About 400 Mentally/Physically Challenged Children;

On the day of our last visit to this school of mentally and physically challenged children, 24th July 2024, most of them expressed their excitement being that we missed visiting the previous month of June.
In June, the road to the school became flooded and impossible for cars to drive through. We enquired and was told that the early rains were too heavy in that area which resulted to over-flooding of the only access road the school. We were constrained to bill for an emergency meeting of BoT and staff of C4HDI to discuss the situation and to arrive at the best approach to solve the problem of our scheduled monthly visits to the school.

DELIBERATIONS

In our meeting, we discussed at length and arrived at inviting a teacher over to our office to collect our gifts for the children. We considered paying for a chartered taxi for her to come over but realized that if we did so, it'll affect the sum of the fund we dedicated for them for the month.

DECIDING 

We decided that we would fund her visiting travels costs using public transport and back to the school same way. We saved over 80% of the fund ear marked for the children by paying for her transport to and fro the school village via a public transport.

ARRIVAL OF THE TEACHER

The teacher finally arrived on Tuesday morning, we hurriedly handed the fund and gifts including colourfully designed "we miss you cards" for the children back at school thus, she expressed appreciation to us. We promised visiting them in school in July. When we finally embarked on our monthly visit for July, on getting to the road to the school gate, we noticed the signs and heaps of sand left after the floods. We approached the school gate at exactly 12 noon which was their customary long break. It was good to see the children engaging in different sporty games. Some played with every seriousness while some were passive with games. On sighting us inside our vehicle, a couple of excitedly tried to touch us in love, through the open door glasses which obliged them as we smiled back at them.

REACHING OUT

They followed our vehicle until we pulled by. We went straight to head teacher's office as we greeted and parted their backs. Their head teacher, a woman with wisdom, greeted us and offered us drinks. We sat back and exchanged pleasantries with her. She told us that our gifts of diapers from the previous month are still remaining. We appreciated this information and cut our eyes at each other as a sign our surprise. At 1 pm, the school bell was rang by one of the students signaling close of long break time. As the bell was rung, all the playing children headed to their various classrooms intuitively. At 1:30 pm, another bell was rang for all the children to come out, this time, for us to interact with them as usual, as in, our usual way. It was on this interaction that we discussed with the children, some of them wanted to know the time for the next yuletide, some demanded bicycles from us while some needed us to bring mangoes, paw paw, guava and various other fruits for them. We jotted their needs and also jotted down their progress. It now came the time for us to offer the gifts we brought for them. We offered them handkerchiefs, some dozens of notebooks, pens and pencils, few fairly used shoes, trousers, trousers, sweaters, raincoats and detergents.
At 3:20 pm, we set out on our journey back after praying earnestly with all the children at end of which a chorused loud 'Amen' was said by all.
We noticed the genuine appreciations and regards all the teachers, care givers and the children accorded to us during our monthly visit to them.
By 6:40 pm, we arrived back to Onitsha, the head office of champions For Humanity Development Initiative (C4HDI), our organization's office where we transfered our records to our system for analysis.
Thanks.
Ebele I. Chukwuka (Mrs).