Help Wanted

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Yay! New (used) Clothes! Denis is next to me.

Since 2007 Kathleen and I have been working with a former child soldier named Denis Ayella.  Dave met Denis at an IDP camp (essentially a refugee camp for displaced locals) when Dave was shooting a documentary film about Uganda.  Denis was abducted as a child by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and forced to do some horrific things.  Denis was in the LRA for he thinks about nine years. To make a long story short, Denis escaped the LRA in 2004.  When Dave met him he really had no options.  We got Denis out of the camp and attending a local school in Gulu, then another one in Jinja.  Two years in school didn’t work out (too much time had elapsed since his formative years) and Denis returned to Gulu and began taking in orphans in the area, we feel, to help atone for some of the things he did while a soldier.

This last Sunday we visited what is now called The Future is Now Orphanage, Gulu, where Denis oversees sixteen beautiful children who have become a large family.  The orphanage is currently experiencing a great deal of hardships.  To put it bluntly, the little brood is barely surviving.  We brought as many clothes for the children as we could, bought them several hundred pounds of beans and corn, and provided four bed nets for the new bunk-beds one of the service missionaries’ daughters provided a few months back.  The missionaries, Elder and Sister Woods, worked with the children a few months back, planting sweet potato seeds in a small garden Denis has been using free of charge.  The dinner the orphanage provided for us and the Woods during our short visit were the first fruits of that little garden project.  We enjoyed boiled sweet potatoes, beans, and a sim-sim (sesame) sauce with a little grit from the sand and diesel dust from the “house” being so close to the road.  The children did a little welcome dance, just before the sun went down.  Once the sun goes down, it becomes very, very dark.The orphanage is temporarily housed in a small village adjacent to Gulu, called Laroo.  No electricity.  No running water.  These are luxuries in this part of the world. The landlady is in the process of evicting the whole brood due to the fact that the latrines are full and the children make too much noise.

Two of the youngest orphans

With our help Denis has nearly completed purchasing two acres of land in Paicho (ten miles outside of  Gulu, on Kitgum Road: GPS coordinates for you Google Earthlings: 2°52’59.08”N  32°26’08.79”E) and is in the process of clearing the land to grow some crops to feed the kids.  He has an option for an adjacent three acres across the street—a very good investment considering the road will eventually be paved & electricity brought in--Kitgum is on the way to Juba, South Sudan, where much international work is being done.  The cost of the latter is 4.5 million Uganda Shillings, or about $2000USD.  Denis is one of the hardest working men I’ve ever come across and is deeply committed to the children.  They are the family he never had and undoubtedly there is a lot of psychology at play in this situation.  

Our little foundation, Enough to Spare, has helped as much as we can but the needs of the orphanage are greater than our meager means, since our charity is also sponsoring 25 children in other schools, and four teachers’ salaries.  Two great couples from Rexburg, Ches & Stephanie Blackham, and Shane & Gale Goodwin, are generously sponsoring one of the orphans, a little boy named Eddimon.  Because of them, little Eddimon is thriving.  No others have stepped up to help carry some of the load Denis bears, and he takes charity wherever he can, sometimes from the LDS Church.  Although we never proselyted to Denis, he sought out the missionaries on his own in 2010 and was baptized.  He attends the local Gulu branch intermittently, together with his orphans.  Transporting 17 people five miles with some children as young as three can be challenging.

Sam, Dave and Denis with children who still live at the refuge camp where Denis grew up

 

What the orphanage needs is a permanent home and a way to create some income to pay for school fees to get these kids some opportunity for an education and a future.  There is a house (no electricity or running water, but potential to install) down the street from where they live now.  The cost of this is 12 million Ugandan Shillings, or about $5000USD.  Another option is raw land nearby (still close enough to town so the children can attend school) at nine million Ugandan Shillings, or about $3600USD, an absurdly small amount for a “house.”  We all realize this is “chicken feed” by American standards, but for such a paltry sum these kids could have a permanent home and move forward with several possibilities of sustainability, looking to install electricity eventually, running water, and wow, even a luxurious toilet!

With this in mind, we have come up with four possible revenue streams for the orphanage, if a permanent home can be obtained:

1.  A Goat Farm.  Goats sell for about $36 each. Two hundred goats (only a few males needed) will nearly double in number in one year, the sale of which would pay for school fees.  School fees are roughly $45USD per term (three terms per year).  Slaughtering a few goats would also add some sorely needed protein to the children’s diets.  Cost for this project would be around $4500USD for 200 goats and the supplies needed to corral and contain them; the chickens would reproduce more quickly and within a couple of years a few hundred chickens and at least 200 goats would sustain the orphanage on the two acres of farmland.  Denis would rotate the goats so they wouldn’t overgraze; the chickens would require feed which is not much.  Denis would build coops, and also two corrals for the goats on the two acres in Paicho.  During the dry season Denis would need to bring in water; a lot of work but doable.  This is a reasonable and manageable investment to create a sustainable revenue stream for the children.

2.  A Chicken Farm.  Chicks are cheap (about 80 cents each).  Feeding 300 of them for 120 days until ready for sale (they grow much more slowly on the feed here than in the states) would cost another $1500USD.  Broilers (hens for cooking) sell for around $6USD.  Eggs would also be a regular source of protein in the children’s diet and easily sold at market.    

3.  A corn mill.  The villages around Gulu grow an incredible amount of corn.  In the more remote areas, such as around where Denis has purchased land (in Paicho) there is no one to grind the corn into meal (they call it posho), which is what most peasants eat every day.  A corn mill would be quite a good little business since Denis would charge for the convenience of milling the corn instead of people doing it themselves, which is still done.  Currently, farmers are required to bring in their harvest all the way to Gulu (about ten miles), renting a truck, or getting it there any way they can, have the corn milled at a fee, then haul it all back in sacks to the village.  A Chinese-made (cheap but good for starters) corn mill would cost about $800.  Then a diesel generator to power it (electricity is spotty in the rural areas) would cost another $800.  This is perhaps the cheapest way to generate some income, but I fear the income generated will not be enough to sustain the group.  Perhaps the corn mill should be one source of revenue in addition to others, at least until the orphanage is on its feet.

      4.  An Internet Café.  Denis is quite good at computers, at least for an uneducated African.  I could probably talk the surplus department at my university to donate five or six desktop computers monitors, and a printer/scanner or two to the cause.  Shipping them over would cost around $1200, which is about the cost of the equipment itself.  We may have a container from Rexburg coming in the next few months. If so, I will put some computers in it destined for the orphanage’s needs. What will also be required for this project to happen is the payment of renting a small store near Gulu University, where many students need computer/printing/scanning services.  Should the internet café need serious technical help, Denis could call on the IT students on campus to fix the problem quite inexpensively.  Start-up costs on this, considering donated computers, would be around $3000 for shop rental, advertising, etc.  This seems like a reasonable and plausible sustainable business opportunity to provide for the orphanage, although student clientele would be seasonal. 

 All of the above are estimates based on current prices.  Costs may change due to inflation (20% here), currency exchange rates, rainfall/scarcity/famine, etc.

One of the smallest girls in a new dress

 

Now for the smooth salesman close, and I really don't enjoy asking people for money, but I see no alternative and someone must go to bat for this small family faced with so many hardships.  Not seeing anybody else volunteering, I am:  Is there anybody out there that would be willing to help us get a permanent dwelling for this little brood, and put one or more of these sustainable business plans together?  For example, there is no reason why we cannot support both chickens and goats, or corn mill and internet café, or any combination. Even just helping with ten goats would be fantastic.  Any and all support would be tax deductible through our 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, Enough to Spare.  The senior missionaries in Gulu would oversee the projects and provide valuable advice and consultation.   

In a nutshell, does anyone reading this know any gajillionaires who don't know what to do with their money, or just people who want to make a difference in the world for some orphans? :-)