Daily porridge for 750 Infants in Northern Uganda

Here in the UK, we are starting to emerge from the dark and long tunnel of Covid and I hope that, wherever you are, that things are ok with you and your families.  In Uganda the Covid situation is very different to here.  Reported cases and deaths are low. However, the unintended consequences have been huge.

We learned a lot in 2020 and one of the most important lessons was just how vulnerable the people we support are.  When they went into lockdown, like us they stockpiled food. They used their savings to make sure they had food for what they thought would be a few weeks. The weeks turned to months and they turned to the seeds they had kept for the season ahead.  Having eaten the seeds, they had no alternative but to turn to nature and resorted to eating grass and wild plants.  With no money and no food, they started falling weak and sick, but had no money for medicine.  There was no transport, because of the lockdown and curfews, and women found themselves giving birth on the way to the clinic to deliver their babies.   A grim picture indeed.

It's not just in northern Uganda this is happening.  Big international development organisations are saying that development progress could be put back as much as 20 years or more.  I don't know about that, but I did know that we had to act swiftly, decisively and creatively, which we did.

We deployed the teachers into the communities to find out more.  The schools were shut (and still are) and we wanted to continue paying them, but not to do nothing.  They moved from home to home, teaching the children and providing porridge.  If the children couldn't get to school for their porridge, we would take the porridge to the children.  They are also teaching the parents about Covid and how to prevent it - not easy when you have no water.

We sent tons of emergency food and thousands of bars of soap to the villages.  When the maize harvest came in, we bought tons of that too and distributed it to the most vulnerable. We commissioned the child mothers to make face masks and handed those out to everyone. This was really important because it was illegal to move anywhere without one and there was no way they could afford to buy them, or pay the fine if caught without.

It is almost impossible to monitor the impact of this in any detail, but we are pretty sure it is happening as whenever someone is ill or disaster strikes when a house is burned down we hear about it and have been able to respond and help families directly, as and when needed.  

Covid has meant that we have had to change almost everything about how we work and it has actually been a very positive thing. 

We can't travel, so rely 100% on feedback from Uganda and have provided key people in the villages with smart phones and data bundles, so they can send photos directly to us via WhatsApp.  When Doreen's house burned down, we received photos of it actually happening.   When whole villages were reporting Scabies, we could buy tubes of cream to treat them.

We can't go to the bank to make bank transfers, so have switched to using World Remit and Mobile Money as the new mechanism.  It is brilliant and we will not be looking back.  Take Doreen's house fire.  Within hours of hearing about it, we were able to send money to provide emergency goods, like a blanket, jerry can and food and within days she had rebuilt her home.  Doreen is the cook at Paibwor Nursery School and every day she prepares their porridge, we had to help her.

This year, we are planning for the hunger that will come.  We have planted 380 acres of maize, which we plan to buy back from the farmers when it is harvested and store it until it is needed.

The nursery schools are still shut, but we hope they will re-open soon and when they do, we will be ready.

Thank you for your ongoing support, it is hugely appreciated and greatly needed.

With all best wishes

Alison

Links:

• Seeds for Development website