I (Okey) am excited to introduce you all to my friend Lindsay Branham. Lindsay lived in DR Congo and Rwanda for 18 months working as a writer and photographer for Food for the Hungry (FH). She has produced film and photography throughout Africa and her work on child soliders has been featured on CNN. Lindsay is currently co-directing a documentary film about child soliders in DR Congo with Discover The Journey

WHISPERS by Lindsay Branham

Whispers of hope have settled into words. The rain fallen has not yet dried.

A sad maturity marked her face. Her provocative black, lacy clothing clung loosely to her constantly thinning frame. Her deep sultry voice and swanky gait, as she threw her hips around, reminded me of a little girl playing dress up.

But she wasn’t playing.

Aisha is a prostitute. A child prostitute. A former Mai-Mai child soldier, beginning when she was 13, Aisha today has nothing else to help her survive but the selling of her own body.

Aisha says she sleeps with at least two men per day and gets an average of $2 a session. Often, the men beat her.

I listened to her quiet words, drenched in pain, and told her that she is valuable. I told her that $2 has nothing to do with what she is really worth.

I began thinking about Jesus as I sat in the dimly lit room in Sake, the rain pounding outside, Aisha in front of me. I thought of him bending down to write in the sand as he stood in front of the adulteress, her accusers’ stones falling heavily to the ground as they turned and walked away, one by one. And then Jesus had looked up and simply told the adulteress to go, and leave her life of sin. What had His presence been like to evoke such obedience? The humility of Christ and the glory of the Father must have combined to utterly woo that woman towards repentance.

What should I say to her? How could I convince her to leave the life she led? All around her poverty rages. She is just trying to survive. She said she thought selling her body would at least provide her with a living. She said she was deceived. “This is not living.” Aisha whispered.

So I took a breath and told Aisha that she needed to stop selling her body, that it will destroy her. I told her that Love awaits her. She admitted her fear of contracting HIV/AIDS and “dying like a dog.” I told her that fear does not need to become reality.

Her parents are in an IDP camp along the lake. She said she knows her father really loves her.

Aisha,” I said, trying to maintain eye contact with her, “would you be willing to leave Sake, to go back home to your family, to live a different life?”

With her family she would be safe from the sexual ravages of the men she served with their greedy appetites and forceful fists. With her family she can be loved. With her family she could be a child.

Aisha sat still for a few moments and thought.

And then she said yes.

We went with her to pay the $6 she owed her landlady for rent in the back ways of Sake. Aisha gathered her things in a brightly colored pange, Congolese cloth, splashed with brightness, contrasted against the dark sky and the smoke circling in the air, coming from the low hanging bars with men and beer and promiscuity.

And we got on motos. And drove away.

With all her belongings in her lap, Aisha rode out of Sake toward her family. When we arrived at the camp we circled between rows and rows of UNHCR covered huts, over small rivers of rain and stopped when a beaming younger sister rushed to embrace Aisha.

She was home.

Though facing the rigors of life in the camp, her father said he would provide for her and protect her, and would soon return to their village. Her father hopes she will stay.

I still don’t know what it was about Jesus that compelled the adulteress to leave her life of sin. But maybe it was being offered a way out. Maybe it was the way Jesus had stood in front of her accusers and defended her in love.

As Aisha and I had walked out of the alley and away from prostitution, I had heard people calling Aisha “solider,” and “harlot.” And as she reached gently down for my hand, I held hers tightly. We walked through the center of town, hand in hand. I prayed that somehow her shame might be broken, that she would know I was proud to know her. And as the mocking cries died away, her small fingers still holding onto mine, I realized that no words, much less guilt, could persuade this child. Just an open hand of love.

By Lindsay Branham