In a quiet village of Mtoso, Traditional Authority Kalolo in the outskirts of Lilongwe, a barefooted boy of six clings to his mother’s skirt as she gestures silently for help.
Beside them, three other children watch with wide eyes, hoping for a kind stranger to offer food or a few coins.
Their mother Alifonsina Chidzanga, 46, cannot hear or speak properly.
Meningitis stole both abilities when she was still a child, leaving her with a limp and a lifetime of silent battles.
Yet, she is raising six children alone, aged four to 12.
“Most days, they walked for hours, moving from shop to shop, hoping someone would take pity on them,” recalls Ndimyake Aladdin, a nurse at Child Legacy International (CLI).
“When I met them, I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking, what if this was my family?”
Through her vindication, Aladdin decided to help the woman.
Together with her colleague and laboratory technologist Lisa Marie Chilima, she began ‘a journey of the heart.’
They started fundraising among friends and colleagues to build a house for the family—a safe shelter in place of the crumbling shack they called home.
“We didn’t have much, but we couldn’t look away,” says Lisa. “We told ourselves, even if we start with one brick, it’s better than doing nothing.”
Two of the six children were placed at Agape Orphanage, while four remained with their mother as efforts to find them safe homes continue.
But as funds ran low, the women reached out to CLI Chief Executive Officer Jeff Rogers.
“When I heard about this family, I was moved,” Rogers says. “I knew right away we had to step in—not just as an organisation, but as human beings,” he added.
He provided financial support and visited the family, where another need surfaced.
The children’s grandfather, Lemison Chidzanja, 80, could barely walk from a hernia.
“He was in a bad state,” says Ayisha Tawakali, a clinician at CLI. “We had to act fast.”
“We will continue to help this family with basic needs so that they are healthy and happy,” he added.
Since CLI has no male ward, these well wishers accompanied the grandfather and his wife to St. Gabriel’s Hospital where he underwent surgery.
For three days, the two women stayed with him until he recovered.
Chidzanja: “When they told me I would have surgery, I didn’t believe it,” the grandfather says softly, leaning on his walking stick. “I thought my suffering would end only when I died. Now, I can eat, I can sleep, I can walk again. These people saved me.”
Today, the family’s new house is taking shape, brick by brick. The mother, still silent, but smiling, tends to the four children.
Her hands, once outstretched in begging, now rest on a doorway that symbolises a new beginning.
“There’s still work to do,” says Aladdin. “The house needs finishing, the children need food, safe homes, and the grandfather needs regular meals. But there’s hope.”
For a family long trapped in poverty and silence, the kindness of strangers has turned despair into possibility.
