Left: Hazel was abandoned at the clinic. Editor’s note: Sydney, a Columbia Star Cub Reporter and a senior at AC Flora High School, spent two weeks in Malawi, Africa, last summer with her father, mother, and sister. They were on a personal mission with the Ministry of Hope. This is her story.

“The only solution to AIDS is abstinence, abstinence, and more abstinence!” read one billboard in downtown Malawi. It was just one of the many signs that addressed the AIDS epidemic in Malawi. The diseases’ devastating consequences were visible in the many posters and pamphlets that promoted health safety and in the thriving coffin businesses. However, I saw the disease’s impact most clearly in the faces of its tiniest victims, the orphaned infants.

On the third day of our trip, we visited a crisis nursery that cared for abandoned or orphaned infants. A missionary from NC founded the nursery in 2000. Over the past five years, it has cared for over 100 infants.

Above: Child orphaned by AIDS The nursery building itself is a tiny oasis in an otherwise poor community. Walking inside the confines of its iron fence, we found ourselves in the middle of a botanical garden. The structure’s brick walls were half–hidden by vivid flowers, and poinsettia trees grew along the border of the fence. Its well–kept lawn stood in sharp contrast to the overgrown lots that were the nursery’s neighbors.

The inside of the Crisis Nursery was a safe haven as well. For the infants who stayed there, it was literally the difference between life and death. While we were there, we held and played with several of the infants and heard their stories from the caretakers.

Mphasto was only five months old when his sister brought him to the nursery. He was child number ten, and his mother died giving birth to him. His father abandoned Mphasto and his siblings to fend for themselves. Mphasto’s 20–year–old sister and her husband tried to care for her younger siblings, but with a child of their own on the way, they couldn’t manage.

Mphasto’s mother died giving birth to him. When Mphasto’s sister brought him to the nursery, he weighed six pounds and was severely malnourished. However, after five months of care and feeding, he had recovered to a healthy weight and was placed in a foster home.

Hazel, on the other hand, had been utterly abandoned by her family. A relative took the child to the hospital on the pretense of visiting a sick friend. The sick woman greeted her visitor happily; the relative was the first to come in weeks. The visitor offered to go outside and get her sick friend a drink if the friend would hold Hazel. She never came back.

The sick woman tried to take care of the baby, but after four months of battling TB and attempting to provide for the child, the woman called Social Services. Hazel was taken to the Crisis Nursery, where she was loved and cared for.

Mphasto and Hazel’s stories were just two of the remarkable tales we found crawling around on the crisis nursery’s floors. The children giggled and smiled as my family laid down flooring for the nursery’s playroom. As we held and played with them, it was hard to imagine many had been on the brink of death.

(Next Week: Matapila village)