At village level harvests this year will be very poor and definitely continued food shortage; this is made worse by the turmoil which was in Kenya early in the year. Time memorial, eastern Uganda has been traditionally supplementing the ever poor crop yields in western Kenya, but due to upheavals, the farmers in western Kenya did not even grow first rains crops, so have to depend on the poor yields in Uganda! This poses real social threat to our people.
Today I had to respond to an emergency call, that is a looming out break of Cholera in Tororo, for it is just about 18-20 miles north as reported this morning on our local FM station. On hearing this threatening news, I called Yoga and we agreed that it is our duties to make the people of our community know how to protect themselves against the disease. Initially it was reported in western districts, last week in Palisa 35 miles north west of Tororo and this morning Manafa, that is between Tororo and Mbale! We went to district health office and picked some materials / charts for sensitizing communities on the basics of health and hygiene like washing hands after toilet, disposing human waste, boiling drinking water, minimizing hands shakes as basics to avert cholera. We even went beyond Papoli and people were so much interested in what we were explaining to them and appreciated, one even called me doctor! Please keep us in your prayers.
We used the funds you most recentely sent as follows: Geological survey for clinic well, Built 10 new houses( bringing total houses at 58),Replaced tires and battery for the truck, Bought 15,000 seedlings of thorn bushes for the entire schools and church land and along the road for the clinic site, Bought timber and shade tree seedlings and distributed to community members, Bought fencing poles, nails and barbed wires for part of the school fence, paid some allowances to volunteers, $3,800 went to support teachers house construction.
The community members have now made close to 20,000 raw bricks for the construction of the clinic. We are waiting for some dry spell, most likely mid July and we will fire the bricks. As the team in Tampa is lobbying for funds, the local folks here are doing what they can within their means to contribute towards the project. We plan to continue making bricks for the bigger project, the good thing with bricks is that even after a number of months, they are just as good for construction.
Papoli village is split into 7 zones, so since we elected village zonal committees of PACODEF, now there is healthy competition among the zones in what ever activity we are doing. Tomorrow we have zonal meetings to review our work (areas of weeding village paths, water user committees, pit latrine coverage, vaccination of children, maternity attendance, PMTC clinic attendance etc) and plan for the next 3 months. We are as well initiating zonal health competition that will cover broad range of areas and the best zone will get a special Christmas gift most likely a big bull to be shared for Christmas feast!
— Emmanuel Ofumbi
