Nigeria: Desperate IDP kid beats camp security to gather spilled beans for starving mother

David Habbah wrote the following on January 1, 2017…

I am currently working for Christian Aid in Maiduguri, Borno State where I am saddled with the responsibility that at the least, 30000 internally displaced persons are given food.

This is a huge task as it is not throwing food off the truck to people but following a systematic and automated procedure of registration, profiling and subsequent distribution based on persons per household.

As tough as my job is, it is one that I am deeply pleased and privileged to do as I head a team of passionate and highly skilled personnel and volunteers bringing succor to many hungry IDPs with support from the United Nation’s World Food Programme.

*Christian Aid humanitarian volunteer, David Habbah.*

It is 11am on the 1st of January 2017 and I have just arrived the venue of the food distribution in Malakyari. I am not in the highest of spirit because this was not my plan. I am waiting for my colleagues to get set for distribution. Aisha, an IDP who I co-opted into a field volunteer mentioned to me about an area that had not been reached because the people doing the house to house registration had not gone there.

I am not so convinced so I say, lets us go there. It is especially difficult for me to walk around in this community as people keep following me with cries of ‘Oga help me’ and many other things that my Hausa has not caught up with yet but I go anyway.

The first house I enter, the woman says she they have not eaten a proper meal in 2 days. I am sad. This woman must be served today. I visit a few households, ascertain the need and head back to the distribution point.

As I enter the gate, I see a boy sieving beans from the sand; he has his way past the security to do this. I walk to him, go on one knee and ask him, what he wants to do with the beans and he says, he wants to take it to his mother because they do not have food. I am broken.

I ask a colleague to go help find his mother. Turns out she heads a household of 15 children and dependents.

We did not plan to do any registration today but this is priority. She is registered and just as I sign her card for her to get food, 3 bags of rice, 1 bag of beans and 4 bottles of vegetable oil, then it hit me. Hard it was, like a rock from the sky, this is why I am in Maiduguri. Not to challenge myself and get new experiences as I think, not to improve my Hausa as I plan, not even to make an income as I would but for people like this, who go to bed hungry and not knowing where their next meal is coming from.