His thoughts always returned to that day, and the panic attacks continued for six years.
Life would never be the same for Joe Tiago and his family after Feb. 17, 2007. He was watching Viridiane, his 7-year-old daughter, play basketball at the YMCA in Austin, Texas. “She was having the best game of her life,” said Tiago. “I was sitting there watching her coming toward me, and she collapsed.” They thought she was just dehydrated, but after helping her to a water fountain, Viridiane collapsed again into her father’s arms, and she would never regain consciousness.
She died at the hospital early the next morning. “We had no idea she had a congenital twist of the coronary artery of her heart. That’s what I was told caused her death,” said Tiago, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cameroon with his family of four in 2000.
Remaining in Austin was too much to bear, and the family, now with three more children, moved to Northern Virginia in 2008.They are members of Nativity Catholic Church in Burke.
“It took me about six years to even talk about the death of Viridiane without having a panic attack,” said Tiago. “Just the thought about sharing that experience was very traumatic.”
The panic attacks would eventually subside, but the years of grief lingered, and Tiago found “no peace or comfort.” Yet, he knew he had to do something on the 10-year anniversary of her death. “We were asking God to please help us deal with this grief,” he said. “The inspiration we had was that we received a calling to do something for other children in the name of our daughter to channel that grief.”
Founded in 2018, Viridiane’s Hope for Children’s Health and Education was the fulfillment of that inspiration and is now a nonprofit charity providing school construction, clean water and hope to thousands of children in Cameroon.
Funded by proceeds from bingo games, church fundraisers, and his own savings, Tiago and VHCHE volunteers reconstructed the dilapidated St. Anne Catholic School in 2021 for 250 children in Melong, a village in the French-speaking part of Cameroon.
Then the refugees came. The United Nations estimates that 700,000 people have been displaced by war being waged in the English-speaking part of Cameroon, where separatists calling for an independent state of Ambazonia have been fighting government forces since 2017.
Tiago saw an immediate need, as the English-speaking refugee children were without a school. “Some children are left to do just farming or menial work with their parents,” he said. “Very few have the means to be educated.”
The village has no infrastructure and only recently received clean drinking water, thanks to VHCHE volunteers who drilled a well. The school for the refugees in Melong is one of Tiago’s many projects. Beyond the relative safety of French-speaking Cameroon, Tiago and his volunteer crew ventured into the English-speaking war zone to build two wells that will supply water for two Catholic churches and more than 4,000 people.
“I went to the spring where the kids were getting water to use for laundry, cooking, and drinking, and it was stagnant,” he said. “A child must walk miles and carry five or 10 gallons on his head to come home and drop off the water before they go to school. It’s like you receive gold when the community has clean water to drink. It’s more than gold, because it’s just so rare to access drinking water.”
Donna Piscitelli’s mission trip to the Melong village with VHCHE last year was an overwhelming experience. “I’m an educator and it broke my heart to see the number of children that were not in school,” said Piscitelli, a parishioner of St. Lawrence Church in Alexandria. “I saw children standing on the side of the road, selling whatever it was they had to sell. I was deeply moved by the life that these people live, but at the same time everyone was praising God. Those who have the least love God more than we do in this country I think because they recognize how much they need him.”
Tiago doesn’t speak of overcoming grief. He says that grief must be channeled through action and the best kind of action is the kind that helps others. “Although mission work cannot heal grief, it continues to play a significant role in lessening my anxiety,” said Tiago, a parishioner at Nativity Catholic Church in Burke. “Bringing hope to others that are suffering and desperate gives me strength.”
And if that means bringing fresh drinking water to desperate people surrounded by war, so be it.
“We are open to God’s spirit and his guidance,” he said. “Wherever he sends us to go next, that’s where we’re going to go.”
Find out more
For more on Viridiane’s Hope for Children’s Health and Education, go to vhche.org
