Meet Misthafa
Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to Misthafa. As you probably know we are writing a blog series to introduce our supporters to each of our children and if you have missed any, please click here to read our previous blog. Misthafa is a joy to know and a joy to write about. She is a beautiful 13 year old girl who is funny, sweet, and loves life. That phrase, “loves life,” can be very hard to explain unless you know someone who truly loves life. Misthafa laughs at everything, can be entertained by the smallest thing, and she just loves people unconditionally. She is a little shy, and if you have been down to visit before you may not have even noticed what a great girl Misthafa is, but for those of us who know her, she is just fun to be around.
We have met Misthafa’s Mom one time on the day that we moved to Hope Rising. She paid little to no attention to Misthafa. She just walked in, ate the food we prepared for the parents, signed the paperwork, asked for some money, and then left. She did care enough to come and make sure she was moved into Hope Rising, but there was clearly no relationship between the 2. Misthafa was born in Cite Soleil which is one of the poorest places in the world. We believe that Misthafa has been at the orphanage since almost the beginning and was brought there by another “pastor” who brought many of the children here. We also think she was at a different orphanage prior to moving to All Things New.
Misthafa is also a little bit flighty. She is one who, if you happen to be speaking to her while a butterfly passes by, you will struggle to regain her attention. This is both extremely endearing and a challenge for Misthafa. In fact, we had our translator attend her parent-teacher conference at her previous school and then come back and report to us what he learned. The first thing he said was that the teacher said, “Whenever I call on Misthafa she does not know the answer because she is always staring out of the window.” When we first heard this, we couldn’t do anything but laugh because this is Misthafa. At the same time, this is something that we need to work on with her because it is something that can hold you back. She is a very smart girl, she just struggles to focus and pay attention.
Another really funny thing about Misthafa is that she loves our (mine and Jessica’s) hair. She especially loves for my hair to be long and always begs me not to cut it and to let it grow out. I think because she wants to braid it, but also just because she likes the way that it looks. In fact, when she sees pictures of my hair when it was longer, she will tell me how much better I looked in the picture than I do now. She used to tell Jessica that she was not pretty when her hair was short, but we finally convinced her that it was not nice to tell people that. Anyway, this may seem really little, but this is a really fun connection that we both have with Misthafa and one of the ways she shows affection to us. As you can tell, Misthafa is a wonderful girl and someone that is a joy to know. Since we have been at Hope Rising, she has really grown in confidence, the security has allowed her to be herself more and more, and she is slowly becoming one of the leaders at the orphanage. She even helped cook for the kids a couple of times! When you come, make sure to spend some time with Misthafa and get to know the sweet, affectionate, and kind Misthafa.