Ten-year-old Mwaba only recently started to go to school, now eats regular meals and finally lives in a real home.  


When she was an infant, her mother contracted AIDS. Upon learning of the infection, her husband left ; a not-so-atypical act.  Abandoned and living in a desperately poor compound close to train tracks, Mwaba’s mother tried feverishly to provide for them both.  Yet her illness was slowly killing her.  With no means to obtain medical treatment, she succumbed to the illness when Mwaba was a mere 18 months old.  Mwaba crawled, sat and waited in the shanty by her mother’s body for an unknown number of days and possibly weeks.

One day a neighbor saw this tiny girl crawling along the tracks and brought her to the police. Several days later, the police made the connection between the infant and the body of the woman that had been found in the shanty.

During the next few years, Mwaba lived in many places, with neighbors or extended family members, but she was often left on her own. She got no schooling, little food and was scraping out a hopeless life in the streets where she was abused.  Her future seemed destined to be one of the millions of street children living in the cities of Zambia.

Having been identified by the Zambian Social Welfare office, she is now living at Vima Lupwa Home where she has started school, has a future-oriented attitude and is learning quickly both at school and at home as member of the Lupwa family – our hopes for her are very high.