Meet my sweet little friend Isaac (or as we like to call him, Zac). I met Zac a few months ago as I was jogging through Musanze late one afternoon. Zac joined me on the last leg of my jog, and I immediately fell in love with his bright smile and charming personality. He was clean, well-dressed, spoke decent English (better than most local children) and was just so stinkin cute that I wrongly assumed that he had to have a good family that groomed him, fed him, and loved him. So, I was confused when I asked him where he lived, and he pointed to the streets and said he slept under a tree. I asked him where he went to school, and he said “no school.” I soon came to realize that Zac was one of the street kids that hangs out at the town bus station. However, Zac was a different kind of street kid. He didn’t beg like the other kids, he didn’t have dirty clothes…and he still had this sweet innocence in his eyes. So, as I seem to have a habit of doing, I made a new little friend and knew that God was calling me to love on this sweet boy.
So over the following weeks, I got to know Zac pretty well. He actually became my little tag-along, showing up to my house most days, helping me run errands, becoming my basic Kinyarwanda translator, and assisting me with various tasks around the house. He reveled in the fact that someone was actually caring about him. I pulled Emmanuel (my former student and “adopted” little brother) in to investigate Zac’s story. I found out that Zac’s parents died when he was young, and he had been staying with an older sister and aunt in Uganda. They all moved to Rwanda a couple of years ago, and then one day about a year ago, he somehow got lost from them. He has spent the last year living the life of a street kid. He occasionally slept at a lady’s house, but she obviously did not really care for him as he wasn’t even being pushed to go to school. Primary education is free in Rwanda, so I knew the first thing I needed to do was get him into school and off the streets before he became so corrupted that there was no turning back. Emmanuel and I took him to the local Primary school to enroll him in school, and then took him to get a brand new school uniform and other essential school supplies.
Zac and Emmanuel. Emmanuel swears Zac looks just like him when he was a little boy.
Visiting our friend's new baby.
A few months passed, and I grew closer and closer to this sweet boy. I realized that he was not a perfect child, having no one guiding him, loving for him, or even caring where he was. I had to have serious talks with him about boundaries, about not stealing or begging, about going to school every day, about staying off the streets. I checked in to make sure he was attending school, took him to church, and made sure he was properly taking care of himself. I felt like a mom, trying to guide this child in the right direction and advise him on making good decisions in life. He even started calling me “mom”, bringing me small gifts, and drawing me pictures that said “I love my mather” when he came to visit.
Zac and one of my other boys, John Lambert.
After I had been out of town for a few days, Zac showed up at our house with a huge gash in his head (that had luckily already been stitched up). We learned that he had been caught in the middle of a street fight and was hit over the head by a wooden board. As we started talking to Zac about taking care of his wound, he shared with us that he had a blood sickness for which he had to take medicine everyday and visit the doctor regularly. Although he didn’t say the name, we knew right away that Zac was referring to AIDS. Unfortunately, I have been in Africa long enough to know this explanation. My heart sunk into my stomach, and no matter how hard I tried to stop them, the tears started flowing right in front of him. I have become close to several children who have this sickness, and I thought surely God would not let this happen again. Surely He had brought Zac into my life so that I could get him off the streets, help to shape him into the next great leader of the country, and watch him live a long and healthy life. Surely the world wasn’t this cruel and unfair. I was even in denial about it, so I took him myself to get tested at the local hospital. When they showed me the results, they showed me a book with about 100 names written in blue (indicating negative) and one name on the page written in red. It was Zac’s name. It was a heartbreaking and shocking thing to read, even if I did already suspect the results.
From visiting us so often, Zac also became close with our house staff, especially our joyful, energetic housegirl Janviere. Around the time that we found out he was sick, Zac called me crying because the lady he had been staying with kicked him out of her house only to sleep on the streets again. Without even thinking about it, Janviere said that Zac could come home with her and stay for as long as he needed to. Here was our housegirl, recently married and only 28 years old, offering to take into her home a street boy who was HIV+. She didn’t need to ponder it for weeks, she didn’t need to think about how hard it might be to care for a sick child, she didn’t need to think about what a burden it might be….she simply opened her arms and welcomed him into her home indefinitely. She told me that the signs around Rwanda say: “Take every child as your own”…so that is what she did.
Within a couple of weeks, we also found out that Zac had not seen a doctor in months and had not been taking his treatment. So Janviere and I took him to the hospital to get him back on regular treatment. When we walked into the doctor’s office, to our surprise the doctor already knew him and had been wandering where he was. He also told us that Zac’s aunt had recently been to the hospital and was looking for him. The doctors and nurses then helped us locate his aunt, and the next day, Janviere took Zac back to his aunt and sister who lived in a nearby village. We don’t know the whole story of how or why Zac was separated from his family. He may have even run away on his own. But in the end, the best thing that could have happened was to get him reunited with his family.
I learned a priceless lesson through Zac, maybe one of the most valuable I have learned while being in Africa. You see, it is one thing to know from the beginning when someone has this illness. Not that it changes the absolute tragedy or sadness of it, it just makes it easier (that being a relative term in this situation) for you to accept knowing it from the start. It is completely another thing to get to know and love someone first, and then find out that they are sick. But, nothing had changed for Zac; he has had this illness since he was 2 years old. The only thing that had changed was my awareness of it... and my willingness to accept it and still love him unconditionally, even if that meant that I might be more heartbroken in the end. It’s not that I might love him a little less because of his condition; it’s that I immediately found myself pitying him and thinking that I should not become so attached because circumstances like this are too difficult and hopeless to face. Occasionally I find myself unconsciously wanting to distance or disengage myself from certain situations because they are too hard, and I realize that many times it may be selfishly to protect myself. So this situation with Zac got me thinking about how I am called to love and serve the people around me. And I came to the realization: I don’t give love based on conditions. I don’t give love based on whether a child is sick or healthy, whether they have a future or not, whether they do good or bad things. I don’t give love so that I can see a return on my investment. I don’t give love because of the world’s fairness or despite its unfairness. I don’t give love based on how I might feel or how it might affect me. I give love just to give it. Because that is what I am called to do. No other reason.
I have seen Zac one time since that day we took him to the hospital. His aunt’s house is too far for him to come visit us regularly. I miss seeing his sweet face and bright eyes, but I know that he is right where he needs to be, reunited with his family. And I know that God brought this little boy into my life not for me to teach him but for him to teach me a valuable lesson about love.
Here’s an update on two of my boys whom I made recent posts about…John Baptiste, who recently had the hand surgery, and Zac, my little street boy.
By the way…there are also precious, wonderful little girls in Rwanda. I just seem to have a soft spot for sweet little boys, and that seems to be all the stories that I post about! 
My boys! 
