Inside the rise of Balkissa’s motherhood in the south of Niger
By Tijs Magagi Hoornaert
Balkissa folds her 5,5 feet tall body in frame onto the school desk of her son Issa. Only ten minutes into our conversation, she feels comfortable enough to smile for the first time.
Why? I asked about her preferred dish and at the same time cracked the code to her kindness. “With bread doughs and a good sauce, you will make me happy”, she says while laughing.
Balkissa is a mother of 8. She lives in Diney, a village in the municipality of Koleram, Zinder region, located in the southeast of Niger. As I walked past her into her child’s classroom, Balkissa’s eyes meet mine with strength, pride, and confidence.
“I get up every morning a little bit before dawn to start cooking for my eight children; four of them go to school, so they won’t have an empty stomach”, says Balkissa whose vision of life and that for her children has a strong educational component.
“When I was as young as my son is now, I had to go work on the field with my parents to bring food on the table”, she says. Her son Issa is 8 years old and attends the first grade in the Diney centre school. “My favourite course is writing because I want to be able to help my parents,” he confesses to me.
Balkissa is determined to provide the best possible conditions for her children to go to school. She accepts that her unfortunate story of not being able to finish school because she had to help her parents in providing food at a very young age; could be used as a self-motivational factor. Now she is doing what she feels she needs to do in order to provide much-needed food for her children.
“I am one of the few women in our village who can give their children breakfast. Many other mothers can’t. I managed to generate a small income from my little business selling peanuts next to preparing food at the school of my children. It relieves me from a lot of stress knowing that my children focus on playing and learning”, she says.
As a mother Balkissa dreams evidently of a better future for her children, and she is convinced that attending school is the first logical step to achieve it. The added incentive for her and her children is the School Feeding initiative that provides them 3 meals a day. A double relief: her children can focus on being a child at school; and she can use her resources to help others.
“You know what grates on me every single day? I just cannot ignore the empty stomachs of my neighbour’s children when mines are full. Thanks to School Feeding, I am able to help my neighbour’s children who might not have the resources, by preparing them some meals that I would have prepared for my children instead.”
Balkissa and her son are feeling hopeful and energetic. They can bring a different perspective to their futures and try to turn things around for themselves.
The Diney Centre school benefits today from School Feeding, a government programme supported by WFP. The school receives food consisting of cereals, pulses, and oil from WFP, the government, and parents. The latter also complements with condiments and other food items, when possible, to cook school meals. Since 2014, school meals are cooked with food items purchased from smallholder farmers and retailers in the municipality or within the region as part of the integrated resilience approach that aims to strengthen the local food value chain and food systems. The activities that fall under this approach for the village of Diney are: creation of community fields, cereal banks, 2 modern market gardening sites, IGAs (sewing workshop, food paste production, soap production), community-based nutrition, school feeding, school scholarships, grain mill, school herd, treatment of moderate acute malnutrition.