September 16-17th

On Wednesday, we left Kampala and traveled 4 hours west to Fort Portal. Uganda is a beautiful country full of green, rolling hills, and mountains. We stopped briefly to visit Faith, the founder and director of Bringing Hope to the Family. She has done an amazing job of organizing a children’s home (“we don’t call them orphans; they are children”), a vocational training center for 120 students, and a medical clinic currently serving 330 HIV-positive patients, 70% of which are children.

We picked up Mary Abigaba, our Fort Portal Director, and went to meet with the grandmother of one of our sponsored children. In Africa, it is customary to give a gift to someone helping you, no matter how poor you are or how small the gift. In Fort Portal, it is commons for the guardians of orphans who are part of our sponsorship program to give us gifts of food. This grandmother gave us a tray of eggs, a bowl of guava, and a bag of avocados. We have difficulty with this tradition considering the plight of the people giving, but Mary assures us we cannot refuse as it would be very rude. The same situation actually applies to all of our visits throughout Africa. A visitor is highly regarded and all of our partners serve us tea or soft drinks and something to eat.

After a long day, we checked in to the Rujuna Hilltop Guesthouse, a lovely bed and breakfast perched on a hill facing the Rwenzori mountain range and overlooking the village below. We can sit on the balcony and here the noises from the village, goats, cows, birds, chatter, and children laughing. It is a pleasure to stay here and feel like family with meals served in the dining room and long talks with the owner, Edith. The first time we stayed here we had the pleasure of spending time with her husband, Silvano. He entertained us with stories of his childhood, as well as his kidnapping and eventual exile by the army of the brutal dictator, Idi Amin. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2006 and Edith seems happy to have our company.

Thursday was spent making our way through the bumpy, dusty roads of the Fort Portal villages to visit the latest recipients of the Fort Portal microgrant Every year we grant cows to 40 women who are guardians of AIDS orphans. The majority are grandmothers who in their old age, are now responsible for the care of their grandchildren after the death of their own children. Too often they are caring for grandchildren from more than one of their own children. Yet, despite their difficult circumstances, it is unbelievable how much of a difference a cow can make. The daily milk for the children can greatly improve their health and with the $30-40 a month in milk sales, they can pay for basic necessities and send their grandchildren to school. They also breed the cows and can sell calves for additional income.

I have also been very impressed with their initiative. The women form their own micro-credit groups and save small amount of money to give each other loans to start additional businesses. Once the money is paid back, they decide to make a loan to another member. This proves to me that the initiative and motivation is always there, they just need the seed money to get started.