.

On a recent trip to the Hlane game reserve with some of the children from the paediatric ward, I met Zama.

Zama is 6 years old with porcelain skin and wide brown eyes that i’m certain would make Bambi herself squirm with envy.

Since my first trip to Swaziland, it feels like we’ve taken a thousand kids to Hlane. Sometimes In wheelchairs, sometimes covered in burns or sores or Kaposi sarcoma, barefoot and carefree with IV cannulas still in their hands and dreams of lions and elephants in their heads.

Of all the children I’d taken there, Zama was by far the quietest. Even with all my clowning around and silliness it was hard to make a soft smile break upon the shores of her beautiful face.

Precious Zamas story is hard for me to tell. She was born to a very poor homestead even by Swazi standards. Her mother was infected with AIDS and died giving her life. In her family there were only her grandparents, and her father remaining.

At the age of 5 Zama was first admitted to hospital for trauma secondary to suspected sexual abuse.

At the age of 6 she was readmitted for genital warts and steps taken to remove her from her homestead. She has been in hospital ever since.

The sadness which a child should never have to endure is written all over Zamas face, etched into her ways of being and behaving.

How could anyone hurt something so tender, so beautiful, so wholly innocent? Why does child abuse become more common in communities where people are impoverished and destitute.

I don’t have the answers.

A wise friend told me once, that sexual abuse has less to do with sex than it has to do with power and disempowerment.

After a few hours of driving and dancing, I ask Zama what her favourite animal is?

‘Impala’ – she says. Impala are among the gentlest animals I’ve seen. They are always listening to the wind, to the slightest sound that might herald the approach of danger.

Zama says they look very kind, like goats, and asks me if she can have one to take home to the hospital.

By days end, after a meal of pizza and icecream and, her smiles come much easier. And as I walk her back to the paediatric ward she offers me her tiny hand in a wordless gesture of trust.

I want to tell her how beautiful she is, how priceless, how nothing that she has been through can tarnish the beauty that rests and abides within her.

But I know that this is not the time for words. So I take the soft hand she offers me and walk with her back to the ward.

Somehow I know that there is much more to Zama than even the farthest reaches of her pain.

With love,

Maithri