Heroes’ Day you say? Meet Jjaajja Flora.

She and I first met on the 3rd January 2021. Someone directed me to her when I sought another home to bless with the charity collections I’d done the year before. On my first encounter, it looked like scarcity in this home was just an outsider’s concept because these children showed no lack. Contentment and gratitude are a natural aura in Jjaajja Flora’s home.

Jjaajja says that she started opening her home to abandoned children in the 80s. The humour in her tale is that her late husband, at one point, left because he was tired of coming back home to new faces, but he later returned when he realised that his departure didn’t stop Flora from caring for abandoned children. She says that he returned with one condition. That he will care for the children with her, but he will not buy her dresses (as a husband would for his wife) anymore.

It is 40 years or so since Jjaajja decided that nothing would stop her from leaving her door open for the abandoned children. She says that as long as she has breath, she will continue ‘giving birth’ to children abandoned by the very ones meant to love them.

Jjaajja Flora is the exemplar of generosity. In the months that followed our first encounter, she always expressed disappointment when I had to leave and she had nothing to give me. Oh, Jjaajja, I don’t eat boiled maize. “At least take it for maama,” she would insist. I once dropped the kids from school & found Jjaajja with a piece of jackfruit that only fit in her palm. She swore there were some fruit pods left that we could share. For quite some time, it felt extremely weird to take from the people who do not have. As the months turned into years, I realised that my “Nos” will start looking like pride. I decided not to look at the home as a mere charity base but another place I call home.

If a stranger has ever stepped up for you, then you know just how much Jjaajja Flora means to these children—walk with me in supporting her and the children in her care.