Hello all. A quick note to thank those of you who have donated toward some emergency relief for our Mamas. Your kindness and generosity are much appreciated. If you would like to help support these women, you can donate through paypal, cheque, or etransfer to erika@iseesolutions.org. 100% of these donations will go toward supporting the women and their families during this crisis and will help them rebuild their businesses once the crisis is over. Thank you for your continued support of our programs. Stay healthy. – Erika

Greetings to you all our dear readers. We are 3 weeks into official lockdown in all the major towns within Uganda and we have 2 more weeks until 5th May 2020. 

We have had 9 National Presidential addresses since the first case was discovered about 3 weeks ago. The president ordered a lockdown throughout the entire nation where both public, then private transport was halted to help stop the spread of the Covid 19 that has become a pandemic. It has now been 3 full weeks and we have only 55 infections and some of these formerly infected people have been released after recovering from the symptoms. The last few days we have not registered any new cases.

During last week’s National Presidential Address, he televised his work out routine to encourage the public to stay home and to work out indoors rather than doing it on streets running. This was majorly because many people were abusing social distancing and it was really unsafe. The president started by running about 15 times back and forth in his office and did 30 push-ups which was very impressive for a man his age. 

The streets are more empty than before but on Monday 13th, a few people tried to rebel and open regular shops but all were locked up, so that didn’t work well for the traders which is okay because safety has been paramount for our president. All motorcycles were restricted to 2pm every day and after that, all of them shall and have been impounded since.

The government procured some food stuff for public distribution but with all efforts going on, according to my follow up calls, actually none of our mamas have received relief so the support to our community still goes on. Most of them surely have been out of food.

Anna M was still struggling to stabilize her salon over the past few months but unfortunately the lockdown happened just before she could find a new place because she was looking for a place to move her business. She has run out of food too so I transferred some money to her to buy some food. Lucky enough she had taken her kids to her parents in the village so she was the only one to worry about. 

Prossy L, one of our mamas who keeps pigs, was also in a similar situation but this time with her pigs, they were running out of food. Her family, her husband and granddaughter that she lives with, are well. The pigs have run out of food so we organized some money to get some food for the pigs because the mother pig had just had 7 piglets which needed a boost. 

Jane N, one of our water tank mamas, is doing well. Her business didn’t close because she sells water to her village so that’s a good thing for them because there hasn’t been any rain so no one harvested water. She had enough food for her family because she had stocked enough food and also she was prepared for the season. 

Margaret N, one of our tailor mamas, is also doing fine and she is also doing her best for her community through her volunteering with the community health service to do sensitization of the masses. Otherwise she is well and her family is doing fine. 

Christine N, our poultry mama, is doing really well as she was able to sort out her chicken feed issue and they are laying better eggs she said. Her family is well and they are healthy too. 

Lorna K, another tailor who has been struggling since lockdown, has also not received food but had some food remaining from the previous stock. All the kids are at home but they are all well.

Francoise L, another mama who has literally fought to survive in her community by doing jobs from brewing alcohol to selling vegetables and many others like soap making and charcoal trading, is still struggling. She has readjusted her trade according to opportunity and season just to provide for her family since we first met her in 2014. She has bounced from one practice to another to survive.

Unfortunately, these last few months have not been good where some transporter stole her money for supplying charcoal so she went down to the village to start again buying trees and burning some charcoal. She also had rented a garden and planted maize which at this time is ready to harvest and this is when the lock down happened. She was caught up and couldn’t travel back to Kampala. She had charcoal worth 10 bags and maize so she didn’t want to leave this behind because all public transport means had been stalled so she couldn’t leave. Her ARV medication got done in the last two weeks because she carried just a few to last her a few days so she was stuck and she had no medication. Erika and I worked a way to deliver medication and she got it. It was expensive to transport but it was worth it.

We also thought that leaving her there wouldn’t be good enough because she had caught malaria so we wanted to bring her home. After all the effort working with my brother who had medical clearance to drive as a medical worker, he and I drove us down there to meet her and bring her home. We managed to reach there but she begged to stay because she couldn’t leave all this produce behind to go to Kampala and just sit because our car was too small to carry all these items. So we left her in the village with her maize and her charcoal.

Thank you all for your support everyone who works hard to make all this happen in the lives of the many people down here. We appreciate you all.

Regards to you all. Stay Safe.

Andrew Echel