Many of you have been involved with one particular project or another and may feel like you don’t have a clear picture of what all is happening with HIPPO and Uganda these days.   We thought we do an update of what continues to happen in the slum areas of Banda, at our school in neighbouring Kireka and at the school in Mukono.   Either Tim or both Tim and I are continuing to go to Uganda for the start of each of the three school terms. While we are there, we go over new resources with the teachers, buy all the food and supplies for the term, pay the staff, problem solve and make changes and improvements with the staff and students, start new housing projects, and occasionally get to bring wonderful visitors like the dentists, Paul, Mike and our parents who have all used their various talents to help the community. 

 

The new school year in Uganda started on February 2^nd. Over the two month Christmas school break (like our 2 months summer break), some of the kids visited their home villages and most of them continued to come to school for a half day camp program. This program allows us to continue to feed and provide medical care for the kids as well as a chance for them to play games, sports and do crafts like weaving skipping ropes from reeds and making dolls from various grasses (no marijuana was used in the production of any dolls).

 

Although we had uniform T-shirts made for the school at this time last year, they were almost completely destroyed in one years time. Between the daily wear in the dirt and the sun, and the daily hand scrubbing, there wasn’t much left of them in most cases.   Thanks to Cary and Larry and their families, we were able to have new ones made in Canada and brought them with us to give to the kids. We were able to bring enough for the 80 students at the Mukono school as well – theirs are red.

 

It has been a year since we have been running our HIPPO school and it has been both extremely challenging and rewarding. Our first job was to make a secure, safe and fun environment for the almost 200 students. We were able to convert two small houses into classrooms, an office, a library, a bathroom and storage, and build 4 new classrooms, bring water in with a new water tower, made a covered cooking area, built a large concrete sink for hand washing and drinking, and surround it all with a compound wall and gate. Over the year, we did a bit of landscaping, brought in plants and palm trees, made a soccer/volleyball area, and put up basketball nets.

 

Along with getting some basic needs in the school such as desks and chairs, resource materials, textbooks and library books, we hired Nurse Esther to begin treating each of the kids for various medical problems from worms, malnutrition, open infectious wounds, malaria and HIV. She was super busy at first and has finally slowed to a more reasonable pace. The kids look so much healthier one year later and it is really wonderful for us to see such a big difference.   Sadly, we estimate the number of children in our school that are HIV positive to be 50% or more. We are beginning to examine how to deal with this rampant problem both in the school and in the community.  

 

We improved the food from a basic gruel to include rice, beans, and lots of vegetables. We are so thankful to those who help us pay for the teachers, food, and medicine each month and allow us to care for these kids without the stress of a lack of funds for these basic needs.

 

On this trip, our focus was to really start to get their education improved by working with the teachers, making sure they have the books and resources they need, encouraging them to lesson plan and to follow their curriculum. This is a big challenge and we will have some help this year with some volunteers from both Canada and the U.S. which we are very excited about!!   We finally found a small plot of land to rent around the corner from our school for grades 5 and 6. These grades have been down at the original school site and it has been really difficult for them. We had no room for them at the HIPPO school and so they have been making due with no desks and very little in the way of resources. The wooden boards making up their classrooms have slowly been taken for firewood and although they join us for breakfast and lunch, they haven’t really benefited from the new school site. Construction is under way for two classrooms with room for one more and a small library/office. Although the work and responsibility for running a school in Uganda has many challenges, we just can’t think of a better way to keep so many kids safe, fed, clothed, healthy and happy.

 

Another focus of ours continues to be building houses for families; almost always widows and their kids that are currently living in sub-human conditions in the slums. As we write this, 5 more houses are being completed by Moses and Moses (our construction guys) bringing the grand total to 63 houses and over 300 lives that are now safe and dry and free from paying rent. We were able to find a few more little plots to buy before we left and Tim will arrange the construction of more homes next time when he is there in May. We make it our policy to be there to meet the women, get to know them and their stories, pay for the land, make sure there is some written contract and pay for the labour and materials ourselves. This eliminates so many potential problems and it seems to be working well this way. So many of you have made it possible for a family to go from living on a porch or under reeds and paper bags to a house of their own. Thank you so much!

 

We continue to provide small micro loans to widows in our area. We have been able to re-loan up to three times to those that have repaid. Others are so incredibly poor, that it will take them longer to pay back. We were able to start 6 more micro loans on this trip.

 

We also have some projects started in Wycliffe’s (our administrator) village on the border of Kenya. This farming community has been really struggling, the crops have been failing from poor seed and lack of equipment and an unusual period of flooding while we lived there. They have begun planting hybrid seed and I’ll let Tim explain it all once he visits the village in May. 

 

About 30 minutes to the east of our school is the rural village of Mukono. When we lived in Uganda, Tim built a school/church building there for a poor community. The school was started by a pastor and the parents and we do as much as we can to help them when possible. We provide the school with food on a weekly basis, helped them put in toilets and provide extra school supplies when we can. On this trip, we were able to bring them quite a few supplies thanks to your donations.   Tim has written more about Mukono in this update.

 

Please click on the youtube link to see a slideshow of our ongoing work in Uganda.