hen the light begins to fade each night, thin silhouettes begin moving freely about a treed refuge tucked off the highway on the outskirts of town.

Whether or not there’s food to cook, somebody starts the fire with twigs harvested from the nearby wood; a few sprinkles of gasoline give the flames energy. In the darkness, it’s difficult to tell how many people are living in the handful of flimsy camping tents scattered among the trees.

It’s for exactly that reason that the HIV-positive young women who sleep here – orphaned teens who have been raped and burned and, in one case, blinded in one eye – wait until the sun slips away before they return: If the property owner who lent them space for their tents knew the true size of their group, they would be evicted.

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