In Yaoundé, with Mrs Essome: breaking solitude

After Bertoua, Yaoundé. Another street, another solitude. Mrs Essome is a widow. Without family support. She lives alone in deep precarity — fragile health, not enough resources to eat or house herself decently.

This is not a large family met in a courtyard. It is a woman alone, and the silence around her.

November 2024: the first contact

Our volunteers went to meet her. To sit with her gaze. To listen. To measure what isolation means when hunger and illness strike at once.

I write to you from Belgium. It is our volunteers on the ground who sent these images and what they tell — not to pity, but to act.

December 2024: food aid

In December, we returned with what was needed to hold on: rice, oil, eggs, pasta, soap — concrete supplies set down on the ground at her door.

The report on this mission is here:

Beyond the plate

Food aid eases urgency. It does not heal fragile health, and it does not replace a presence. What we envisage next: medical consultations and treatment; visits to break isolation — because dignity is not only eating: it is also not being forgotten.

At Awaken Destiny, every destiny counts — including those we meet in the silence of a Yaoundé courtyard.