Jan came to school a couple days this week.
I haven’t seen her since I returned to South Africa and I was worried about her. Too often, when people stay away from school for extended periods of time they walk back through the gates of Amasango changed. Jan is no exception.
She is one of those girls who really can do anything she wants. We always tell young people they can do whatever put their mind to, but I’m convinced that’s a lie. Everyone is not built the same. Everyone does not come from homes with a caring parent or parents. Everyone does not come to the table with the same background. For a number of reasons, not everyone can become an astronaut, a lawyer or a teacher no matter how hard they try. Nor can everyone—Amasango students included-- break the cycle of grinding poverty they’ve been born into.
I believe Jan is one kid who really could break the cycle; who could become the lawyer she always talks about being; who could be the exception to the rule; who, I’m convinced, really could become just about anything she wants to be. She’s intelligent, she’s feisty, she doesn’t let the boys push her around and she isn’t afraid to ask questions and call you out when she disgrees. She is one girl who I’ve often said should be at Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls at Henley on Klip, just outside Johannesburg.
But a lot has changed since I left South Africa. The Jan I used to know has changed, and changed a lot, in the few months I’ve been gone. Jan looks tougher. She doesn’t still project the same kind but serious persona she used to. Her voice is sharp. She’s crossed the line from being aggressive to being a bit of a bully. When she sees me she doesn’t greet me with a big smile anymore. That smile has been replaced with an outstretched hand, a stern look, and a demand “Give me five rand Jason.”
When I decline, Jan throws her hand up, scowls and walks away. I used to take these crazy shifts in attitude personally. I’ve figured out over my three visits that it isn’t me, but a reaction to the seemingly impossible circumstances they find themselves in.
One other thing has changed since I last saw Jan . She’s now pregnant.
Last week, she was sitting outside grade five on one of Amasango’s broken benches. No school uniform, just some cut off jeans with holes in the thigh, a striped shirt and some flip flops.
She looked at me and said in a kind, yet fragile voice “Jason, when you have time, can we talk?”
“Sure,” I said, looking back at her with a smile. She didn’t smile back, she just put her head down.
I went over, sat down next to her and looked up.
“We don’t have to talk now,” she said. “We can talk later when you have time.”
“No,” I said. “I have time now. We can talk now. It’s fine.”
“No, we’ll talk later,” Jan said.
“Alright,” I said. “But, if you want, we can talk now and if anyone comes over, we can ask them to leave. If they put up a fight, we can get Isaiah (the security guard) to take them away. But it’s up to you.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk now.”
She began.
She’s scared. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s got huge problems: the poverty she comes from, her mother was stabbed this weekend and was taken to the hospital, her mother told her to “go to Hell,” when Jan told her she was pregnant, Jan doesn’t want to burden her little brother with the family’s problems so she tries to deal with it all herself, she regrets sleeping with the baby’s father since he no longer wants anything to do with her, she’s sad about never meeting her own father, and her indecision about the child she’s a couple months away from having.
Every single student at Amasango is a survivor. Every student has a remarkable ability to endure desperate circumstances. Still though, every student, every human being, has a breaking point. I’ve seen it time and time again.
Last year, following a rather vicious stabbing, the stabber came to school and just broken down crying in front of me because he just didn’t know what to do.
Jan too had reached a point where she couldn’t endure anymore. Her tough outer shell disappeared as tears began rolling down her cheeks.
We talked for nearly an hour. Well, she did most of the talking. I listened.
I told Jan I can listen to her whenever she wants to talk. I told her even if it’s during school and she doesn’t want to come to class, she just needs to find me and tell me she wants to talk—and I’ll come outside and listen. But I also tell her that her chief concern, about what to do with the baby, is up to her. I can’t tell her what to do. Nobody can. It’s a decision she must make.
“I don’t want my baby to have the life I had,” she says between her heavy, distressed breathing and crying. “I don’t want my baby to struggle. I don’t want my baby to struggle. I don’t want my baby to live like I have.”
At times, it’s so hard not being able to steer people in certain directions. I know what I’d recommend, but I say nothing. I tell her it’s a decision she must make, but whatever she decides I’ll support. I tell her Mama Jane can help her—that everyone at school can help her, can stand by her, but that nobody can make that decision for her.
I wish I could make that decision for her. I hope she opts to give her child up for adoption. I hope she carries a healthy child to term, has the child, and gives it to a family who has the means to care properly for the child. I think adoption is the best option. But I can’t tell her that.
It feels almost like she’s taking a test—and I can’t give her any clues. Only this test won’t result in her getting an “A” or a “B.” The choice she makes will profoundly shape the existence of two people: hers and her unborn baby.
I wish I could tell her what I thought. But I can’t—and I don’t.
She, like so many other kids at Amasango, finds herself at the age of 15, at a crossroads. She can keep the child, and, likely drop out of school, get a job, but getting a legal, well paying job is hard for somebody in South Africa who hasn’t even finished grade seven. She’ll struggle through life like her parents. She’ll turn to drugs and alcohol to try and drown her problems. She’ll have a long line of abusive boyfriends who come from backgrounds like hers. She’ll get beaten by a couple of those boyfriends, likely in front of the child so the child will also learn it’s okay to beat people when you’re angry. The boyfriends she confides in will beat her until the physical scars she bears are nothing compared to what life has done to her inside: broken her spirit.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to.
She can give the kid up and give the kid a chance—and give herself a second chance.
I really believe she can do anything she puts her mind to.
But she needs to make this choice—and the choice is hers.
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