It is another Sunday morning and Mama Segun has already sent out her first son Segun to the ACCMAD feeding centre in the neighborhood three times in quick successions to find out whether the ACCMAD Volunteers had arrived. And each time, Segun had come with the same news “Mummy the “blue bus” had not come yet”. (The ACCMAD vans are painted blue).

Her countenance changed while she waited for Femi to return. She was in deep thoughts and her heart missed a beat on realizing the consequences to their family’s survival if the “food people” do not show up this Sunday. She had earlier on done the family budget for the week and had spread the little money they had over 5 days leaving Sunday and Monday to be covered by the “collections” from the “food people”. She had coached her 5 children on how to collect the biggest packs and also extra packs from the food people who visit them every Sunday by 12 noon for the past 5 years. These “collections” are then pooled together for the family to share and eat on Sunday and Monday.

With her ears straining for Femi’s footsteps, she began to imagine the calamity that faced the family if the “food people” don’t come. “This must not happen”, she prayed. “This must not happen”!

The ACCMAD Soup Kitchen Manager has had a tough day. Saturdays are usually the busiest and most demanding day for him and his staff. For it is on this day that the 70 bags of rice, 450kg of boneless beef, 13 cartons of tin tomatoes, 10 full baskets of fresh tomatoes, 300 litres of vegetable oil, 2 full baskets of onions, 7 cartons of knorr cube seasoning, etc etc. are purchased, washed, grounded, cut, etc. in preparation for the commencement of cooking by Saturday mid-night by the 51 cooks and supervisors. He has to be particularly alert and on the watch with his trusted staff, to avoid some of these “raw materials” developing “legs”. These raw materials with the bags of raw rice will then translate to the more than 2000 large basins of cooked jollof rice to be produced by the cooks (mainly Agoin women).

But a major challenge faced them this Saturday evening. By the time they finished the pre-cooking preparation, they found out that they had run out of water. By this time, the Manager had gone home to rest his tired limbs, hoping to catch some rest and resume early Sunday morning, by which time the cooking would have finished. Of course, he had to rush back to the Soup Kitchen once this “water don finish” news got to him.

The staff sent to the Water tanker locations at Maryland came back with the bad news that, it was too late and all the drivers had gone home. The Manager on his own went to the Water Corporation in Surulere and he got the same news that “had you come earlier, may be we could have done something” This has developed into a major problem now! Without water there will be no cooking. Without cooking there will be no food to serve on Sunday! How can this be explained to the Pastor? What of those who depend on the ACCMAD meals? He thought of going to buy cartons of bottled water – but how many cartons can you even get this night? May be knock on the doors of all the neighbors and see whether they can donate Jerry cans of water! With all the suggested solutions coming to naught, the Manager went back to the Soup Kitchen. It was now around 12 midnight. The cooking teams were all gathered, but NO water to commence cooking. With a forlorn look and confusion reigning supreme, he gave them the bad news that he could not get any water.

With no solution in sight, he went and stood by the public water corporation tap in the premises that has not brought out water for days now. The tap was dry as hell. Nonetheless, he faced the tap and started praying and asked God to intervene. He laid the problem at God’s table. He reminded God that, this is “His Work.” It was His Injunction that we feed the poor and that is what we are doing, he prayed. But we don’t have water to cook. We are sorry Lord for any negligence on our part that has led to this situation but we need water Lord, he prayed and prayed.

Slowly little drops of water started coming out from “dry tap”. Remember this tap had not run for several days, before this midnight. Slowly and slowly the little drops became gushing water from the tap. All the workers then converged at the tap and nobody could believe what they were seeing. This was clearly a Miracle!

With water now available, the cooking commenced in earnest and slowly basins and basins of hot and steaming Jollof Rice were pushed out. As the day broke into Sunday, the Volunteers for the packing of the food resumed work and they started by scooping the rice from the basins into nylon bags with the piece of meat and then packing 80 nylon bags of rice into the Jute bags to be carried in the ACCMAD vans to the various serving locations all over the City of Lagos.

“Mummy, Mummy, they have come, they have come”, Mama Segun heard his son Femi screaming from far and running towards the house. Then Mama called out to her 5 kids to rush to the serving point immediately and reminded them to pick only the large sizes of the nylon bags of jollof Rice, and Extra bags too and of course, with satchets of water.

You could see the relief on her face! They have been saved from the agony of going hungry for 2 days, without the ACCMAD food - “Because you gave”.

As we celebrate another “CAN Day” today, let us remember the “Mama Seguns” of this world who depend on our giving to live.

May God continue to bless you as you give.

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