Report from Uganda Partnership Facilitator Following Visit

We had a lovely visit to Lira in late October 2022 although it was cut short by the need to return to Entebbe and on to New Zealand because of a threatened lockdown by the Ugandan Government due to a spreading Ebola outbreak in Kampala.  

Recent Events

Children

We met some of the children at Hope Restoration Centre (HRC). The actual number of children either living at HRC or supported by Anna and Penninah has dwindled during COVID as many have now graduated. There are now only five at HRC, and one living full-time with Anna and Simon in Mbale. The last of the young people are Tom, Yeko, Elvis, Jenn (who has changed her name to Jane), and Maurice.  

We also met Christabel, Winnie and Steven, all of whom have graduated from their respective trainings. I was greatly impressed by each of these three young people. All of them have some form of employment. Winnie was graduating as a midwife the next day. It looked like it was going to be a big event. If we had stayed in Lira, we were obviously going to be part of the audience. Robina also arrived to attend the graduation. She is a fully qualified nurse and is working “voluntarily” in Lira. Christabel is working in paid employment as a nurse in Kampala. We had lovely interactions with them, and they are clearly a credit to the love and care that they have been given through very difficult circumstances.   

Update in April: The children at HRC are doing well. All the children passed last year's exams with the exception of Jenn who had to repeat the year and who will look at vocational training after finishing this year.

Grinding Mill (UGA03c)

The mill is not yet making significant income although there is an operator and also a new building where the night guard and operator will live, and which will also become a storehouse. This is partially built and has been funded by the sale of some of Simon’s cows, as can be seen in the photos. All along the intention has been that the mill will replace the financial support from Bright Hope World to Hope Restoration Centre and is intended to enable the people here to finally become self-sustaining.  

Update in April: The mill is now working but only just and perhaps erratically. It had some mechanical difficulties, but these now seem to be largely being sorted out. Simon goes to Lira regularly. He is training the workers and stays there for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. It does seem that when he comes back to Mbale there can be some problems with the machinery, and when he goes there, he is able to resolve them. At the moment they are able to mill some maize that they have grown themselves. They are reinvesting the proceeds and not taking any income from it while they build it up so that the business can become self-sustaining. They're not making any profit out of it yet. Even so this is considerable progress, given that the mill was purchased approximately 12 years ago. 

This bodes well for the future of the families involved at Hope Restoration Centre, given my recommendations that once the mill is fully up and running, we should be looking at finishing our support of HRC, apart from the main educational costs.

Anna and Simon

Anna and Simon have had to move house in Mbale after 15 years in the same place. The position became untenable in the existing place as the landlord terminated the lease and had brought people in to start doing a renovation on the inside and outside of the property even while they were still living there. There were apparently issues regarding outstanding rental and the retention of Anna and Simon's personal possessions in the property, which they were initially not allowed to remove. That has now been resolved, they have been able to sort out the outstanding account and have now moved.

They have not moved far from where they were living previously. The place that they have now moved to has actually been vacant for some time and they are in the process of resolving the lease arrangements.

During a lot of this time Anna has also been sick and, in her words, depressed. I think they have found it very disrupting and tiring, particularly because they have also had issues with the landlord in Lira. The landlord wanted to increase the rent from 650,000 UGX a month to 900,000. This would not actually have been unreasonable as the previous rental had been unchanged for many years but the landlord finally agreed on 750,000 UGX, an increase of US$30 per month.  

Plans for the Future

The only way forward that I can see for this partnership, which allow us to finish supporting this part of the HRC ministry in accordance with the original commitments is as follows: 

1) We need to continue to fund HRC while the mill gets on its feet. It is unlikely to operate at full capacity over the next year or so. I would suggest that we establish a budget, which I am presently working on with Anna, which means that we will fund the rental on the house, some basic outgoings on the house, and the remaining five children’s education costs. At present all five of them, except Maurice, are in senior classes so the educational costs are limited. Maurice is doing agricultural training in Mbale now, living with Simon and Anna there in the same way that Emmanuel Ocen did several years ago. Maurice is like Emmanuel in that he is passionate about farming and Emmanuel was teaching him before he went to Dubai to work for two years. The others will all go on to tertiary or on the job training and many of them will do that this year. 

2) I recommend that we give them a further year of full support for household costs, particularly with the probable need to transition to new accommodation, and the educational costs for the remaining five young people. This will vastly reduce the allocated budget over this year. In the years ahead, while the remaining five seek job training or appropriate higher education, we should honour the earlier commitments made to support them through this.  

3) We will be insisting that the mill starts functioning at its full capacity as soon as possible. Simon has been quite diligent to take steps, but everything takes an enormous amount of time to be achieved. When we were there the problem with the mill is that a new part was needed which had meant that it couldn’t fully function. Simon was working on this.

Anna had also arranged to grow a crop of maize on land on the Kween Road about half an hour from Mbale centre. Unfortunately, the floods destroyed the vast majority of the crop and they only got five bags. However, many people lost all their crops in these catastrophic floods so she acknowledged that her outcome was better than it might have been. There is also land around the mill which could be used. These are their issues to resolve but we need to determine our level of support and put in some clear boundaries.

My recommendation is that all support to HRC be phased out over the next year, except for the actual education/tertiary costs and the related expenses for the children. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) It has been wonderful to reconnect with HRC in person after a three-year hiatus. They are doing well.  

2) For the number of young people who have received tertiary or vocational training and now have found some form of employment, albeit that much of it is ‘voluntary’ or ‘unpaid’. Most are gainfully employed. Many of the ones we have met evidence real character in their lives.  

3) The fact that the mill is finally nearly fully operational. It needs some impetus now to finalise this but is still encouraging.  

4) Pray that the remaining issues with the mill will be simply sorted out and that the mill can fully replace the financial support given by BHW so that Anna, Simon and Penninah, and the many others who rely on HRC for some type of support, can be self-sustaining.  

5) For us to be able to continue to have a significant relationship with HRC notwithstanding the change in financial support.  

Comments

Anna did express a great degree of gratitude for the involvement of Bright Hope World and particularly the prayers and support that has been given over the years. She identifies, as we all do, that there is a continual need for prayer and support.