#2 – Update & the first week with a family

The past week we experienced a lot of things. The internet on the compound is currently not good enough to update regularly, so I’ll now do that through a blog post.

Last week we posted about a mother who we met earlier. About three months ago, this (at that time pregnant) mother came to our compound, with a very malnourished child. The girl is a twin, but the other girl is a lot healthier. The mother told us that she had very little food to eat. At that moment we couldn’t really help them, because our organization wasn’t registered yet. We just gave them a little bit of money sometimes, or they got a meal. Two months ago we saw her again. The girl was often sick, but the mother wasn’t able to pay for medicine. We made a video with them, which became the beginning of our introduction video. She told us they need help and she also doesn’t have her own place to stay (she often stays in someone else’s place for some time).

Last week she came to our compound again, with the malnourished girl. She went to the hospital because the girl has a rash on her shoulder, but again she didn’t have money for medicine. At that moment I noticed she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Last time she didn’t look heavily pregnant (but she was) and now she didn’t have a baby with her, so I wondered what had happened. She told us she gave birth. She said the girl was born on a Friday and we thought she said it was one or two weeks ago. We asked if everything was fine, she told us that she didn’t have enough / no milk and that the baby seemed hungry. That day she also left the baby with the grandmother for the whole morning. I asked if she was feeding the baby something else, but she said she only gets breast milk, which wasn’t enough. I immediately started to worry, because I imagined that she had a very tiny, weak baby at home, who needed help very quickly.

The next morning the mother didn’t come back. We sent someone to their home and the grandmother was home alone with the baby again, who was crying a lot because of hunger. They came to our compound and meanwhile someone went to get the mother, who again went to the hospital with the malnourished child, because once in a while they hand out food. When I saw the baby I immediately noticed that she looked healthy and also quite big already. She wasn’t a newborn baby. She was obviously hungry because she was opening her mouth the whole time. But that morning we weren’t able to find any formula in Namalu, in case the mother really didn’t have milk. It was possible to send some formula with someone who was going to travel to Namalu from Mbale (a city which is 2,5 hours of driving further). But that would still take hours. When the mother came the situation turned out less bad. I asked if she wanted to feed the girl and it went well. She said it was because yesterday she got some money from us to buy some food. When she eats better, she has more milk. I did notice she stopped feeding already after 5 minutes, but when I asked her to continue the baby was able to drink more. I was relieved, because the mother was able to breastfeed, as long as she eats enough and feeds the baby in the right way. That is great, because bottle feeding is very expensive and also difficult when it comes to hygiene. We decided to let this family come to us every day, so they can get enough meals.

The nearby hospital often hands out packages with plumpy nuts (a paste of peanut, sugar, oil, vitamins and some other things) and flour for porridge. Sadly enough it often happens that the mothers sell this food, instead of giving it to their children. It’s sometimes hard to understand, but the situation is this poor area is complex. We told the mother of the twins to bring her packages here, so it will be used in the right way for the children.

We also met another mother. We quickly noticed she has a type of mental disability and it’s difficult to have a conversation with her. She has a son, who is probably already 5 years or older, but he is severely malnourished. I have seen quite some malnourished children, but I think never a child as thin as him. We think he has cerebral palsy. The mother has to feed him. We heard several stories about this mother, one of them is that she wanted to throw her son in the river one day. She got help more often, but didn’t use it in the right way. When she kept sitting next to our gate at night, I was afraid she would leave the child behind. We are going to discuss this story with someone else, because it is too difficult for us to help her.

Meanwhile there is a lot of work happening on the compound. We are thankful with a donation which made it possible for us to continue building. The compound now looks like a building site with sand, stones, cement and trucks which come to offload. They are now building three rooms, one of them will become an office. They are building a strong foundation, because the soil in Namalu sometimes sinks.

It’s not always easy to be here. Things can take long, or go differently than we had hoped. We have to remind ourselves often that we don’t have the control ourselves, but it’s in God’s hands. One day that’s easier than the other. It causes quite some stress that money goes out quicker than that it comes in. We are now spending a lot of money on building, but also on food, some workers who we pay and petrol. Meanwhile we are left with not much anymore, but we still have a lot of plans. So we hope to find more (monthly) sponsors in the future. We will soon post about how much we spend on certain things, so it will give you a better idea about the costs.

Thank you for reading and your support, we will keep you updated about how it’s going here!