Nana's Rediscovered Sleep: How a Food Donation Healed a Soul ?
The night is long and sleepless for Nana Cissé. At 57, every hour that passes in the dark is a reminder of her anxieties. Since her husband, her rock, was taken by illness eight months ago, she is the only bulwark between her children and the abyss of poverty. Her thoughts are a constant loop: how will she feed them tomorrow?
Every day, as soon as the dawn barely breaks, Nana gets up. Her body is tired, but her will is a fortress. She goes to the health center in her neighborhood of Dabani in San, not as a patient, but as a cleaner. The 15,000 FCFA= 26.82 Dollar US she earns each month is a meager consolation, a drop in the ocean of her needs. Once a trader, her husband's illness ruined her small business. Today, this stipend is her only treasure.
Her two older sons, 16 and 18, are learning to be a driver and a mechanic. From their meager earnings, they sometimes bring back 100 = 0.18 Dollar US or 150 FCFA= 0.27 Dollar US "Coins they hand to her with tenderness, like silent promises." Sometimes, her eldest daughter, married, appears with a hot dish. These gestures are balms on a gaping wound, but hunger is a tenacious companion. "We rarely eat our fill," she murmurs. Her only slogan, her silent prayer: "God has a plan for everyone."
This plan, she was waiting for it with a desperate faith.
And then, there was that call. A call that changed everything. The World Vision team. At the very moment she had just told her children the hardest of truths: "There wasn't a single grain of cereal left in the house."
What follows is not just a food distribution; it is a resurrection. Nana recounts, her words vibrating with contained emotion:
"As soon as the World Vision team gave me these food supplies, I came straight home to put the rice on to cook in the pot. That's what we eat now. These supplies are extremely useful to me, because every morning, I used to buy one or two kilograms of rice, not to mention money for other ingredients. Now, I no longer have to worry about finding rice. My children and I are very grateful for this donation."
Her voice breaks slightly, but it is a break of relief.
"I sleep peacefully now, because my mind is at ease. I can even set aside a little savings. If I hadn't received these food supplies from World Vision the day before yesterday, things would not have been easy. I immediately told my children, and they were happy. I thank World Vision and all its partners for their generosity. I realize how much these supplies are helping me. I am truly relieved, and I know my children are too. May God reward them for this support."
Nana is one of the 4 "extremely vulnerable" households out of a total of 144 assisted in San. She is not a number in a report. She is a mother whose insomnia has lifted. A woman whose faith has been rewarded.
If this assistance restored hope to Nana, it above all offered her children the most precious of treasures, the one that hunger had stolen: the return of their smile.
