Zephany Nurse’s goal is to become an accountant

DESPITE the intensity of the situation Zephany Nurse has been thrust into, she has already made plans for what she is going to do after she finishes at Zwaanswyk High School this year.

Under intense media scrutiny at a press conference yesterday, her biological mother, Celeste Nurse, said: “Zephany has a life plan. She definitely has her head screwed on straight. She has already been accepted at a university and is thinking of studying chartered accounting.”

Meanwhile, Zephany’s sister, Cassidy, returned to school this week, albeit under the protection of the school’s guards.

Zephany’s biological father Morné said the visits the family have had with Zephany have gone extremely well, and that their other two children had immediately accepted her as their sister.

Morné said he and Celeste had always told the two younger siblings about Zephany and the events of that fateful day of April 30, 1997 when she was abducted as a three-day-old baby from Groote Schuur Hospital.

Morné asked the media to respect the difficulties his family has to deal with. Morné and Celeste Nurse divorced just a few weeks before Zephany was found. There has been much speculation as to whether they would reunite now, but have been counselled that putting such pressure on Zephany might not help her.

Celeste Nurse’s Facebook profile shows she is a travel consultant and has been involved with Justin Smit since December 5. It is under- stood that Morné is currently seeing Kelly Valentine.

Despite this, the couple presented a united, caring front as they spoke of the “bumpy path” they are on. The pair were young when Zephany was born after Celeste finished school at Maitland High in 1996.

“It is very hard for a young couple to deal with something like that (the abduction). We are having difficulties, yes,” Morné said. “But we are ecstatic, over the moon, about finding Zephany. We still feel like it’s a dream. The only hope I ever had has come true.”

Asked how the pair felt given that in most abductions the worst-case scenario is true, Celeste said she always knew “in my bones” that Zephany was alive.

“Call it women’s intuition, but I knew. I just didn’t know whether she was being loved and cared for properly – was there someone there for when she fell, was she getting enough food? But we believed she was alive.”

IT IS now time for us to leave the Nurse family to heal their wounds in private. They have asked for time to recover and get their lives back on track. We should respect that. Perhaps what we should turn our attention to, now that one has miraculously returned to the fold, is the 1 600-plus babies, toddlers and children who disappear annually in this country.

One goes missing every five hours in South Africa.

Fortunately, 77 percent are found. Unfortunately, they are not always alive and well as in Zephany’s case.

But this still leaves us with at least 360 of the missing never being found, alive or dead. It is something so traumatic that it is likely a case of we prefer just not to think about it and hope it never happens to us. But that simply isn’t good enough.

We adore reading about miracles like Zephany, but in general don’t give a thought to children – and their parents – who are suffering: we click “like” or comment “how sad” on Facebook and then move on with our lives.

That said, the Facebook page by Missing Children South Africa has 56 777 followers and its Twitter account has 3 952. It’s obvious that the more people who are on the lookout for someone, the greater the chance of finding them, so if you do nothing else, spread the word.

Click that “like” button and read their posts. Missing Children South Africa turns six this year so, if you are able to, go to their website – http://www.missingchildren.org.za – and donate to this non-profit and public benefit organisation.

Obviously, with our hectic lifestyles, many of us can’t do more than this but, as we have seen with Zephany, miracles can and do happen, and we will all sleep better at night knowing that we may be contributing to even one.

In the meantime, until the Nurse family feel ready to share their decisions with us, we need to leave them in peace. It’s the right thing to do.

Picture: BRENTON GEACH STILL DREAMING: The emotional parents of Zephany Nurse, who was abducted when she was just three days old in 1997, told a press conference yesterday that they always knew she was alive and were ‘over the moon’ that she had been found.