This may be just a story to you, but this is a precious life to me.  She doesn’t want to share her name, but she said I could share her story (words in brackets are mine):

One day I was coming from school with one of my friend. A man came and ask us a way to Moneni. When I show him the way, he hold my hands and force me in the bush. My friend ran away.
The man took my exercise books [note books] and make them a bed. He rape me on top of my school exercise books. … The man have STI’s [no HIV] I found out myself. My body was weak so I ask my teacher what is wrong when a person feel this and this in her body. She told me that it when the person have STIs so that mean I have STIs. I got it that day and I did not tell my mother because it make me feel like I’m nothing and no one care about me. 

[Years later she still suffers with the pain of this memory, especially since school books are a part of the nightmare…] At school…I sometime see the man taking my exercise books and I will go to sit at the toilet so that I will not see his face. 

[People who know what happened] will look at me as if I’m die.
That man took my life he took my happiness, my pride and every things away from me. 

This doesn’t have to be the end of the story for her and for so many others like her.  Show them there’s hope and healing by supporting the operating costs of Hope for Life Home, projected to open February, 2013, for sexually and physically abused and at-risk girls in Swaziland. Visit www.hoseasheart.org to donate or for more information.