By Yerima Kini Nsom
“The worst thing that happens to me is when my children are hungry and I do not have any food to give them,” laments Chanceline Njinan, an internally displaced single mother from the Southwest Region. Chanceline and her children fled to Yaoundé for safety after the Anglophone crisis morphed into an armed conflict, triggering an unprecedented wave of indiscriminate killings in 2017.
She told The Post that life has been harsh and brutal for her in Yaoundé because there are days when she does not have the means to feed her children, let alone pay their school fees.
Another internally displaced single mother, Comfort Ndukong from Binka village in Donga Mantung Division of the Northwest Region, said she fled to Yaoundé when the rumbling sound of artillery gunfire and mass killings became the order of the day in their village. She said since she arrived in Yaoundé with her children, they have been living in permanent need of shelter and food. She initially stayed with a friend but was forced to rent a room when more family members came to the house.
She said she has been doing odd jobs to provide food for her children, yet ends barely meet. For her, her children have hardly had the luxury of receiving their report cards because they are often withheld for non-payment of school fees.
Another single mother, Mildred Manju from Bamenda, narrated a pathetic story in which her employers refused to pay her after she had worked for them as a house help for over three months. She said she was often stranded because she could not feed her children properly, let alone pay their school fees and house rent.
These women, mostly single mothers, narrated their ordeal while receiving food from the international non-governmental organization known as Safe Empowerment Reform Foundation (SERFoundation) over the weekend. SERFoundation, which is based in the United States of America, has a Cameroonian, Fenjie Tamajong, as one of its founders. The organization handed over food items and money to over 20 internally displaced women in Yaoundé who fled from the Northwest and Southwest Regions due to the ongoing Anglophone Crisis. After receiving food items, including bags of rice from SERFoundation, one of the beneficiaries, Mildred Manju, told the press that her children would have the luxury of having three square meals a day after a very long time.
While expressing gratitude to the authorities of SERFoundation, the women said the food items they received would sustain them for a very long time. They said the little money they would have been using to buy food would now be used during this period to purchase other needed items and consumables for their children.
While handing over the gifts to beneficiaries, the SERFoundation coordinator for Cameroon, Professor Elizabeth Tamajong, said the organization was contributing its own quota to alleviating the plight of women who were victims of a conspiracy of circumstances. In her view, SERFoundation will always stand behind the needy and the underprivileged.
Commenting on the event, Fenjie Tamajong, one of the founders of the organization, told the press that SERFoundation was committed to alleviating the agonizing plight of this category of women who have been living in penury and wanton lack of basic necessities. She appealed to other organizations to come to the rescue of these women, noting that they were suffering in Yaoundé because of the Anglophone crisis, which was no fault of theirs. “SERFoundation founders and sponsors are always happy to help, be it food, shelter, education. We are here to serve, heal and support,” Fenjie Tamajong told journalists.
According to a press release from the organisation, SERFoundation was founded in 2022 by four ladies – Fenjie Tamajong, Susan Akuma, Melanie Olisha and Biblilomo Ikuomola – who live in the United States of America, Canada and Africa. The objective of the organization is to give hope and healing to the needy.
