uganda

Greetings to you all,

I am glad we have come to the end of April, I must say it is one of the best months in the year. Like I narrated last week, surely I had some fun and I concluded the week with something interesting.

This week started on a good note and I will start with the interesting stories for me. I visited Amina A., Jennifer N., Angel N., Justine N. and Pulakiseda N.

My most interesting story or visit was with Amina A., she is doing great. I loved the fact that she has added a new business to the old one. She started a chapati making business for the fasting month for her Moslem counterparts. Her home is located just next to a mosque so on top of her ripe bananas, she added chapati because it is a delicacy enjoyed by the Moslem fraternity here in Uganda. Every afternoon she starts to make her dough then fries the chapati and sells them later that afternoon opposite the entrance of the mosque. This has ensured her sustainability this month of fasting. I was so proud that she was doing this. The banana business is still going on and she got some great bunches of bananas, this is her niche product and I don’t want her to lose it, so I was glad. I hope she can keep up with the pressure.

Unfortunately she has a very big bump on her hip that has been causing her some considerable pain over the last few weeks since my last visit. I am hoping it’s not a big deal but I asked her to see a doctor about it. Apparently it causes so much pain in her right leg so her mobility has been hindered by this bump.

My next visit was with Jennifer N., who deals in second hand shoes. The business has been growing since the year started majorly because students have been only going back in intervals. The going back to school in phases has helped create somewhat a sustainable market for shoes and she has been doing week and in general the sales have been up there.

She has been opening up to 15 bales a week which she says is really a great number. She averages 3 bales a day, a great return. I am glad that she is really happy with what is going on in her business. We will keep checking on her.

Her first born son has successfully finished primary seven which is the lightest class of his grade. We hope that he performs as good as he expects.

I finally got to meet with Angel N., who I have been searching for all this while. It’s been about 5-6 weeks of looking and this week I managed to meet her after her expedition of helping build her mothers house. It’s always our joy to hear our Mamas doing more than just their business, by adding another element to what they do. This time it was a social involvement with family to help build her mothers house, who underwent surgery a few months ago. Angel spent a lot of her savings trying to treat her mother and provide after care services that cost her a lot more money. She then recently went to help build a house for a mother and according to her, by the time she left the house was almost complete with a ceiling required and some little things. I was honestly happy to meet her and also hear of the development.

Unfortunately this move set her backwards in my review and assessment that I have since decided to review her boost again. We had made progress in the review but when she got lost, my review got a setback so I have decided to restart the entire process again. I will take another couple of months to review and exam whether the boost will be viable then.

My visit with Asia made me think about a boost for her business. Asia has been trying to make ends meet with her business for a while. She originally started with book making and has added several other efforts like beverage selling and she has done well. During my previous visit before last she had requested to boost her business with sodas, water and juice. I was glad to see progress when I saw her shelves filled with bottles of water. Water is cheaper than juice and soda so I was happy that even without our help she has been able to invest in her business. This is usually one of my pointers to Mamas seeking boosts. I have since decided to push her name forward to try and get her business boost. She needs 200,000/- Uganda shillings to buy sodas for her shop. This will probably help increase her capital and income.

During my visit she was extracting banana juice using grass and banana leaves. This is a type of local juice enjoyed by the population in the market where she dwells. She extracts it by hand, chills it in her fridge and sells it to market dwellers throughout the day. She actually will sell up to 20 litres of this juice a day.

Business has not been going on well for the last three weeks for Pulakiseda because the market road was under repair. Since her stall is right by the entrance of the market and the road, this eventually slowed down her business because the dirt was a lot so she had to close for a few days. Hence a dip in her sales per day and the week.

Otherwise she is now well. She is getting back on track and is looking forward to moving on from this road making event.

Finally for today’s edition, I visited Justine N. Justine is our only Mama who deals in saucepan hiring. She will usually rent to anyone who has a congregation of more than 100 people. This includes weddings, funerals and other forms of gatherings. Obviously business has not been going on well for her because of the issue of social gatherings and social distancing. This has reduced demand for her services throughout this time. Times have been hard for most of our Mamas because kids are returning to school every other month and their fees have essentially doubled because they have to now take certain accessories to school in the effort of trying to fight the pandemic.

Luckily she has a veggie stall that has been her backbone for more than a year now. She sells small things like onions, tomatoes and other veggies. This has sustained her and her family. We can only hope that the season remains good for her to get her veggies for sale.

It was truly an awesome week for me as always, I hope to find more optimism in the following weeks ahead. Thank you for always following what we do weekly, it means a lot to us. The feedback has been positive and is much appreciated.

Please stay safe, maintain social distancing but remember to remain sociable. The world needs a little more loving in this pain and anguish. Spread the love.

Our Mama Boost of the Week is:

Asia N. has requested boost worth 200,000/- Uganda shillings to help her buy sodas to add into her shop. This will boost her capital and increase her profits eventually.

Yours Sincerely

Andrew Echel

Director for Programs, Uganda

ISEE Solutions Society

Good morning,

I hope you are all doing well as you read this blog. I don’t know about many of you but I consider myself fortunate to be here writing and talking to you. It is amazing how fragile life is and how many people take it for granted but I feel that most of us following this work have realized what we could do with the life we have. Being a part of something that transforms just even one life brings some kind of meaning or purpose in life, that is what most people look for in life. To bring meaning and to find a purpose, at least that is my philosophy. Thank you for always following what we do, for supporting the lives of both the old and little ones that we serve. My heart melts every single time I see the smiles on the faces of these wonderful ladies and their children, I admire their strength and courage to do what they have been doing.

Over the past few days I have been struggling with some health issues as my immunity was low but I managed to see a doctor and I had a small infection in my system caused by the water I had been drinking. He gave me some antibacterial drugs I think and asked me to take bed rest for at least a day. I took a day off, cleared out all the drinking water in my storage pot and got fresher water to replace it. I am feeling way better after the rest only two days after, so thank you to the magic of medical magic.

This week like all you know, I continued to visit our Mamas and below are some of the wonderful works they are doing;

I will start with the wonderful Dorah A. who has been doing really well over the last couple of months in her restaurant business. She at one point had an electric power issue that was later sorted out by her landlord and she is now making monthly payments for the power. The restaurant looks good, she has a new employee because her previous one got sick because she was not taking her medication and she relapsed. The new employee is also another young woman who is helping clean, cook and washing utensils. It is a good thing when I come across such stories where women are supporting women in our community. The only challenge that she has this coming month is the fact that a faction of her community, the Muslim, have started fasting this week. This has already caused a downshift in the number of clients at the restaurant. As you may know, our Muslim brothers and sisters started their month of fast a few days ago and we would like to wish them a wonderful month of Ramadan.

Rovence N. another restaurateur in our project group is suffering the same consequences of the Islamic fast this month of Ramadan. It seems that this has always been the trend and our Mamas like Rovence and Dorah will have to ride this month in this groove. Otherwise she has been doing great, the business is doing well, the furniture we helped her get is still holding up and it is a good thing. She will be featuring in our monthly “My Story” segment where we get to meet some of our Mamas personal life stories. She is thrilled and excited to share with us, which is a good thing. Stay tuned.

Betty N. is continuing with her tailoring school but yet slowly this time as she is struggling to find new students in her new environment, we guess it will take some time before people can get used to it. Otherwise, she is doing well in other business sections as she continues to get individual clients who need clothes done. During my visit she was actually finishing a dress for a customer who had made the order a few days back. Her family is doing well and her kids are doing coaching to keep them sharp before pre-school reopens for them.

The amazing Florence A. is doing really well despite having electric power issues as she disconnected because there was an illegal connection on her supply so they got disconnected. This meant that the salon business got troubled for a few days since the disconnection. In the meantime, her side business has been doing well with the chips and deep fried snacks. She has set her mind to continue doing this chips thing longside the salon. This is going to help her balance her finances and incomes and may also help to stabilize her life.

On the other side of town was Maria A. our piggery farmer, she is doing well with her pigs at the moment. The chickens have been a disaster because they have been falling sick and she has lost almost half of the chickens she got. This is the same story with Christine’s chickens too as they have been undergoing extensive treatment the last few weeks. She has treated them but has not had any breakthroughs which has then resulted in very low egg production less than intended.

The pigs have not been bad and for the first time I witnessed the sale of one of her pigs during my visit. The piglets have not attracted the market she had hoped for so she has been finding it hard to get some buyers. Unfortunately, she was not able to attract a price that she wanted because the buyer was claiming it was smaller than he expected. The challenge she had was that two of her children needed to go back to school so she had to make some kind of sale. Anyway she was happy to sell because she got some income to get a break and figure out her next move. We have decided to help Maria get some feed and supplements for the pigs to help them get fatter so she can attract a higher price.

Finally I dropped by to see Cissy N. to follow up on the business prospect she was working on and it turns out that there was no progress there at all. She cancelled it because the location was risky and the authority would keep bothering her because it was too close to the main road, so it was both unsafe but also unhygienic for her to cook at that location. She has resulted in working in the same shack with her daughter’s restaurant. This is where she intends to work for the next few weeks as she seeks for plan B, to create her own work space.

If there was anything in the world I would do to show you how grateful I am for all your support, in a heartbeat I would. All of you who are continuously mobilizing all the resources from you out there, ensuring all our group of Mamas are taken care of. On behalf of the Mamas, we appreciate you all.

Thank you for the support and your continuous donations, they bring meaning to the lives of the people we serve plus ourselves too. Stay Safe, Maintain Social Distancing but Stay Sociable, the world needs us.

Jee Shukriya

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Echel

Director Progs, Ug

ISEE Solutions Society

ISEE Solutions

Investing in Sustainability, Education and Empowerment Solutions

Tag Archives: uganda

Update April 30, 2021

Our Mama Boost of the Week is:

April 18 update