2000

Jeanine, was a pretty eleven year old, when I first met her. A blond little girl with the sweetest face and big blue eyes, yet she was no angel. She’d frequently visit my house to trash it.  Swearing, shouting, bad language, you’d hear her a mile away, and I always felt like picking up my house and all my children, and run.   She stayed at the Ranch Hotel with a 17 year old junkie friend, after she ran away from the children's home.

Two adults took care of them, the couple clearly had a rough life and not much money, parking cars for a living.  The slovenly room they rented had no furniture but looked like a whirlwind had just rushed through it, clothes, mattresses and sheets, scattered all over the floor.  It was mid day, but the older woman was still lying in bed, smoking something foul.  The man had long oily hair, no teeth and no manners.  I’ve seen these scenes in movies, experiencing this in real life was almost unreal.  My own daughter was also eleven at the time, and Dear Lord, she was just a little girl, how could this happen to children?

It took 3 years for Jeanine to trust and love me.  She has wisdom beyond her years, can manipulate and deceive even the slyest fox.  She knows all the tricks in the book, from standing on a street corner, to fighting her way out of a nest of black men. Many men were eager to taste some of her innocence, but she lost that before she was ten.   She lived on the streets, on corners, under tree’s, and no one saw her, no one looked.  She has been jailed a couple of times, not for safe keeping but for possession of some drug.  She has been slapped around by men upholding the law, spat on, warned, shouted at and pushed around.

At the age of thirteen she wrote:  "People take interest in funny things." They're not interested in meeting us, but they pretend to know us. If it wasn't for this house I would have been a 13 year old hooker on Church Square. We are children and you neighbors are voting us out. It's corrupt, making a big problem from a small one. Clearly you haven't really taken a good look at the street kids, because you are not interested. All we want is for people to see how we really are, we are not asking for money, although we do need food and clothes, we are only asking for 'something'. We don't want people to say 'Oh shame' we don't need anyone's pity. Would it make anyone poorer just to take interest in a child from the streets? Do not expect only the bad and ugly, meet us !

Original letter

25 August 2005 Five long years have I watched two young girls destroy their lives, and the lives of others.  Including mine.  She wanted to go to school again. She had not been in school for years. Again we struggled, but finally managed to place her in a main stream school. She did all right for the first term, and really tried hard, her rapport wasn’t  good, but she was just as proud of herself as I was. Surpricingly she did excellent in languages and social science. Seeing her in her school clothes was such a blessing, I could not stop saying “Thank You God!”

  She stayed a few months, her marks weren’t good, and she got a lot of debits, but she went, and studied and struggled, but stayed.  In July she was out of school for 2 weeks when she was admitted to hospital with bleeding kidney’s.  Shortly after that she left school completely. She was to testify in a Court Case, she wrote a short note, said she did not want to testify and thinks it is better if she is not found by the court, she disappeared.  She was seen back on the streets, it meant back on drugs. 

By November 2005 she was back with us – again, she stayed till January 2006, when she tested positive for HIV.  She was devastated, who wouldn’t be.  Yet it did not stop her for taking drugs, sharing needles, prostitution.  She went back to the streets and remain their for months. She finally moved in with a Nigerian, he supplied her with drugs.  Nice as he seemed, he pushed her around when angry with her and forced her to go to the streets to make money. 

Due to her status and she felt she had nothing left, no life, no future, no family.  Her Sister unexpectedly got married without letting her know -or inviting her to the wedding. She gave up on life, did not care, as soon as she came down from one drug, she took another, until she was so high that she could not walk, or talk, or think. Jeannine has been experiencing such great feelings of rejection, that she needed to know that someone cared, still care, would care in future.

Finally a Teen Rehab centre admitted her with the help of a TV Reporter Gillian. She stayed there for 8 months before running away.

Aug 2006 They ran away from the Teen rehabilitation Centre for no reason, maybe just to prove that they can. Soon they fell back into old habits, that could kill them. They did not seem to care.

I don't know where from here.  I wish I could tell them something different, but it is not in my hands.  There are people with more authority.  When they got here, I called there parents.  They didn't want them back.  Then the cops came.  The girls got scared and jumped the fence,  back to the streets, the drugs.  It seems that, if they are with me, all hell is loose, they will get thrown in jail, but if they are on the streets, no one cares - as long as they are not with me. 

I don't know why they did not stay at the rehap.  I dont think they were treated badly.  I dont think they know why they left either.  The had been in and out of rehap for years.  They have been with and without their parents for many more years.  They have been hooked on drugs for as long as I know them.  I dont know why they have these problems.  I have no answers to them, well not answers that they want to hear anyway.

Yet to leave them without trying, would kill my soul.  If I have a chance, an opportunity, should't I atleast try to make a difference?  Let them know that there is someone they can trust, some one who cares enough, to not let them spend one more night in jail.   If it was going to help them, it would have helped years ago.  It hasn't.  The 'lessons' they were taught made them no care and hard.  "So what?" they say, but I know, inside they are trembling with fear, they hate the coldness of the sells, the rougness of the blankets, and the way they are spoken to and are slapped around, even spat on.  But what does it help them to show fear, they would be thrown in jail anyway.

She was only 12 when I saw her the first time.  Loud and proud, she raided my home.  Once the cops brought her too me with 6 other children.  They were sleeping on the pavement, all aged fourteen.  People say they make choices, but I know their parents.  I met them all.  I know why they make these choices.  No child runs away from a happy home.  Secure children do not get hooked on alcohol or drugs.  These words might get some 'good people' with drug addicted children on my back.  We - as parents - are the original reason for their drug or alcohol abuse, whether we give too little or too much, it is abuse all the same.

When they were children, the authorities and their parents did not allow me to spend much time with them, they were always fetched, taken away to 'better circumstances'.  Now that they are almost grown-up and their behavior did not improve, they are back with me - still runaways.  They have learned so much, yet they have much to learn.  They can blame no one anymore for the choices they make, they are suppose to be young adults now.  Emotionally they are still Fourteen, trapped in a grown-up body, with grown-up habbits.

Jinna's note about her addiction