Bag of Rice Project #39 -A visit to the Chima 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.

The Following story is about the Chima family, their bag of rice was donated thanks to This bag is donated on behalf of Annie & Barbara Aquino. This is the 39th bag of rice our program has been able to give away thanks to generous donations!

We met this wonderful family in a village outside Aba, Abia state. It took us 2 hours of driving to get there. The Chima family live in an uncompleted building that they have managed to patch up and stay in. They have made it livable and into a home. Mrs Regina Chima is a widow and she has 6 kids and 5 grandchildren. Some of her kids and grand kids still live with her. This big family are all farmers and when its harvest time, they go to a local market to sell their produce.

The front view of their house

The Chima family are predominantly peasant farmers and they mainly eat what they grow and sell the surplus if any. This season is for Cassava and Cassava is used to produce Garri which is a meal that Africans eat. It goes through so many stages and the final stage is the frying. Below is a picture of me trying and failing to fry Garri… P.S there was so much smoke in the shade they use as a kitchen that I could barely breathe. We met them while they were engaged in this last stage of processing the cassava to eat and sell.

Me trying to fry Garri in the kitchen (I was supposed to use two hands)

This wonderful family was all smiles as we came to visit them. They even allowed me to pretend to fry Garri. We had fun staying and talking to them and we got to meet all the available family members and their neighbors. They got even excited when they saw what we brought for them and Mrs Regina could not stop thanking us for as long as we stayed with them. They were a truly wonderful family and we could instantly see the difference our gift meant to them.

The Chimas

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.