Can you imagine Yaham with an AK-47 in her hands? We couldn’t either when we rescued her, but not long ago Yaham was in active duty as a child soldier in Myanmar (Burma).
Today, Yaham spends her days learning and living with 60 other children with simular pasts. Give her some good soil between her toes, a hoe in her hands, a garden to tend…and she’s loving life. Yaham is often our most helpful girl; you get the impression that if you took her chores away, she would boycott the decision and rally a coup.
Watching TV is a delicacy in our homes, and Yaham respects it with utmost priority. On television days, Yaham does whatever it takes to arrive first in order to maintain her front-row status. On the rare occasion she’s late, she adopts a strategy somewhat resembling that of an American football fullback. She plows her way through the complaining kids, and when she conquers her front row seat, she wears her typical gigantic smile and chuckles (obviously thinking her stunt is hilarious).
There are currently 100,000 more Yahams in Myanmar alone. Rather than garden hoes, they carry AK-47s. It was the stories of children like her that demanded the birth of
A kid or a killer? We can decide.