Report from BHW Uganda Partnership Facilitator Following Visit in October

This report follows a meeting with Anna and Sarah Muzaki, and quite a lot of the loan beneficiaries, in Mbale on 26th October. We arrived in Mbale on the night of 25 October and were treated to the usual great hospitality with Anna and her family. It was wonderful to catch up with Simon as well. 

Recent Events

Challenges

I continue to be greatly impressed with the strength and resilience of this loan programme, especially as they have had an enormous number of challenges recently. The Covid pandemic locked the country down for the best part of two years. Anna said that the first lockdown was not too bad, but that the second one, which was imposed about 3 months after the end of the first one, had been terrible. We have seen photo evidence of deaths from starvation in the local population. Not only that, but Mbale had a devastating flood in June 2022. There is no real understanding of how many lives were lost, as the bodies were not all recovered, but it was somewhere in excess of 50 people.  

Anna and Simon

Maurice, one of the children from Hope Restoration Centre, is living with them in Mbale and studying agriculture. He was inspired by Emmanuel Ocen, who we have previously reported on, and who is an enthusiastic farmer. In the house are also Anna and Simon’s deaf daughter, Deborah, Anna’s sister Hope, and a number of other people.

Despite the challenges I did find them to be in good heart and we did have a lovely connection with them. 

Loan Beneficiaries

We met with a number of the loan beneficiaries at Anna’s house. What was different this time is that quite a large number of the 12 or so people in the room were each taking responsibility for four or five other loan beneficiaries, ensuring that they were paying on time, and giving them support and encouragement. This means that Anna is recognizing the need for new leadership and succession in the role.

This loan programme has grown significantly even during the lockdown. There are now 86 beneficiaries in the programme, up from about 55 to 60 three years ago. In the room we met several people that we had met before and a number of new people. Among the new people were Immaculate (second hand clothes and some growing), Harriet, Pastor Fred (about to become the second male beneficiary and do some farming), Angela Agnes, and Norah.

All of the loan beneficiaries had difficult stories to tell around the two-year lockdown. However, all of them were also interested in learning more about how to grow food to sustain themselves in difficult times. We therefore need to urgently look at the possibility of securing a local, Uganda based, trainer in Foundations for Farming to assist groups like this to develop and grow.

Among the other people who were in the room were the two Gertrudes from the bakery (both of whom were carrying injuries from boda boda accidents), Dimali who had a hair salon, Anna’s daughter Deborah, and Fatima. Deborah, despite being deaf, supports herself with lovely baking, cake decorating and jewellery. Fatima is a Muslim woman who we have previously reported on. Historically most of the Muslim women in this group have become Christians although there are still a few who are not. Fatima is wonderfully articulate, runs a cosmetic shop which she is about to close because it is failing, and is very keen to develop growing or farming. During the meeting she described problems with her daughter, at which one of the other beneficiaries told her that her daughter needed to find Jesus Christ. Fatima fully agreed with this and joined in the prayer [to Jesus] for her! Again, this is a wonderful testimony to this programme. 

Personal Stories

Norah

Norah is one of Sarah’s protegees in Eastern Mbale, about 5 km from where Anna lives (Norah is on the left and Sarah Muzaki on the right). She has a first loan of 300,000 UGX (US$90) which is helping her with the inputs to enable her to farm her land. She has two children and a husband who also helps with the land preparation. Norah is clearly interested in Foundations for Farming. We had understood that Sarah had taught her some of the basics although unfortunately, we saw some, but not much evidence of that. However, there was evidence that she was mulching, and she had been working extremely hard on her land, growing tomatoes, maize, rice and sweet potatoes. She had a lot of land. John perhaps thought she had taken on more than she could adequately handle. 

Grace 

After we had visited Norah, Anna took us to visit Grace, of bakery fame. She has been evicted from the property where the bakery was and had to rehouse herself. Grace was in great form however, as her four children had all pitched in and built a house for her on land that had been purchased. She also had an area of land around the house which she was starting to plant and develop.  She has three grandchildren living with her. Although the bakery at the old property is now gone, she has built herself a small oven and still continues to make some deep-fried products which are quite exquisitely nice!

We had previously reported that Grace had not been entirely faithful with making loan payments. There seemed to have been some breakdown in relationship, which has now been resolved. She still owes some money to the programme but is catching up. Like everybody else she was hugely affected by the pandemic, and the eviction. 

In her words she said that “The dream (of the bakery) is still there”. Some of the other bakery members (Betty and two Gertrudes) are still involved with what she is doing now. We did point out that BHW would not be supporting the bakery in anything like the way that was previously planned as it has not been possible to develop a true cooperative. I think this position holds true except that if there was a proposal for some baking equipment, along with ideas for employment of others, this might still have some much smaller potential.

After the visit to Grace, we had the most amazing encounter. Anna has introduced the first man to the loan programme, and it was exciting to visit his extraordinary business.

Elisha of Kuzukira Snacks 

Anna took us to a business in the extraordinarily busy eastern market in Mbale. It was a cacophony of people, motorbikes, vehicles and stuff! She introduced us to the first male loan beneficiary. Anna had been a customer of his when he was starting out and one day said to him something like “One day one of your customers will become your angel”. In reality Elisha said Anna had become that angel to him. 

Elisha had a very troubled history. He had been growing rice on someone’s land but his rice crop failed and he lost 7m UGX (about US$2,000 - a huge amount of money). After that he had relocated to Mbale with his family and obtained very basic employment in the Bugere market on the outskirts of the city. He lost that job because the employer mistreated him and fired him. In this job he was being paid 3000 UGX a day (US$1) and still had a family to support. His wife is a teacher, but teachers don’t always get paid either.

Subsequently he relocated to this market and started a business making foodstuffs in 2021. He makes chapatis and samosas etc. This business has grown hugely and there are now 17 young people in full-time employment in the business. In addition, he provides financial support for a number of infirm or crippled people. One of these women was there when we were there.

The young people that he employs were street people, and vulnerable or troubled people. The first ones he took on he was paying 7000 UGX per day (US$2), each day that they worked. Now he pays, as I understand it, at least 10,000 UGX (US$3) per employee per day. For many of these young people that is a fortune.

When he started this business, he was located in the centre of Mbale, near the bus park. Unfortunately, two of his first trainees ganged up against him and he was chased out of that market. He subsequently relocated to his current location and business is thriving.

Kuzukira means “resurrection”. He feels that his life has been resurrected and is for service to other people. He sells his chapatis, and other foodstuffs that they produce, not just in the marketplace but to local schools, hospitals, police, and the university. Many of the young people are his “salesmen” and out travelling around.

He was clearly highly enthusiastic about the mentoring role for young people. He had a great relationship with them, and we interviewed a number of them along the way.

We were introduced to Maureen Johnson, his first employee. She is a young mother. She described a very challenging background during which she had suffered both mental illness, and demonic activity. In a very matter of fact way, she described how the devil had stolen her memory. The way she described it, we believed her.  She has now regained her memory, is very articulate, works for Elisha, and is also active in a local church.

One of the other young people had been rejected by his family and had tried to hang himself. He is now actively employed, earning money, and clearly enthusiastic about what he does. 

Current Issues and Challenges

Anna and Simon are currently faced with the fact that the landlord wants their house back and he had given them until 2nd November to vacate. At the time of my visit, they had not yet made plans to vacate, and are hoping that they might be able to negotiate for a further extension.

While we were travelling around Mbale, Anna was also in phone communication with the landlord at Lira (Hope Restoration Centre - UGA03a) who also wishes to take back the rental of that property to turn it into a Funeral Home. He is proposing to do this before Christmas and is apparently being very demanding. Anna does seem quite stressed by this.

Recommendations

1) BHW provide some additional funding support to this group to enable the lending to expand. They have a model that allows them to take on new beneficiaries, without relying on Anna to be the king pin and I think we should support this. (The BHW Exec has approved recommencing financial support at a level of US$3,000/year for the next two years. At that stage the programme will be reviewed to assess if there is further need for support or expansion.) 

2) With costs having gone up significantly the Exec has also approved increasing the administration support to Anna for the two loan programmes. She is relentlessly involved with the people, and continuously travelling between Lira and Mbale. 

3) Funding will also be allocated for Foundations for Farming training for this group within the next year, if we can find an appropriate trainer. The likely cost of this will be in the order of US$1,000-$2,000. There is significant interest in this. 

Comments

To be frank I haven’t seen anywhere in my travels, such a great outcome from what is an incredibly modest amount of money advanced by way of a loan (it was initially 300,000 UGX and the loan  fund now stands at 800,000 UGX).

Seeing stories like the ones above give me a great deal of confidence to want to continue with this loan programme, and to support what is going on in these two loan programmes in Mbale and Lira. Even though the trend will be to shift loan programmes towards table banking, these programmes are marked by good levels of trust and cohesiveness in the groups.

We do need to be realistic that payments are a lot more erratic at the moment. People literally have nothing and are absolutely struggling to make ends meet in Uganda. There was a lot more extreme poverty, and a huge small business downturn, which is going to take years to recover from. At the same time, I do not think that we should delay in providing support. 

In summary this programme amazes me. Anna has significant, and growing, health problems but she continues on and works incredibly hard to support two very large groups of women, while also speaking at conferences both in Uganda and other parts of Africa. She has an invitation to speak in Zimbabwe early next year.