by Mattie Mutare

Created on: December 28, 2008

Daddy, find my twin sister!

As I sat near the waterhole I retraced again Rumbi's eventful little life. My wife, Nina and I had picked Rumbi up on the shores of a lake just outside the little town of where we lived. She was newly born but wrapped in dirty and torn linen; stuffed under the overhang of a boulder on the shore. We rushed Rumbi to hospital but with little hope for her survival. Miraculously she survived and was eventually sent to a local children's home. About two years after this incident strange happenings started occurring in and around the house.

We would hear the cries of a child in the house late in the night. On such nights our two-year old son, Shadi, would be very shifty in his bed beside ours.
Many times I would wake up to watch him. The motion of his hands and feet seemed to be that of one pushing someone off the bed. The little struggle was always short and then a serene and contented look would settle on his little face and he would sleep quietly for the rest of the night. Sometimes we would hear a female voice singing a lullaby outside the front door.
Every time I searched I found nothing. We invited all kinds of religious and spiritual mediums to exorcise these strange spirits but to no avail. The disturbances went on for a year.

One day we woke up to the cry of a child outside the front door. With trepidation, I peeped through the window and was shocked to see a little girl, of about three, sitting on the veranda.
She was wearing bedclothes and was clutching a bed sheet about her shoulders. The bed sheet was heavily soiled showing that it had been dragged on bare ground for a long distance. I opened the door and the child stood up and said,

"My name is Rumbi. I have come home."

I was too shocked to say anything and as I stood, dumbfounded, the child quietly brushed past me and came inside. She sat cross-legged on the floor. I phoned the police who arrived a while later with the matron of the local children's home. . The matron confirmed that Rumbi was from her home. She said that Rumbi had been given a separate secure room because was a constant sleepwalker. None could say how a three-year old child could explain from a locked room with barred windows. And again none could explain why the child chose to come to my house and why she called it home. The child could not have known that I had been the one who had picked her up on the shore as an infant. The girl stated again her claim that she had come home and said that she would not be going

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