In Nakivale, they say there’s a girl who plants stars.
Her name is Aurelie, and she came from a land where stories were written in ash. She carried no gold, no shoes, no map—but her grandmother once told her: “The stars listen best to children.”
One night, after a blackout swallowed the entire camp, Aurelie took a broken lantern and walked into the forest. They said the forest was haunted, but she believed otherwise. She followed the hum of insects, the flutter of bats, and the whisper of her own heartbeat.
She found a glowing stone, buried under the roots of a tree. Not light like a bulb—light like memory. It pulsed when she touched it.
Over the next month, she planted twelve more. Small devices she built with parts nobody wanted. Each one charged by the sun, placed carefully where light was needed most: outside a widow’s hut, by the school, next to the borehole.
People called it magic.
But Aurelie knew—she had simply listened to the stars.
Now, every time a new child arrives at Nakivale, she gives them a pebble-shaped light and says:
“This is not a lamp. It’s a seed. Plant it where hope is darkest.”
And when the camp sleeps, if you look closely,
you’ll see tiny stars glowing from the ground—
Aurelie’s garden.
