A MODEST HOPE FOR MODESTA.

Modesta was on the porch that first evening, two years ago, when I arrived at Saint Augustine University of Tanzania as a Jesuit Volunteer. There stood a dark-skinned adolescent with close-cropped hair, whose gender I could detect only because of her ruffly dress. She balanced a tray of papayas on her head, hoping to make a sale to the new teacher. Modesta addressed me shyly, dipping to a full bend at the knee, and whispered her Kiswahili greeting, acknowledging me as her elder.

Little did I know that this thirteen-year-old was one of a dozen children in a polygamous family, and that she shared a single bed with three sisters. Nor did I know that her days consisted of carrying buckets of water on her head, scavenging wood and cooking for eleven, and "learning" in the village primary school in a classroom with forty desks and more than a hundred children. Most important, I did not know that, over my two-year stay in East Africa, Modesta would be my greatest teacher of Kiswahili and Tanzanian custom, and quite simply, my best friend.

Within my first week, Modesta's family invited me to dinner and to spend the night. Modesta led me on the ten-minute but worlds-apart walk down a dusty road and around immense boulders to her village of cornfields, bleating goats, and ramshackle, reed-roofed mud huts. As I squatted next to Modesta in the smoky cooking hut, I saw a house with no electricity or running water, no screens to keep out the malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and with only an outdoor pit toilet.

I was one of nine females that evening who sat around a single platter of stiff corn-meal porridge that, aside from a teacup of beans intended exclusively for me as the honored guest, constituted our meal. When we finished, Modesta helped me hang my mosquito net, the only one in the house that night, over her elder sisters' single bed the two of us would share.

During my first year in Tanzania, Modesta and I grew close. Sometimes I was clearly the elder, encouraging Modesta to save her hard-earned money after her daily seventy-foot climbs into papaya trees, teaching her not to interrupt people, and answering her questions about aids. Equally often, she was my elder, showing me how to fan a cooking fire to life, helping me by effortlessly carrying buckets of water atop her head, or poking me when I overlooked greeting a stranger.

But one Saturday morning Modesta appeared at my front door, her eyes downcast, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. Her father had not come home in two nights. The children had gone to bed without food. Modesta wanted half the fruit-selling earnings she had deposited with me (to buy a gift for her father). She wanted to buy corn flour for her siblings. I gave her the money and, pretending that I had not eaten, invited her to breakfast. She said she wasn't hungry. We both knew she was, but she wanted to hurry home to cook porridge for the family.

Modesta seemed not to resent the fact that, at fourteen, she was providing for her siblings. She seemed not to mind that in my house there was not only food, but also such luxuries as powdered milk, peanut butter, and pineapples. In fact, after making up for the lost savings, Modesta bought me a shiny second-hand blouse, as well as a pair of used corduroy pants for her father, who had eventually returned home.

As Modesta neared graduation from primary school, I began to worry. Many of her prepubescent female classmates had already dropped out of school, and were matched with strangers in pre-arranged marriages. Hoping to help her avoid such a fate, I offered to enroll her in a girls' secondary school and to pay her fees ($300 a year for five years). She now boards in town at the school where she can escape the interminable chores of her home and can focus on her studies. Visitors are allowed only once a month.

I miss Modesta. During her occasional visits home, she brings her notebooks to show me her lessons. Her English, the instructional language in secondary school, is improving, and she is proud of herself and her school. For one assignment she had to memorize verbatim a two-page encyclopedia entry on nutrition. This struck me as ironic, considering her school diet consists solely of porridge, rice, and beans. No fruits or vegetables. She did not see the irony.

Although I will continue to pay for her secondary-school education, I hope that when I leave someone will look out for Modesta and remind her that she is a beautiful and talented young woman. I hope that she has some choices in life.

Katie Quirk, a graduate of Haverford College, taught journalism and English at Saint Augustine University of Tanzania, under the sponsorship of Jesuit Volunteers International.