Scottish Catholic Observer

Recent reports from our amazing team in Liberia make for harrowing reading. For the past few months they have been working bravely to feed hungry children living in communities devastated by the Ebola outbreak.

Before this crisis we were feeding those same children school meals, but the schools have been closed for months now and the children are hungrier than ever.

The little town of Tubmanburg has long been our home in Liberia. Fr Garry Jenkins, SMA, a remarkable missionary priest, set up his mission in the town over 30 years ago. I first went there with him in 1997, the first of many visits during the long war years. The local community loves Fr Jenkins and I would like to think they love Mary’s Meals too.

From our base there we have been feeding nearly 130,000 school children every day. Many here work for Mary’s Meals and many more have children who eat the food we provide.

There are also young adults whose lives have been transformed by Mary’s Meals; like Bwokai, who was one of the small children who queued for the very first meals we served here in 2004, having walked three miles to get to the school. He now works as a Mary’s Meals monitor, travelling by motorbike each day to visit village schools where the next generation are eating and learning. Or at least they were until Ebola began its deadly march.

On the edge of Tubmanburg is a small government hospital. Today, 58 orphaned children live there, having lost their parents to the disease. Amongst them is Fatu who lost four members of her family to the deadly Ebola virus.

Her father was working as a nurse at a health clinic when he contracted the virus which led to his death a short time later. Fatu’s mother also caught the virus whilst taking care of him at home and died less than a month later.

Fatu faced further heartbreak when the virus spread further killing her 13-year-old brother and 100-year-old grandmother.

As the oldest surviving member of her family, Fatu is now responsible for looking after her five younger sisters and four children of her own.

“Feeding and caring for my younger sisters has been a problem as I am not working and my husband has left me because my parents died from this virus,” Fatu said. “I also have three older children together with my baby of three months. I am taking care of all of them alone.”

Normally, in Liberia, the wider family provides care for orphaned children, but this disease is so terrifying that many of these children have been totally abandoned by their families. Thankfully Mary’s Meals is providing these children the food they need each day.

“I really appreciate the food that Mary’s Meals is giving us in this time and that we can’t forget,” Fatu added. “It is sometimes hard to believe that we are all now orphans.”

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, tells us that ‘poverty today is a cry, a scandal.’ And in many ways this work of Mary’s Meals is a response to a cry: the cry of a child.

Mary’s Meals was born in 2002 after I met a boy called Edward. I asked him what his hopes were in life and he told me that he would like to be able to have enough food to eat and to be able to go to school one day.

His answer was a cry, a scandal, and the work of Mary’s Meals—to provide one meal every day in a place of education—is our response.

As we approach the end of this year, it is incredible to note that more than 920,000 children eat Mary’s Meals each school day. So many lives are being transformed by thousands of little acts of love all over the world that make this possible, both by the kind donors and the local volunteers who cook the meals.

But too many hungry children are still waiting. I thank each of you for hearing their cry and for responding in love. And I ask you to pray that we might soon reach those hungry children still waiting, and that we always strive to do this work in a way that honours Our Blessed Mother and points to her Son.

Please support our Scottish Catholic Observer Advent appeal and help make a difference to the lives of many impoverished children like Fatu who, thanks to your kindness and prayers, can look forward to a brighter future.

—Donation coupon in this week’s SCO in parishes Dec 5. For more information, please visit www.marysmeals.org.uk