The Step Up Challenge has been a huge success – thank you to everyone who took part, in the planning, walking or donating – as you can see we far exceeded our target number of steps and raised £2,701 which will enable us not only to buy sandals for all the children in both villages but also Wellington boots for the barefooted farmers. Sadly, the shopping will be delayed as since 6th June Uganda is now subject to a further six week partial lockdown which includes limiting travel and closing all schools….
Milton says,’ Beans are now ready, people have started harvesting and eating which was not previously the case to have them ready as early as the end of May. Usually none could harvest until the end of June but this time the end of May. It's like a miracle but this is the reality.’
He also sent these photo’s showing how the children carry the leaves and stalks from the fields to feed to any livestock in the village.
In Namayili the farmers have had another meeting and Joseph sent this update ‘The maize is flowering, all we can do is wait for the crops to come through now. Our beans have not done well this season. We had some success with soya beans initially, but birds ate a lot of the germinating seeds! Some areas of the village are seeing cabbages coming up now too.’
As you know the school year has been very disrupted by Covid restrictions in Uganda. To increase social isolation only the older children initially returned – years 4 and 5 are pictured here completing their end of term tests. However the rise in Delta Variant Covid cases has caused another lockdown which has prevented the younger children returning to school as planned. We continue to hope that all the children will be able to return on 9th August – the numbers are still very low but with such poor healthcare and so little access to vaccines the whole country is vulnerable.
And here are the older children assembled outside the school.
I am delighted that we have had seven new sponsors join us in the past month, partly as a result of the Step Up Challenge – but we have more children, some of them ‘balondo’ ( the local name for albino) still needing support. Please encourage your friends and family to email me if they might be interested.
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