Sonia’s father passed away during the pandemic, causing upheaval in her family life, but now she has a lifeline
WORDS: SARAH FINLEY
HELPING HAND APPEAL 2023
As we’re welcomed into Sonia Devi’s family home, a mud shack with four rooms and straw for a roof, a clap of thunder sounds in the distance. It’s a rare break from the 40°C heat outside.
We’re in a small forest town called Morwai – a 10-minute drive from Sonia’s school. We drove down winding paths to get here.
The 10-year-old girl no longer lives here though, with her mother, three sisters and one brother, but you can tell she misses them as she clings on to them with such enthusiasm.
Most of us in the UK have put the pandemic behind us. Sonia and her family are still seeing the impact of the virus – which took away their father.
“After my father’s death due to Covid, we experienced extreme poverty,” she explains.
“There was no rice, or other food at home. There were days we wouldn’t eat – it made me feel very sad. The whole family went hungry.”
Sonia’s father was the main breadwinner of the family and worked as a farmer – with five children to feed it was already tough on the family, but despite this they were happy.
“I don’t remember the day Father died, but he was buried near my home,” she recalls. She starts to cry at the thought of burying him.
Sonia remembers getting sick because of the lack of food. She also had to give up school as her mother had to find work, which was hard to come by.
As they grew more and more desperate, the local community reached out. Nuns from St Theresa Morwai school and convent near Barwadih, Jharkhand, asked the children to attend the community school and offered to house Sonia at the convent in an effort to take pressure off her mother.
Sonia misses her family but knows it’s for the best, for all of them.
One big plus of her new situation is that she gets to eat lunch every day, provided by Mary’s Meals.
“I enjoy eating Mary’s Meals. It is very tasty and energises me to study well,” she says.
As well as Mary’s Meals, her favourite food is pakora – chicken or vegetables fried in batter.
A studious girl, Sonia tells us she loves to learn English as she says she “wants to know different languages”, and she has many friends at the school.
