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The heat here is extreme.

Daytime temperatures stay above 40°C for weeks. Inside our shelters, it feels much hotter.

The shelters are made of thin plastic and rusted sheets. There is no shade. No ventilation. No fans.

At night it barely cools down, so we do not sleep.

Heat exhaustion, dehydration, skin rashes, and headaches are common. People on ARVs and TB medication suffer more because the drugs increase heat sensitivity. Children and the elderly collapse.

The small WFP rations spoil faster in the heat. Maize gets weevils. Beans ferment. We cannot store food, so we eat less.

Plastic tarps tear more in the sun. Rain leaks through, but the heat makes the plastic brittle, so shelters cannot be repaired with what we have.

We stay inside to hide from stigma and violence, but inside is an oven. We cannot move during the day, so we lose work, meetings, and chances to get help.

We queue for hours for water in the sun. Many get dizzy and go home empty-handed.

So we are urgently need support to go through this hell

We need Shade + Shelter Materials, Heavy-duty tarpaulins, rope, and poles to create communal shade and patch roofs.

Extra water points or jerrycans so we are not queuing for hours in 40°C heat.

Mosquito nets, floor mats, and if possible, solar fans for the most at-risk households.

Rehydration salts and basic skin medication at the clinic.

We are not asking for comfort. We are asking to survive the heat without falling sick or fainting.

Please share this. The world must know Gorom is burning.

Now I think it's one of the most complicated.

Because hope has a strange habit of keeping us alive...

While also breaking our hearts.

Someone once said,

"Hope is the cruelest delusion. We suffer more by expecting less suffering."

The first time I read those words, I wanted to disagree.

Hope has always been described as something beautiful.

Something noble.

Something worth holding onto.

But the more I lived, the more I understood what those words were trying to say.

Hope can hurt.

You hope someone will stay.

They leave.

You hope the interview goes well.

It doesn't.

You hope the test comes back negative.

You hope the person you love feels the same way.

You hope tomorrow will finally be different.

Every hope carries the possibility of disappointment.

Maybe that's why disappointment hurts so deeply.

It's not just the loss itself.

It's the future you imagined disappearing in front of you.

The conversations that never happened.

The plans that remained plans.

The life you had already started living in your mind.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier without hope.

If expecting nothing would protect us from pain.

If lowering our expectations would somehow make disappointment less sharp.

But every time I think that, I remember something.

The people I admire most aren't people who never hoped.

They're people who kept hoping after life gave them every reason not to.

Hope is painful because it makes us vulnerable.

It asks us to believe in something we cannot yet hold.

It asks us to plant seeds before we've seen the flowers.

To love without guarantees.

To begin without certainty.

To forgive without knowing the outcome.

Yes, expectation creates suffering.

But expectation also creates anticipation.

It gives tomorrow the possibility of being different from today.

Without hope, we may avoid some heartbreak.

But we'd also lose every reason to try again.

No one falls in love without hope.

No one starts over without hope.

No one heals without first believing healing is possible.

Hope may be the reason we cry.

But it's also the reason we get back up after we've finished crying.

I've started believing that hope isn't cruel because it sometimes disappoints us.

It's courageous because it continues to exist in people who have already been disappointed.

Maybe hope isn't the promise that everything will work out exactly as we imagined.

Maybe it's the quiet decision to keep walking, even when we can't see where the road leads.

To believe that life still has chapters we haven't read yet.

To trust that today's pain doesn't have to become tomorrow's identity.

Perhaps that's the paradox of being human.

We suffer because we hope.

And yet, without hope

We stop living long before life is over.

So maybe the goal isn't to abandon hope in order to avoid pain.

Maybe it's to hold hope gently.

To understand that it makes us vulnerable.