Bag of Rice Project #217 -A visit to the Uwem family


Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign
. In 2016 we started helping a young man named Ikechukwu from Nigeria. Summer of 2019 we were able to visit his family in Aba, Nigeria. While there we saw widespread poverty and lack of basic needs. We would like to invite you to help meet one of those basic needs, by providing
Nigerian families with rice. This gift will feed a large family for a few months, or a single person a year. It also reminds them they are loved, and brings most of them to tears… as a full bag of rice is one of the most generous gifts they will ever receive. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.

The Following story is about the Uwem family, their bag of rice was donated thanks to Jennifer Starr this is the 217th bag of rice our program has been able to give away thanks to generous donations.

We visited this next family in a village outside of Uyo, Nigeria. They were introduced to us by their village chief. The Uwems have 8 kids and they live in a one bedroom mud house that has no plumbing or electricity. There is no borehole in this village so people fetch water from streams or collect rain water.

The Uwems cook in a semi open kitchen and they use firewood in cooking. I don’t even think they have a choice because they sell firewood as well. Mr Uwem is a carpenter and his wife is a trader and she was not at home when we visited. Most of their kids were not at home and some of them live in the cities as indentured servants to other families.

Parents allow their kids to be indentured servants to other families in exchange for them to be sent to school. This is a last resort for parents when they can no longer afford to care for their own children. As an indentured servant they are suppose to care for the other family, cook clean and in exchange get a daily meal and school. Often this does not work out and they are abused, not fed well or not permitted to go to school as first agreed upon.

It was a delight visiting this family. They were happy to meet us and even happier with their bag of Rice. They expressed their tremendous thanks to those that donated this bag of Rice to their family. As we left them I felt like we left them in a better state than we met them.

Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.