Report from BHW Uganda Partnership Facilitators Following Visit in July

Recent Events

Anna Ocen

Anna has not been enjoying good health recently. The medication that we took her last year ran out just over two months ago which coincided with the rainy and cooler season. This has aggravated her asthma and has meant that she has literally not been able to do much for the last two months. She has been in and out of hospital several times. It is clear that her asthma is quite serious and possibly getting worse.

Our son is bringing her some more inhalers and we have supplied her with medication for the next year. 

Hope Restoration Centre

Hope Restoration Centre is doing well. Like everything else it has been faced with massively increased costs. Some of this is complicated by the fact that all of the children (including Jen the youngest) are now boarding. Many of them are back on the weekends.

One of the difficulties that we have in determining how to manage this budget is that the school year runs from January to December and the university and vocational training year runs from August to July. In practice this means that when the children finish senior school, there is a gap of nearly seven months until they start tertiary. For us this has created a little bit of confusion around the budgets.  

HRC cannot make ends meet on the current budget. This is because some of the children expected to continue on their senior education had finished at senior 5 and gone into vocational training. In 2016 Peter and Robina did this, in 2017 Sandra, Haggai, and Haggard and in 2018 Winnie, Alan Otike, Stephen Ogwino, Pilkington, Emmanuel Ayoo and Night will all be doing this. This means that the previous budgets have created quite an unexpected shortfall.

To address the shortfalls Anna has done what she can. She has adjusted pocket money and travel costs in the previous budget, reduced clothing and “parental” school visitation fees (there is an expectation of school visitation by “parents” during each term time). Anna has had to manage very carefully even to do this and has been faced with some other unexpected expenses. Maurice Opio had a last minute increase in his fees from 484,000 to 984,000.  Similarly Winnie and Yeko suffered increased fees.  

Children

The following is a list of the children and what they are presently doing:
1) Peter – Telecom
2) Robina – Nursing
3) Sandra – Plumbing
4) Haggai – Building
5) Emma Ocen – Agriculture
6) Haggard – Public Administration
7) Emma Ayoo – Teaching (to start)
8) Night – Education (start August)
9) Pilkington – not sure (start August)
10) Stephen Ogwino – Information and Computer Training (August 2018)
11) Alan Otike – Nursing (23 July 2018)
12) Winnie – Nursing (July 2018)
13) Maurice Opio – Senior Five
14) Elvis Ogema – Senior Four
15) Yeko Ocen – Senior Four
16) Tom Okello – Senior Four
17) Jen – Senior Three

The other children have finished. 

The Mill

The mill continues to be problematic. Apparently there was a partial resolution of the problem with the transformer which has now been installed. It has, however, been installed on one man’s property and it would look like no one else in the area is able to use it. The others who were hoping to have use of the larger transformer have made a significant complaint to the electricity authority and the new officer who has been transferred into the area has now recommended that the issue be rectified. This means that something is happening and it is now possible that the mill will be able to start operating in the near future.

In the meantime, Simon has been practising Foundations for Farming and has been growing ground nuts on the land around the mill. The ground nuts are used to supplement feeding at HRC and apparently one sack was sold.

Comments

The dilemma that we face is that BHW has effectively committed to journeying with HRC through the children’s education. Moving the emphasis from tertiary to vocational training has helped as the fees are slightly lower and sometimes the courses are shorter although this is not always the case as the Government has now introduced minimum two year requirements for any vocational training.

There are significant outgoings increases. One of the biggest increases is the cost of charcoal which has gone from 25,000 to 55,000 UGX a sack resulting in a large outgoing increase. 

The running costs are substantially the same even though the children are in boarding because parents/family are required to contribute towards feeding in the boarding situation. In addition the children are often home on weekends.

The significant change though is that children are now starting to finish their tertiary/vocational training and move on.