Pathetic world of girl, 16, robbed of father at birth by herdsmen, abandoned by mother at age 3
ω Faces eviction from orphanage
From GYANG BERE, Jos
A synthesis of the travails of Biblical Jabez and the sufferings of Oliver Twist is the fact of life of Tehillah Noro Davou, a 16-year-old teenage girl whose life since birth has been one of unpleasantness and a precarious existence.
Her sorrow started from the womb. The day she was born, her father was ambushed and killed by suspected herdsmen during the 2001 Jos crisis while he was taking his wife who was in labour to the hospital. Her mother, Victoria escaped narrowly and delivered her child a few hours later in a clinic at Kwok village, Barkin-Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State.
The death of her father plunged the family into an unending agony characterized by hardship, pains and bitterness. It turned out her mother was ill-equipped to bear the burden of the family alone, as she was soon overwhelmed with the responsibility of fending for several mouths. Stretched to the limit of her endurance, Victoria abdicated her responsibility and fled from home in 2003, abandoning her three-year-old daughter. Thus as an infant, Tehillah entered into the second phase of suffering as she became the responsibility of an aged grandmother who herself was also battling for survival in a village frequently targeted by killer Fulani herdsmen.
The last Tehillah heard of her mother was of her remarriage to another man.
Living as orphan
The persistence of the insecurity problem in their village forced the granny and her granddaughter to flee to Bauchi State where Tehillah was eventually enrolled in a primary school in 2008.
In 2013, respite came their way after a miraculous encounter with Kids with Vision Foundation Orphanage Home Rayfield, Jos.
The orphanage took up the responsibility of security, feeding, shelter, clothing and paying of school fees for Tehillah alongside 23 other children. For once, Tehillah Noro Davou’s life enjoyed an improvement.
A year later, however, the orphanage suffered a misfortune. In August 2014, the landlord evicted them all due to the orphanage’s inability to pay its 2013 rents. Thus the children and the orphanage Director, Grace Adams Yaro, found themselves on the street.
After some months, just as Tehillah was contemplating moving back to her grandmother in Bauchi, the orphanage got a new accommodation.
Presently, she is a JSS 3 student of Great Blessing Christian School. But her hope of completing her studies is presently in jeopardy as the orphanage has again been served a quit notice for defaulting on its N450, 000 rent for 2017. What’s worse, the orphans’ home lacks support from philanthropists.
Inside the orphanage
Tehillah Noro Davou is not the only orphan with such a poignant history. Another child with similar fate is 15-year-old Elisha Theophilus who hails from Kwok village in Barkin-Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau state.
His father, Theophilus, was shot dead in 2010 when suspected herdsmen attacked his village and killed several persons and burnt houses.
Elisha, six years old at the time, escaped the mayhem because he had been moved to a neighbouring village with his mother and siblings upon the news that the village was going to be attacked that fateful night.
The attack rendered them homeless as their house was burned with their foodstuff.
Though, the oldest of six children, young Elisha could not understand the tragic twist that rendered his mother incapable of feeding them. At the time they came in contact with Kids With Vision Foundation in 2014, the Theophilus family could no longer afford three square meals.
His mother literally begged the orphanage to relieve her of the burden of bringing up the children, and mercifully, Elisha was admitted for the purpose of education and feeding.
First trickle of help
Saturday Sun came in contact with Tehillah and Elisha when Hon. Suleiman Kwande, representing Jos North/Bassa federal constituency in the House of Representatives, visited the orphanage during Christmas and donated rams, foodstuff and other gifts.
Kwande, who was aghast at the discovery that the children lacked what to eat during Christmas, had pledged his assistance to the needy home.
His gesture was heaven sent, as it was the first time the orphanage’s received gift items in its 11 years of existence, according to Mrs Grace Adams Yaro, the orphanage’s director.
Yaro, who catalogued the woes of the orphanages––a pending quite notice of default in paying N450, 000 rents, and unpaid school fees of the 23 children which is being solicited from family, friends and spirited individuals and the uncertain means of feeding over the next 12 months––said: “Government has never given us any donation, yet most of the children we are housing here are those that their parents were killed during crisis. We don’t have international support either. We only depend on some family friends and individuals who believe in our cause.”