The Story of Bintou and Mami

This young girl in the picture is Bintou, but we all call her Be. She’s 15 years old, and the baby she’s holding in her arms is Mami, her 14 months old daughter.

Be came to our Orphanage on Thursday the 12th. Her family had rejected her and threw her out of her house. She had nowhere to go, so her last hope was coming to us, looking for some help.

Be has, since then, become a member of our crew. She works with us looking after the children, feeding them, cleaning them… Just as if they were her own. She’s finally found a job and place for her and Mami to stay. Now she’s capable of looking after her child.
But in spite of all this, we’ve barely seen her smile in all this three days.

From now on, we think that’s going to change. BIBI has convinced her family to let Be come back to her house. They were in the Orphanage today, looking at the present situation of things, and an agreement has been made. Be will work in the Orphanage looking after the kids during the day, and she and her child can sleep in her house every night. In this way, little by little, the tense situation between Be and her parents may clear out. Who knows, maybe this whole story will have a happy ending.

Unfortunately, Be’s story is not an uncommon story. Everyday, many young girls are forced to leave their home and abandon their children due to social rejection or extreme poverty, especially in Mali, one of the poorest countries of Africa.
Because happy endings do not “just happen”. We have to work on them, to make them happen. And in the Orphanage we work very hard every day, in order to get the happiest ending possible for our stories.