By Chinwuba Iyizoba
A Danish social worker who fed and gave new life to a Nigerian child left for dead by his family because they thought he was a witch is herself rewarded with a new life.
In 2016, a Danish woman, Anja Ringgren Lovena, a social worker, found a toddler, emaciated and riddled with worms,, wandering the streets of Akwa-Ibom, he was naked and fending for himself.
She bent down and gently fed the boy and gave him some water, later she wrapped him in a blanket and with the help of her team, took him to a hospital where he was given medications to remove the worms from his stomach and given daily blood transfusions till he was stable enough. She then took him home, washed, cleaned, fed, clothed him, and called him Hope.
Pictures she shared of her feeding the starving boy broke the internet and the hearts of many the world over, and she received more than a million dollars in donations. A few months later she posted pictures of the fully recovered boy looking healthy and robust. Again, the pictures went viral and she became a celebrity, but more importantly, her life was changed forever.
The boy Hope had brought hope back into her own life.
“I have been looking to find meaning in my life,” said Anja, who grew up in a loving home, where her Mom worked with elderly people and taught her how to care for and love other people. Her mom often told her stories of African children starving, and as a young woman, she became very fascinated with Africa.
At 23, her mother’s death from cancer shattered her life. Distraught, she began looking to find meaning in her life and decided to come to Africa.
She founded an organization for children in 2012 in Malawi but opted for Nigeria when she stumbled across online articles about children killed after being accused of witchcraft in Nigeria.
“When I found out that so many innocent children in the Niger Delta Region were tortured and killed due to superstition and the belief in witchcraft, I was in total shock,” said Anja, “it really made me so sick to my bones. How could anyone do this to children?”
From then on nothing could stop her from coming to Nigeria. Children needed help
In Nigeria, in 2013, she met and fell in love with David Umen, a social worker and a law student; together they formed a team and built a children’s center.
She and David had been on many rescue missions, in obscurity, unclaimed until that fateful morning of 30th January 2016, when she found Hope, a most precious gift clothed in a distressing disguise. Hope made her famous.
Now she has 100,000 followers on Instagram, more than 150,000 Facebook followers, and millions across the globe who, admiring her generous heart, wish to be better.
On that January morning when she first looked into Hope’s frightfully hungry eyes, she saw with crystal clarity, what many Danish people or Americans or Europeans can’t see, and therefore can’t understand or even imagine exists.
She grasped that unless she helped them see what she was seeing with her eyes, through the lens of her camera, many would continue drifting aimlessly, chasing shadows and fleeting pleasures, unaware of that inner call to dedicate themselves to something greater than them.
Her pictures shattered the comfortable selfish lives of millions, and raised consciences long dead; and as she extended her hands to feed that little starving child, many satiated stomachs whose hands never extended to feed any other but themselves quivered uneasily knowing they could be better, they could contribute something, they could share some of their bread with those who have naught.
“When she saw the starving child, she acted like a human being and became an inspiration for millions,” says the editor of German-language Ooom Magazine which listed Anja as the most influential person of the year 2016.
“Her sustained efforts to help the abandoned children of Nigeria give us hope and encourage us to follow suit.”
Africa has given Anja a gift, a return to humanity now lost to many of her folks bent on killing their children through abortions. Abortion is fully legal in Denmark, done on-demand up to the twelfth week. A super-rich country like the United States killed more than 45 million children via abortion since the 70’s, and just this week, New York legalized abortions until birth for any reason whatsoever!
Africans are ignorant, backward, and poor; no doubt, and in their ignorance, kill children. Yet, they are excusable precisely because they are poor, ignorant, and backward.
More shocking and inexcusable are the acts of nations and peoples, highly educated, highly progressive, and super-rich who kill unborn children as a right and a privilege. According to Mother Theresa of Calcutta, “Any country that accepts abortion is the poorest of the poor.”
“Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa,” continues Mother Theresa. “These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today- abortion which brings people to such blindness.”
Unlike African blindness, easy to cure with education and bread, European blindness is complicated and requires complete surgery to right their crocked worldview filled with anti-human ideologies of trans-genderism, of homosexuality, and atheistic anti-life policies.
Africa has given Anja a home to welcome as many witch children as her heart desires; Africa has also given her a gift of love in return: Emmanuel, her handsome husband, has filled her heart with joy of life and a gift of her own very son whom she cherishes more than life itself.
By extension, Anja’s action encourages all Nigerians to rise and uproot this evil superstition of killing children and do more to help others; there is a joy that the world cannot give that comes from helping others, and as the end of life approaches, perhaps those acts of charity are the only things that will endure; for it is simply true that when we help others, we become better.
By Chinwuba Iyizoba
Authors-choice: Hope & Revival 
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