There were angry scenes at the Ajaso Refugee camp in Ogoja, South Eastern Nigeria.
Angry women and children rejected garri rations when they discovered that it had fermented.
But their noisy rage was fueled by the fact that, not long ago, authorities in the camp burnt a stock of food that had gone bad after long storage.
So furious were the women and their children that they literally chased one official in a blue UNHCR jacket to the road where he mounted a bike and vamoosed.
However, the chaos diminished when a charitable group, Change Care Foundation, led by its founder/president Vivian Kiffa arrived just in time with foodstuff.
Part of the stock was immediately shared out to the women with many of them gladly describing the intervention as “manner from heaven”.
Yet these are families that were living self-sufficient lives, harvesting fresh crops from their farms and children eating good diets; now reduced to beggars relying on small, irregular food rations. And sometimes, there is nothing to eat, nothing to drink.
“We sometimes go for three days without water”,
a comment repeated by different women at the camp. The UNHCR official on the ground seemingly did not have the authority respond to press inquiries.
But he was tacit in his response to our reporter. “We don’t want journalists here.” He said, insisting that pictures he believed had been taken should be deleted.
Meanwhile, the CEO of the Cameroon Film Industry, Agbor Gilbert Ebot, was on the humanitarian trip. He was spotted sharing out food packages to the needy women.
This is how he appreciated the event. “Cameroon will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, with the same hopes and ambitions as us—except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.
On this trip to OGOJA, I saw a woman with a golden heart. Mrs Vivi Kiffa, PRESIDENT/FOUNDER of Change Care Foundation, she said to me.
‘Ebot, one of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when this Anglophone crisis will end but we have the responsibility to support our people.’
If Vivi, can do it you too can make difference. Please donate. Support with dresses, food, Medicine or Money. Good morning. Contact Change Care Foundation.Please,