Mohamed Jalloh goes to the Kabala Government Hospital to feed patients who have no family nearby to bring them food. It is ordinary work. He does it often.
On one of those days, somebody took him aside and told him about a room at the end of the ward.
There was a young man in it, on his own. He had not eaten. He was not being treated any more, because he had been declared beyond saving. His leg was gangrenous and Mohamed could smell it from the doorway.
He went in anyway.
He fed him. He made sure somebody was looking after him. Then he found out what it would actually take to save him, which was more than Kabala could do. The surgeons who handle this kind of injury are at Masanga Hospital, in Tonkolili District — most of the way across the country. The young man would have to be moved there.
Mohamed called us and asked for the money.
We sent $550. It paid for the journey to Masanga, the amputation, and a little over a month as an inpatient before he was discharged.
He is alive. He is learning to move again, and his mother sits beside him. On 12 July 2026 we brought the funds for the next stage of his care.
$550 is about three per cent of everything Lamalhaji has raised in three years. We are not a large organisation and that was not a small decision. We made it in an afternoon, because a man was going to die in a side room over a sum of money that would not cover a week’s rent in Boston.
We are writing this down because it is not typical. Most of what we do is quieter — a school uniform, a set of exercise books, a hot meal for someone whose family lives too far away to bring one. But quiet work is why this happened at all. Nobody was looking for a man in an isolated room. He was found because somebody turned up to hand out food, week after week, until the day someone thought to mention him.
That is what your giving pays for. Not rescues. Attendance.
July 2026. Found at the Kabala Government Hospital, Koinadugu District; treated at Masanga Hospital, Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone. Transport, surgery and a month of inpatient care: $550, funded entirely by individual donors.
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