Cell Phone Love

Hello, Sponsors!

Yesterday morning while I was still sleeping, my cell phone rang next to my bed. When I answered it, I heard Tonny's voice: "Hello, Mum! I am here at the school with some of your children, and they want to hear your voice!" What a wonderful way to wake up on a Saturday morning, with ten sweet conversations that went something like this:

Me: Hello. 
Kid: Hello, Mum. 
Me: How are you? 
Kid: I am fine, Mum. Thank you, Mum.

And each conversation was accompanied by the laughter of all the other children in the background, amazed to witness a conversation on two sides of the world. The same laughter occurred last August whenever I would take a picture on my camera, and show it to them.

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The kids I spoke to on the phone: Front row: Paska, Patricia, Eunice, Aaron, Hamis. Back Row: Scovia, Babra, Winnifred, Thomas (spoke with a strong clear boy voice), Emmanuel (Still reluctant to smile, and a bit reluctant to talk)

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They are learning English, and promised to study hard, so that when I return, we can talk to each other in English. Did I ever write about why I love these children so much? They are so respectful, grateful, good-humored, hard-working and sweet (and they are not even boy scouts!) They told Tonny, "Uncle, we love what you, Mum Sally and all our sponsors did for our life and the efforts you are putting for our future to be a bright future." Some of the things they like about their new school are lots of classes, including PE, learning English, it feels safe, nice teachers and matrons, enough food, and it feels like a family.

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Acayo Eunice

Then, Tonny says, "Eunice surprised all of us by saying to me that, 'Uncle, me, am now saved from all evils because I have become a born-again Christian.' That is what our little girl Eunice said today while smiling seriously to us all."

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Alanyo Fiona

Back at the office, Alanyo Fiona visited Tonny with her father. She is also going to a new school in town, where her father lives, so that he can take her for regular medical treatments she needs. She also likes her new school and she loves doing homework (!) very much as she wants to improve her class performance. She told Tonny she prays for us all every day. For us, these kinds of statements seem unusual for children. But for these children, I really believe they are honest expressions of their spiritual lives. Everyone who works with African children seems to encounter this.

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Otam Levi

One of our sponsors has had to quit because of financial hardship, so we I am looking for a sponsor for Otam Levi. He is six years old, and his father died in a construction accident. He loves playing soccer and doing math, and is reported ly a humble and disciplined little boy. If you know of anyone else who would like to sponsor this little boy, please forward this letter to them or let me know.

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Finally, I want to share with you a song that I heard on the radio later in the day yesterday after speaking with the kids. It is called Heather's Song (click on it, Mom, then click on "Listen while you read").

Surprise! A Pile of Bricks!

Written in March, 2013:

Hi Sponsors,

Well, I woke up to another surprise from Uganda this week, and this time it was a big pile of bricks:

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Seven thousand bricks, to be exact. They made my day. Every time I thought about those bricks, I had to smile. Now you may may wonder, like my eighteen-year-old daughter, why I should be so excited about a pile of bricks halfway around the world.

Well, first of all, it was just the surprise of it. The letter started like this: "Mum, always I love surprising you. The surprise is I and Mr. Kisembo 
have prepared and already burnt some 7,000 bricks with our own little 
resources..."

But even more is that those bricks represent the promise of a dream that Tonny and I talked about last summer, that someday SOVCO can build a small school so that the children can get a better and more personalized education right there in their community.

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Tonny and his adopted father, Ojok Kisembo have a vision for their community, in which almost half of the children have lost at least one parent. Kisembo has a special concern for needy children. He adopted Tonny after he was abandoned as a toddler. He was cutting little Tonny's hair one day when the rebel soldiers came and took Kisembo and his wife away. Tonny ran into the tall grass that surrounds the house and hid until an old lady came along. He told her that Kisembo and his wife had been taken, and she cared for him until Kisembo escaped from the rebel group and came back.

After that, the family left the community for several years. But they love their ancestral village, and finally returned to help with its rebuilding. Kisembo is on SOVCO's board of directors, and has donated time, land, and other resources to help his son build an organization that addresses the needs of their people. He is a tall, practical farmer in his fifties, and he and Tonny together made this wonderful pile of bricks on a piece of land donated by Kisembo's mother's (and this is Hamis's grandmother's) daughter-in-law, who is also the aunt of Komagum Paska (that's the kind of community it is). And someday we hope those bricks will become a school!

I found a short video clip online that shows how bricks are made in rural northern Uganda. I sent it to Tonny, and he said, "yes that is very method we use to make the bricks. We don't have any machine but we use a local method like that method you have attached herein in this email for me to see, that is it." So if you would like to see that video, click here.

We don't know when this school will be built. To begin, we need another 10,000 bricks, and to finish, it will need roofing materials and finishing materials, of course., and then furniture. We will start small and dream big. Maybe next year during brick-making season, they will make more bricks. Maybe I will begin to look for grants for this type of project. If you know of a foundation or individual that might be interested in building a school in Uganda, please let me know. And keep this project in your prayers!

International Womens Day Starts Here!

Written on International Womens Day, March, 2013

"Even if a girl cannot shape the predetermined circumstances of her birth, she must now be able to shape a response to her fate. The empowerment of girls through education is the way we move from an old world -- where for centuries your rights have been only what your rulers decreed, your status and wealth what someone else ascribed to you -- to a new world, where even if your grandmothers and mothers were poor, you need not be poor too, and even if you were born without the chance to flourish, your daughters and your daughters' daughters need not be."

-Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

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Today is International Women's Day, which will be celebrated with a day off in Uganda. You, our SOVCO sponsors, are doing one of the most important things that can be done to help poor women out of poverty: supporting the education of the next generation of women! And just to show you that what you are doing IS working, I want to show you a picture of our girl Babra before sponsorship, and after a year of sponsorship:

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Babra is a bright girl, but in the early pictures, she appeared dull and wary. When I visited in the summer, I found that she had a very good report card. When I visited her home, she was working hard in the garden, but she immediately got chairs for us, and then went in the house to change her dress. Her parents were nowhere in sight. I later learned that Babra's father suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome from the war times, and that her home situation was not ideal. This term, with the support of her sponsors, Babra is attending boarding school, where she gets three meals a day and a good education. When I got these pictures, I was struck with the difference in her face.

I sometimes hear the argument that sponsorship of single children is not the most efficient way to change the face of poverty in the world, and that may be true. But for this one child, Babra, or Mercy, or Paska...or any of the 53 children you as a group are sponsoring...this is the most effective and immediate solution I can think of, and I thank all of you for partnering with me in that belief.

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"Girl Child Education" is one of SOVCO's top priorities, and we partner with teachers like this one at Kirombe Primary School, who is working tirelessly to improve the academic performance of girls in a world where boys most often dominate the top of the class. She welcomes our partnering with her, so if any of you would like to become involved in this project more directly, let me know.

And, just a reminder that I will be sending out a package of letters and some t-shirts to be given as prizes to the children who get good grades each term (they say, "I'm a SOVCO Star!). I will send that package on March 15, so if you have a letter or picture you would like to include, please send it to me at the address below. Also, if you would like to send something directly to Uganda, the address is: 
Opiyo Tonny 
PO box 1587 
Gulu, Uganda. 
Just be aware that Tonny will have to pay a fee to receive packages.

Happy Women's Day to all!

Sally

Off to School!

To see pictures of what a kid needs to take to boarding school in Uganda, click on:

Off to School!

Watch Videos of SOVCO kids at play

To see pictures and videos of the kids playing with the balls and nets and jumpropes we gave them for Christmas, click on:

SOVCO Kids at Play

Tribute to SOVCO Guardians

Written Jan. 28, 2013

For a lot of great pictures of the strong, caring (and sometimes tough) women who care for our SOVCO orphans, click here:

SOVCO Guardians

For Five Hundred Shillings

Gloria and her grandmother

Written Jan. 26, 2013
Well, SOVCO has been having a hard time getting back to normal after the Christmas holiday, mostly because of that big black snake I told you about in my last letter. At first after the accident our director Tonny thought the pain in his chest was nothing, but as time went on, it began to bother him more, so that he couldn't stand straight. So the local clinic, which apparently didn't have the equipment needed to treat him, sent him to a medical center in another city for several days. He is now back to work and feeling better. Here is one of his "slice of life" stories, which I love, again involving Gloria, and five hundred shillings, which is about twenty cents:

"Today when I was riding coming back slowly from the office to my home, I met our child Anek Gloria who was on the side of the road trying to look for the lost five hundred shillings that her grand mother gave her for grinding the millet. So I had to stop and she told me while crying and having fears that her grandmother may beat her for loosing the money. I had to sympathize with her and gave her the five hundred shillings and she went back where the grinding machine is to collect the ground millet and immediately she received the millet flour, she started smiling and I was very happy that Gloria's fears went off and she said, "Uncle, thank you very much and God bless you Uncle." This is what our daughter Gloria said to me today in the evening when I was coming back."

One issue that Tonny and I are always discussing in our letters is the matter of the quality of the local schools, which is not very good. For example, the nearest school to the SOVCO office, where several of our children go, has about 1000 students, and eleven teachers. Each classroom can fit about half the students at a time, and even then, it is crowded. So at any given time, half the students are at recess.

Tonny would like to begin sending some of the children to town schools, so that when it comes time for them to take their entry exams for secondary school, they will do well. Trying to make up for lost educational opportunity is difficult.

Transportation to town is expensive , so we have talked through several options (one, renting a house in town where the children could live together with house parents, and another, sending some of the children to boarding school). At this point, we have decided to choose a few of the children whose home situations are the most difficult, because of mistreatment or having a very old or disabled guardian, and send these children to boarding school in Gulu, the town where Tonny lives. He will continue to visit them to follow their progress and give them a sense of connection to their homes.

At this point only two have been accepted, Aaron and Hamis, both of whom are very bright, sweet young boys. Aaron's mother has to work far from home, and usually leaves him with neighbors. Hamis is living with a woman who is about 100 years old and blind. The boarding school tuition is higher than local school tuition, but we think that our $20 a month will just about cover tuition, room and board, and putting a bit aside for medical care, but not the extra gifts that they have been getting each month.