It's exactly eight days now since 11-year-old Ananda Deans went missing.

With each day, anxiety and despair grow, even as the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), the Victim Support Unit and guidance counsellors at the Swallowfield All-Age School, St Andrew, band together to offer help to those in anguish.

Teachers at the school, where Ananda is a sixth-grade student, told The Gleaner that a number of her peers have been distraught and in tears since the disappearance.

Many are still too stunned to speak about it, and those who can are only praying for her safe return.

'Where you going?"

Nadera Nelson, Ananda's classmate, recalled the last time she saw the 11 year old: "She was on the bus, giving jokes and we were laughing and talking," she said, "Then she got off on Red Hills Road and I looked through the window and I said, 'Ananda, where you going?' and she said that she was going across the road to a friend of her mother's and that was the last time I saw her."

Meanwhile, numerous prayer meetings are being held to show support for Ananda's family. In the daytime, friends and family surround Ananda's mother, Nardia Campbell, but in the nights there is no company and it becomes unbearable and sleepless.

"Mi jus' a fret 'bout where Passion (Ananda's nickname) deh and if she eat," Campbell said.

The police do not have any leads into the whereabouts of little Ananda.