The little girl in this picture is three year old Ramatoula. This is what she looked like when she moved noiselessly into my door frame, after dark, on the evening of April 30, 2011.
That day had not started off well for Ramatoula. As daylight was stealing across the Guinea Bissau landscape and the roosters were about done with their morning announcements another song was heard in the house of Ramatoula’s care giver. It was the voice of her aunt who took custody of this child from Ramatoula’s mother three weeks earlier. The aunt was singing a ditty about a little girl who again wet the bed and needed to be punished. The song and the accompanying ruckus awakened one of our missionary co-workers.
When he heard Ramatoula’s screams he was quickly leaped from his bed and dashed out to the veranda where the goings-on sickened and angered him. There was this little half-pint being held inside an empty rice sack. Around her was the rest of the household doing a mock lynching on her.
