At the far end of Moyo Street stood a house that looked forgotten by time—its roof sagging, its walls cracked, its windows covered with old pieces of cloth. People called it the broken house. What many didn’t know was that inside lived three children who carried more pain than the walls around them.
Amina was thirteen, but hardship had aged her. Jio, only eight, had a silence in his eyes that no child should carry. And baby Lela, barely three, still stretched her arms every morning, calling for a mother who would never answer.
Their parents had died the same year—one to sickness, the other to a tragedy no one liked to speak about. Poverty followed their loss like a shadow.
Amina woke before sunrise to fetch water and search for small chores—washing clothes for neighbors, sweeping dusty yards, collecting firewood. Jio stayed home, trying to keep Lela busy, though hunger sometimes made her cry until sleep carried her away again.
But the hardest part wasn’t the empty pots or the broken walls.
It was the loneliness.
At night, when the village grew quiet, Amina sat outside and whispered to herself, “One day one day things will change.” But her voice often trembled, as though even she doubted her own hope.
People passed by. Some pitied them silently. Others judged them for being poor, as if children chose their suffering. But no one entered the broken house—not until the day Mama Zawadi arrived.
Mama Zawadi was an elderly woman known for her stubborn kindness and the warm fire that always burned in her kitchen. One afternoon, she saw Amina carrying a jug of water too heavy for her small frame. She walked toward her softly.
“Child,” she said, “you’re carrying a load bigger than your shoulders.”
Amina forcely smiled . “We’re fine, Mama.”
“No,” Mama Zawadi whispered, “you are surviving.
That evening, she knocked on the door of the broken house. Amina hesitated—she wasn’t used to people coming to help. But when she saw the pot of warm food in the woman’s hands, something inside her broke, and her eyes filled with tears she had held for months.
From that night forward, everything began to change—not quickly, not magically, but slowly, like dawn rising after a long night.
Mama Zawadi brought food, taught Amina how to sew, helped Jio with reading, and held Lela when Amina needed rest. She didn’t try to replace their mother; she simply became a shelter they never had.
Months turned into years.
The broken house did not transform into a mansion, but the it transformed into different souls.
Amina grew into a strong woman who worked with charity organizations to support children ,Jio became a carpenter, building homes that wouldn’t crumble the way his childhood one had. Lela became a nurse, tending to the forgotten and the hurting.
And every year, on the anniversary of their parents’ passing, they gathered at Mama Zawadi’s home, holding her hands as she smiled proudly at the family she helped rebuild.
“We were the children of the broken house,” Amina always said. “But love gave us a change
