How many potatoes can you peel in a day?

So that was our last day of work here. We’ve another day in Soroti, a day to visit Sipi Falls, a day of driving, and a day in Entebbe before our midnight flight on Wednesday. Once again, we’ve been made incredibly welcome. We’ve reconnected with our Global Care Soroti family and made some new friends. We’ve been truly blessed and spoilt with good food and chat. We’ve written more logframes than I care to remember.  The exercise reinforced our impression of the inspiration, vision and care of this team. We’ve asked difficult questions and left them with more work, and really hope what we did has helped them with their proposals for new interventions. We’ve talked about budgets and business plans – for anyone reading this who really knows me, I had a giddy moment when I showed the team how to write a Gantt Chart!! We’ve looked at reports and recording and thought again how hard it is when you keep paper records or don’t have access to computers which have become so much part of our daily lives.

There are some moments I will never forget:

·         Mike and Sam stripping corn cobs so they can take the maize for milling.  A pile of maize sacks was an encouraging example of the great harvest they had this year. As their knives peeled the kernels, yellow mini hailstones rained around them. By the end their chairs and bowls were islands in a sea of corn.

·         Meeting sponsored children and hearing their stories. Shy teenagers and confident young men, the little 4-year-old boy. Knowing how grateful they are because they say without GCare they would be ‘nothing’.

·         Listening today to Francis, a National Representative for disabled people speak with passion and wisdom. It was uncomfortable sitting on my wrap on a hard, dirty stone floor, with other women. The men sat on chairs or benches. Francis talked to the executive committee of the new Abeko Disability Support Group, helping them understand the legal process and constitutional requirements for a village group. People arrived slowly – some walking miles in the heat. One exhausted women arrived with an IV cannula in her hand, and lent against a tree trunk, sweat pouring off her face. But they came. They want to learn how they can improve the lives of people with disability.

·         Peering into a tiny dark hut to see our friend from the Ark and her beautiful smile as we left.

·         The mother cradling her disabled son with compassion and love pouring over him like a sweet balm of peace.

·         Listening to people talk about the problems for people with disabilities – some similar but most vastly different from the UK. How can you fetch water if you can only crawl, or if the borehole is too far away, or if you’re blind? How can you build a house if you can’t use an axe or climb a tree for branches or get a job to pay for materials or labour?

The laughter and smiles in the Ark. The peace and joy covering the children. Seeing a child count from 1-10, standing in a standing frame, talking – all huge improvements from last time we were here. And the child who was like a different boy. Gone was the miserable, unsociable child and here was a laughing healthy boy who wanted to play and was cross if Uncle wasn’t with me.

·         Seeing tiny, tiny babies at Amecet – motherless or sick or both. Little faces crying for comfort and love and milk. And the awesome caring team who look after them.

Today I thought I’d give you some money facts.

·         We paid a similar amount for 11 nights at our hotel in Soroti as the families were given to set up businesses to provide for their disabled children and the rest of the family, when children were discharged from the Ark.

·         We pay our driver Kampala Muzungu rates and the daily cost of the car and driver is the same as someone in the village gets for a month.       

 Peeling a 20 -25kg basin of potatoes pays 1,000UgS (about 20p). An elderly grandmother supporting herself and a child can probably peel 3 – 5 /day. That’s their only income.

·         We paid 3 times as much for a meal in the hotel (which is full of foreigners) as we paid in the café in Mbale, and one hotel meal is not much less than the price of a chicken (£4).

·         In the village you pay someone to maintain and protect the borehole – nothing is free here.

·         In town in a poor area, renting a small hut will cost you £6/month and you share a latrine with 30-50 people.

It really is a crazy world. The grandmother could never afford a 40p rolex – she has to provide for everything – not just food. 

I suspect we’re going to go home and consider our giving again and as we go back to our lovely home, I hope we don’t just count our blessings but remember the need here too.

I am incredibly grateful to Global Care for allowing us the privilege of seeing the work first hand, meeting families and communities who benefit from their work, children with hope for the future, and the utterly wonderful local team.