Ayesha is from the small village of Nansoni in the north part of Ghana.
At around age 11 she dropped out of primary school. As a result her potential for learning and eventually being useful to the family as an income-earner was gone.
Customarily, if a young girl has no financial value to the family because she hasn’t learned a trade or received even a basic education, she is given away in marriage by her father and a payment is received for her. This is often done to girls as young as 12.
Ayesha suspected her father was about to give her in marriage to an older man, one of her father’s friends.
So she ran away, arriving in the capital city of Accra where she ended up in the “Sodom and Gomorrah” slum area. She was immediately identified as a homeless young girl and was approached with an offer of employment.
Ayesha accepted, but later found out that the offer was not as it seemed. Ayesha found herself living in a simple room of corrugated tin and wooden planks of about 12’ by 8’. This is enough for one person, but Ayesha had about 15 roommates, all girls of roughly the same age, and in the same situation.
“In this area there are people who rent out sleeping space,” says Don Tucker, director of Africa’s Children. “And I mean that Ayesha would find a place where she could rent on a weekly basis enough square footage for her body and nothing more. She would have to pay one merchant to have water to drink. She would have to pay another one for sanitary facilities, bathing facilities, or the toilet. And she would work hard every day in the market area.”
To earn money she sold little packets of ice water, which she carried in a metal basket on her head. This was very hard work for Ayesha (who weighed about 85 lbs and stood about 4’ 9”). The weight she placed on her head and small shoulders was about 50 lbs.
Ayesha had no health care. No family except the 15 other girls she slept with; no connections to help her get out of the slum; no one had compassion on her; no spiritual guidance other than the local mosque, which she visited each Friday.
Ayesha was going to live this way forever, or until she died. The slum is called Sodom and Gomorrah because of the depravity and crime it is known for. Many of the young girls who have no protection are raped and/or forced into prostitution—this road eventually leads to death.
Ayesha was at high risk for this.
After a few months Auesha found Lifelines, a ministry of the Ghana Assemblies of God, and supported by Africa’s Children .
At Lifelines Ayesha is given a clean and safe place to sleep and at least two good meals a day. She is taught personal hygiene and also given introductory lessons in embroidery, baking, and sewing.
After one year in the Lifelines program Ayesha is assigned to an apprenticeship with a master outside the Lifelines compound where her skills in her new profession and as a business person are perfected. Then she is able to make her own living, able to leave the slum area, perhaps marry, and enjoy a better life.
In addition, Ayesha is introduced to Jesus. There are regular Bible studies, worship times, and discipleship classes for the girls.
Lifelines brings in 100 girls at a time for this rescue program, ranging in age from 12 to 19. All are orphaned or abandoned/runaways. Many have been forced into prostitution, raped, or abused in other ways.
“Thanks to Lifelines…up to girls every year finds fantastic liberation, not only from their poverty, not only from their malnutrition, but most importantly from the spiritual darkness that they find themselves in,” Tucker says.
Through Africa’s Children, there is rest and hope for Africa’s little ones. Africa’s Children supports orphanages, schools and feeding programs throughout the continent.
“I want to thank everyone who gave and made it possible for me to have access to the opportunities here at Lifelines,” Ayesha says. “Please bring more help so that other girls have the same opportunity that I was provided.”