A SMALL wrinkled hand reaches for Anel van Eyk's blouse. Baby Lisa looks at her with big brown trusting eyes and frowns slightly-just as she did the day Anel, a police Inspector, rescued her from a slop bucket in a derelict house in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth.

The infant's face was full of blood and she was barely breathing. But today Lisa - which means "bright future" in isiXhosa - seems radiantly happy.

"She's not the baby I found then - now she's my baby," Anel says. On 25 November, a month before Christmas, a court gave Anel an early gift by officially putting Lisa in her foster care.

"People say it's wonderful that I've given her a second chance and a new life but actually she's given me a new life."

In 11 years as a policewoman Anel has seen more than enough horror. She helped to recover the body of a 60-year-old man who leapt to his death from Van Stadens Bridge. She found the decomposing body of an abandoned baby in KwaZakhele, another PE township.

"I try not to get too involved in cases I'm investigating," she says. "I always distanced myself because it was just my job but with Lisa it was different. From the moment I held her cold little body in my arms I knew she was mine."

Since then people all over the country haved their hearts and pockets to Anel and Lisa.

"Recently I had a message to say a woman was looking for me. It gave me a fright because I thought it could be a relative who wanted to claim her."

But it was a township resident with a bag of clothes for the baby. What little she had she wanted to give Anel.

But not everyone was happy with her decision to keep the baby.

"When I told my mom she said it would only lead to trouble. Her generation grew up with different values but she may understand in time."

She gets occasional disapproving looks when she walks around with Lisa and her biological children Bianca (5) and Ruan (7). "I don't care," Anel says. "They can stare all they like. Lisa is now my child and if they don't want to accept it it's their problem. God made our paths cross. Lisa had such a terrible start to life, she deserves a better future."

SHE'LL never forget 13 November 2002. "That's the day I found my baby," Anel says, her voice trembling with emotion. She and a police colleague were filling their vehicle with petrol when they saw other officers running from a derelict house. They assumed they were investigating some crime and rushed to their aid.

Inside the dark house she noticed a black bag in the corner of one of the rooms. It had been tied around a bucket.

"I couldn't believe what I saw lying there in the human waste and rubbish - a little foot and a head turned upwards. At first glance the baby seemed to be dead."

Then one of the police officers touched her forehead and it crinkled into a little frown.

"Get me some gloves!" Anel shouted. She touched the baby gently on the arm - it was cold.

She put the gloves on, put a hand under the infant's back and gently lifted her out. "Another policewoman wrapped her in a maroon towel - I'll never forget that towel."

She tried to hug the baby and found the umbilical cord and placenta which were still attached. She wrapped them in the black bag that had covered the bucket.

"Everyone wanted to know whether it was a boy or girl but there wasn't time to tell," Anel says. She checked only when the baby was safely in hospital.

By now people from the neighbourhood had come to see what the police were up to. Some brought scissors to cut the umbilical cord and clothes pegs to tie it but Anel preferred to rush the baby to Livingstone Hospital.

"She was making little groaning noises and I just hugged her more tightly."

At the hospital the baby was given immediate care. "But I wanted to stay with her - I didn't want to leave," Anel recalls.

Some time later nurses noticed a wound on the left side of the baby's head; the mother might have hit her to silence her.

Two hours later Anel was still with the baby. "But it didn't matter. I just wanted to stay with my child. I'd already decided I was going to keep her."

But she had to pick up her own child from a day care centre and the baby was taken to a place of safety.

As Anel drove away she felt a deep sense of loss.

IN the weeks that followed she visited the baby every day. She took Bianca and Ruan along to meet the infant and they bonded with Lisa immediately.

"Bianca wanted to hold her all the time but Ruan wouldn't, fearing he'd drop her."

The kids probably told friends and teachers at school about the baby because bags of clothes soon arrived at Anel's home.

"When's our baby coming home?" Bianca asked. In the evenings, when they'd finished their Bible readings, the little blonde girl would pray: "Please be with my sister."

Anel arrived hot and flustered at the court on 25 November. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" the judge asked her. "We aren't talking about a Jack Russell puppy which can easily adapt to a new environment."

Anel assured him she was going into it with her eyes wide

She drove through the gates of the place of safety just before lunchtime. "I'm here to pick up my baby," she yelled excitedly at the security guard. A woman in the nursery embraced her and they both burst into tears.

Anel is now Lisa's foster mother and if no one claims her before 31 March 2004 she'll be permitted to keep her.

When she went to pick up the other two kids after the court appearance with the baby in her arms they all beamed with pride.

"Is she really going home with us, mom?" Bianca shouted. "I just want to hold my new sister."

Anel tries to involve Bianca and Ruan in the babycare routines and they help to bath and feed her and decide what she should wear.

"I thank God they get on so well with her. She's already part of our family," Anel says.

SOME of her colleagues and relatives have been a little off hand to her since she took the baby into her care but most people - even those she least expected it from - have been supportive, she says.

Anel was divorced in 1999 and the children see their father regularly. "We'll talk about it later but so far he hasn't had a negative word to say about Lisa's presence in my house.

"I thought I'd lose a few friends but in fact I've gained a few."

Some have spoken of the difficulty of raising a child of a different race - of the 2,650 adoptions registered in SA last year only 400 were inter-racial.

When Lisa's older Anel will probably tell her where she came from. "But I never want her to see herself as an abandoned baby. She must call me Mom. She's my gift, my miracle..."

Source: YOU Magazine
Date: 11 December, 2003