They look at me with big eyes. Two girls, twins. Just like me. In their hands they hold a cup of tea and some maize. But at this moment they are not eating anymore. I am probably one of the only or maybe the first white person they’ve ever seen. Their thin arms and legs shock me. Mostly from one of the girls. Way too thin. I go inside for a bit, so they can finish their breakfast.

A bit later we have a talk with the mother. We are filming her story for a video. She doesn’t really know her age, but she probably is around 17. The twins around three. Apparently she is also pregnant. She doesn’t have a house of her own, but she temporarily lives at someone else’s place. I realize she is quite a bit younger than me, but she has such a different life. I hope we can soon help her and the children. I wish that change for her. For now, we have just given her a little bit of money a few times, because we don’t have the official papers for our organization yet. Just like many other people here, every day she has to worry about whether she has enough food for her children. Besides that, these kids also get sick easily, but they don’t have money for medication or a good treatment. A nurse told us that many children only eat one meal a day. The parents are sometimes gone for the whole day to earn some money. You can imagine that besides food, these children miss a lot. They miss the safety of a parent close to them, they miss education and the carelessness of being a child.

I miss a smile on the face of most malnourished children. I don’t hear them play. They just sit on the ground or on their mother’s lap. They don’t have energy to get further in their development. Sometimes they do nothing for the whole day. And that is such a big difference compared to healthy children, who are discovering the world around them and who you have to chase the whole time. But I know once these malnourished children eat enough and good food for some weeks, they get better quick. It’s close, but at the same time so far. Because to be able to help a lot of children, we need enough money. And right now, that is something we worry about.

Always when I am here, I notice how different it is. We all live on the same planet, but just a few hundred kilometers further, it can be so different. Here I see many people on the street, they don’t have permanent jobs. They are busy with somehow earning some money, or they do daily tasks which also take a lot of your time here. Life is so simple here, yet so complicated. In this area I already see a lot of poverty, but Namalu is just the beginning of Karamoja. Recently we drove an hour to the north and meanwhile I looked at the landscape around us. Apart from sorghum (a type of grain), some maize and sunflowers, I didn’t see any crops on the land. The rivers were dry or just had a little stream of water. The only thing that they have a lot of here, is livestock. In a bigger village there was a market, where I saw many people. But for some people it’s too far away, or too expensive. ‘How can these people live here’, I thought. Just getting enough water for the day, is a big task. It makes me discouraged sometimes.

The problem here is big and I realize we can’t just easily solve that. There are many problems behind it, like a lack of education and a good upbringing, alcoholism, a lot of unemployment and drought. It is difficult to escape out of that situation. All these things have to do with each other and some things are also deeply rooted in the culture. But still I hope we can change some things in the lives of mothers and their children. Because this is not a good start of their life. And I know with enough financial help it’s surely possible. We could really help a lot of families here, because there is a lot of need.

I hope that this story gives you an idea of the situation here. We look forward to start working with the children. It’s asking patience from us and we know that the situation of these children is alarming every day. In case this also touches you and you want to help us in any way, we are really grateful for you.