Greetings to you dear readers,

I hope that you are all doing well. I personally was okay until last weekend as I caught another cold and cough that slowed me down a bit. The first days as you might know are hard and also the weather didn’t help at all as it rained for almost 7 hours on Tuesday. I failed to get out of the house so I turned to my in-house chores and worked from home too. Lucky for me tomorrow is a public holiday as Easter break starts on Good Friday. I don’t have plans yet but we’ll see, maybe I will go on an expedition. Anyways I am well now and back to work. I visited 5 of your Mamas; Christine N., Rashida S., Semmy (Salume) S., Gertrude N. and Margaret N.

{note: Andrew recently did an interview with Christine and once it is edited and formatted it will be published here sometime over the weekend. -ed}

The vaccine is here already like I told you previously but for Ugandans, it’s as though it has never arrived. Many people have refused to go take the vaccine claiming that Ugandans have strong immunities and the virus will not affect us. The government has now stopped or reduced the restriction on who can get them to anyone who wants to get the vaccine. In our first 3 weeks only 35,000 people had received the vaccine. This is where some of us will take the opportunity and take the vaccine before they start selling it.. The challenge is that most Ugandans will not take these free things seriously because they think it may not be good so the government may at one point start selling it to the public to encourage them. I shall not wait for this; immediately after I heal from my cold and cough,  I will make my way to the designated hospitals and ensure I get my dose.

This week I was lucky to finally get the chance to see Gertrude’s shop. She was able to find a good place located near the university and she will be sharing the shop with her brother who operates a salon. They have decided to share the place to be able to meet the rent requirement and these two businesses might also be able to compliment each other. The space does not look as big but she also does not need the biggest place to operate her stationery. The only challenge she shared with me was that since the shop is on the road, she is not yet sure about the security part of it because no one will be sleeping at the salon. This put the business items at a risk but let us hope for the best.

Margaret N. is still not very well healthwise as her foot still hurts a bit and also her business has officially closed at the moment because her sewing machine table broke.  During the previous times she had been teaching one of her daughters how to sew and it was a good thing, I thought. She is still struggling a bit with the losses in her family and has been trying to get herself together but the journey is still long. She told me that the nights have been harder for her because that is when the thoughts come in, majorly because there is nothing much to do. We will have to give her more time and maybe when she is back we will see what to do with her business.

I met Rashida S. and she is doing incredibly well especially with her charcoal business but faces some challenges with the vegetable stall. This is why we like supporting Mamas with side businesses because they help compliment the other segment of the business. The season is not good for vegetables as it had been hot this past month so the produce was not coming in especially tomatoes. They have been incredibly expensive, so much so that I have had to cook with one tomato instead of the two that we use ordinarily. 

Finally I was glad to meet Salume S. who had been hard to find previously because of the different things she has been trying to involve herself in. Salume is a trained nursery school teacher and since their section has not been opened, she has been out of business. She tried tailoring for some factories producing face masks and that has since died because the orders had reduced. She moved on to selling juice around her village or community and that too has been halted by these new rains. She is not back to her profession of teaching but is now coaching pupils at her house. She has four students who come to her house daily. She in return charges them for the coaching and this is how she has been going by recently.

I want to thank you for always following and for your encouraging feedback. We appreciate you all. Stay safe, Stay Sociable and maintain Social distancing. Happy Easter Holidays.

Report by;

Andrew Echel

Director Prog, Uganda

ISEE Solutions Society