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Imagine giving birth to twins while running for your life. Read this powerful story from a mother I recently met fleeing South Sudan.
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Dear Erin,

After bringing two little girls into this world, I can't imagine beginning their lives by being forced to flee our home and leave everything behind.

But that's what happened to one mother I met in Uganda.

Just a few weeks ago I was traveling through Uganda for World Food Program USA. Late one night, one of my World Food Programme (WFP) colleagues received a call about an attack on a small village in South Sudan called Pajok — just nine miles from the Ugandan border. 3,000 South Sudanese were fleeing en masse. Mothers and fathers grabbed their children and literally ran for their lives. Once they reached the border, many gathered near a desolate outpost without food, water or shelter. WFP scrambled to gather food and other supplies to respond to this unexpected, harrowing event. People were in desperate need and time was of the essence.

We awoke at 4 a.m. the next morning and set off for a seven-hour drive to reach the people who had left their whole lives behind — everything they owned, a harvest they had worked so hard for and a life they cherished.

As we approached the border point, I was overwhelmed by what I saw. Hundreds of people were walking along the clay, dusty road with whatever belongings they were able to bring with them. The look in their eyes was one of exhaustion, one of hunger. For the hundreds more camping out in the low-lying grass, I could see coal fires burning as families made meals with whatever they could find.

I stepped out of our truck, grabbed my notebook and voice recorder and met up with our translator. We walked into the bush to talk with people — to find out what happened in Pajok and what they needed now to survive.

Then I spotted her.


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Sitting in the bleeding hot sun with her family, I saw a young mother cradling two little babies. It must have been at least 100 degrees outside and she sat exposed — as were her children — to the most punishing heat. Having had my second child just nine months prior, my heart immediately sank when I saw her in these conditions.

I approached with our translator and asked her what happened in Pajok, and how she was managing right now with her small babies.

Like thousands of other people who feared for their lives, the woman I met had fled her village on foot. She was nine months pregnant.

That's right: Nine months pregnant.

By the time she reached the Ugandan border, she arrived with twins in her arms — she had given birth along the way without anyone to help her. She had managed to survive.

Yet when I met her, she was facing another challenge, struggling to nurse her babies. She was so malnourished from her journey her body couldn't produce milk.

This was a harrowing ordeal — one of a magnitude I couldn't possibly begin to comprehend — but there is real hope for her, and her babies' future. That's because as we spoke, she told me my WFP colleague Stella Mavenjina, had given her nourishing food that would give her strength to feed her babies again.

This Mother's Day, I'm honoring extraordinary women like this one who is overcoming impossible odds to provide the most basic building block of life for her children: Nourishing food.


Sincerely,

Erin Cochran
Vice President of Communications
World Food Program USA

P.S. Learn more about the families facing famine in South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen and how you can make a difference.<http://support.wfpusa.org/site/R?i=Xa2u3Cx0x9VVhRZ8skXfpw>


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