New Years Eve on the Nile celebrating with wonderful Ugandan friends who have been there for me since my early days in Uganda. This will be followed by three weeks delivering mosquito nets in outlying villages. I’m looking forward to both! Earlier this year my young friends Innocent and Paul helped me deliver several hundred nets to bring the number up to 1000 nets delivered since October 2017, and with a donation of 11 nets Jackie Gallagher started us on the second thousand before I returned to the UK in March. Since then donations have been coming in slowly reaching 357 nets. Not a bad start but please will you help me provide more so more people are protected from this terrible deadly disease? I’m hoping to deliver 500 during my months stay in Uganda. How about making a mosquito net an ‘alternative’ Christmas gift for someone this year? They will receive a personalised photo of the receiver of their net and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your gift will definitely be helping to protect someone from being bitten by the Malarian mosquito and suffering the most awful symptoms of the disease and even saving a life. £5 can make such a difference to someone’s life, it’s as simple as that! Please get in touch if you are able to help me make a life in Uganda a little happier. Hope to hear from you soon. X
Thank you to all who have donated by letting me look after your dogs and cats, or given me items to sell on local Fb sites, each raising money for mosquito nets, and those who have made a straight donation which includes Poynton Rotary Club. You are all so wonderful!

1000 nets delivered! Can we make it to 1500 in January?

Jackie started us off with a donation of 11 nets before I came home in March!

Many people now have mosquito nets including this disabled man and are protected as they sleep

Those looking on in this photo now need nets!

All these children missed out last year!

The childlren work so hard. Here they have been collecting wood for the cooking fire. It would be great to give them nets too!

Whole communities are in need of mosquito nets as Malaria is still the biggest killer, particularly of children, in Uganda!

Meet Pickles who is staying with us for a week while his family are on holidays. He wasn’t too keen on watching the rugby as he turned his head away but the donation his family will give me in exchange for looking after him will buy mosquito nets. So I don’t mind if he doesn’t like rugby

As I mentioned in the previous chapter there have been several young people before these three who have gained various qualifications and/or have been helped to start up small businesses. They would never have been able to do this without all our help. Amongst them a car mechanic, a tour guide, a nurse also qualified in simple dentistry, a market stall holder and a young disabled father of two, who was knocked down shortly after qualifying as a car mechanic leaving him with a paralysed arm that just hangs limp at his side and a damaged leg with a pronounced limp. With our help he now manages a small Mobile Money business. And of course there is my good friend and project manager Innocent who gained a degree in business and now has bar and piggery businesses.

Although we get help from several wonderful people to pay the fees for the students, plus for other requirements for school such as clothes and books, my husband and I are the major contributors and could always do with more people to support us, in particular with Emma. So if you fancy helping on a regular basis, a few pounds a month, please let me know. In exchange you get regular updates about the student you help including termly report cards. Also I report back to you when I spend time with them when I go to Uganda each year and of course, the satisfaction that you are giving such a precious gift, an education. Another important fact about giving young people in poor countries an education is that having gained an education themselves they will do their very best to make sure their own children go to school too, gradually lifting whole communities out of poverty.

I was really proud earlier this year to find out that Innocent, while attending a family burial had met a young relative whose family couldn’t afford to keep him at school for the last year of his primary education, the most important year where he would miss the chance of taking his Uganda 🇺🇬 National Leavers Exams. So Innocent, though he struggles to make ends meet for his own family, brought Alex to live with him and put him back into school at Brain Trust Primary. Alex, along with millions of other 14 year olds will be sitting his National Leaving Exams in November.                      Enjoy the photos! Please cleck on the first photo to scroll through.

Bosco qualified as nurse in 2018 and will shortly be attending his graduation ceremony. Unfortunately I will miss it. The stethoscope around his neck was a gift from our daughter Nicola

Fazie who only has the use of one arm and walks with a bad limp has been such a help to me over the years. He can still fix a car by instructing others!

My very good friend and project manager Innocent who I stay with. Here he is helping to complete the desks sponsored for Brain Trust PS

Innocent with his wife Betty

Here he is with his son Norman who is ‘helping’ him clean out the piggery!

Family – from back left Judith Innocents mum, Grandma, Me and Betty. The two men of the family Inncoent and Norman Reginald, named after my husband Norman Reginald”

Norman Reginald on his 1st birthday. Norman is named after my husband Norman Reginald!

Innocent looks after Alex like a son and Alex respects Innocent

Alex fetching water from the borehole

Alex with one of the Poynton Pebbles that made its way to and from Uganda!

When this live cockeral ran away before the head teacher had time to present it to me on my last day at Brain Trust PS Alex chased it, caught it and did the presentation!

Alex is so proud of going to school and of his school books.

As well as Nico we are still supporting two others. Paul, a young man who my friend Godfrey found alone, hungry and not going to school, in 2008. Paul has progressed so much that last month, now 21, he headed off to university to study for a diploma in Clinical Medicine and Community Health. Amazing!
It has never been easy for Paul, an ‘orphan’ boy from an outlying village where poverty is the norm, attending schools where most of his classmates were from better off families, relatively speaking, and away from his local community. But each time he was challenged his determination and inner strength led him down the right road to success. He really WANTED an education! Now Paul has an even bigger challenge taking him to Ishaka over 400k away from everything he knows, where he will have to make his own decisions just like our young students here in the UK have to do but to a bigger extent as he does not have family to help him on his way and life in a big town compared to his rural village will be very new to him. But if I know Paul he will rise to the occasion. Actually I heard from Paul recently to say he was working hard with assignments and research and really enjoying the practical side. He said ‘It was some how fun for me as I did the extraction of blood from the person’s vein for the first time. And I did perform that on my fellow student. It was all excitement for me’! That made me smile! I wonder how the fellow student was feeling?

Taking Paul back to his first school in 2008 when we first started sponsoring him

Paul at home February 2019! Did I really use all that water Paul!!

Before I went to Uganda Paul did a wonderful survey of the area to see who was most in need of a mosquito net. Basically no-one had a net so it was very difficult for his to prioritise. He made some difficult decisions!

Paul helped me deliver many mosquito nets but there weren’t enough for everyone!

Paul helped me deliver so many nets in February, reaching the 1000th. I will miss his help on my next visit!

The cabbage man!

August 2019 – Paul dresed ready for his first day at uni. Very smart!

Kampala International University. A long way from Kampala but the campus of clinical studies where Paul will be studying

A recent photo of Paul in his lectures

The other student is Paul’s young stepbrother Emma (Emmanuel) who we started supporting just three years ago when he was maybe 11 or 12 years old (many children in Uganda do not know their actual ages!). Like Paul, Emma’s previous education was of a very low standard and he spent most of his time just hanging around the village with no prospect of employment when he grew up. Emma’s report showed low grades for the first few terms at his new school called Happy Days Nursery & Primary School, mainly because of his lack of English, then during the long Uganda school holiday from the end of November 2018 to the start of February this year big brother Paul, who was waiting for his A Level results to enable him to start university in August, taught Emma to speak, read and write in English. Mind you Paul did report that Emma kept ‘escaping to the next village’ to play football!!

English in Uganda is essential in education because all books etc are written in the language and all modern business is conducted in English. Uganda has many many tribal languages but they often cannot communicate with those outside the tribe or district and very few words are written down in the tribal languages. So English is the main language along with the East African language of Swahili which is also taught in schools.

Anyway, since Paul worked with Emma his results have shot up in all subjects! Emma is so proud of his achievement and most importantly he is happy at school, especially as he can still play football! In fact he is known as Striker Emma because he scored the crucial goal in the end of year championship!

A young Emma well before we decided to offer him an education. He was always so excited at the simplest of gifts I took him

Under the jackfruit tree

Four of the brothers. From front Emma, Nurse Bosco, Market trader Ivan and Uni student Paul. This was taken a few years ago when I went to visit them. They are sitting on the motorbike that got me to their village!

Emma and Paul with me and Mum Monica on Visitation Day, the day children are allowed visitors, usually twice a term

Emma loves and appreciates his big brother Paul

Striker Emma! Recently with the team trophy after scoring the winning goal!

(1 of 3 chapters on the same subject)

Dear Friends, My thoughts most recently have been on the students in Uganda we continue to support with the help from a few special friends, two of whom I have not actually met!
Many of you are familiar with Nico the deaf boy, well he is the latest student we have decided to help. Do you remember, he collected my water from the borehole when I stay with Innocent in the village of Nawanyago?

Nico back from the borehole

Innocent’s neighbours and mine when Im in Uganda, Guster and his little sister Gifty, often joined Nico when he was reading

I had to laugh at the signs for this story and Nico did too! Who flung the dung!! Use your imagination!

He liked to show me how strong he is, and he is!!

Nico was thrilled to get a new t-shirt and shorts donated by one of you lovely people!

Such a wonderful happy character and always there to help me in any way he could. Even to the extent of popping out of the bushes to help me put on and fasten my sandals as I step down from the steep raised veranda. He made me feel ancient but in truth I really appreciate his help as I dread slipping! It’s really lovely how he cares for me and for others.
When Nico wasn’t doing chores for me or digging in the field for his parents we shared many happy times sat in the shade looking at books where I realised he was signing to some of the pictures. Apparently he had been given a few lessons in sign language a few years ago at a school run by an English charity but again there was always ‘some little money’ to find which was impossible when his family is so poor. I was concerned that when the other children in the village were at school Nico was always hanging around. So I got Innocent to make enquires about Nico and he was told by his parents that when he was born Nico did respond to sound and then he lost his hearing possibly from contracting measles. As he grew up the family never got any help or advice about his hearing as they don’t have any money to pay for it! Well we now know that Nico is profoundly deaf. Innocent took him to an ENT specialist at a hospital in Kampala where he was tested and this was the conclusion. His parents have several other children who go to the local state school when they have surplus crops to pay for the ‘free’ state schooling’! But there is no facility for deaf children like Nico.
Once again I asked Innocent if he could search out a school for him and, to cut a very long story short, Nico is now attending the school for the deaf attached to Maria’s Care, originally a children’s home, and by coincidence is where I stayed and worked when I first went to Uganda in 2002, right up to 2007 when I branched out on my own. I loved my time living and working with the deaf children at Maria’s Care and was really pleased that Nico now has a place there, amazing! The school will help him progress with his signing and to read and write, and also study other subjects. In addition he will be taught a skill such as carpentry and tailoring which will give him a chance of employment. It’s fantastic that Nico has ended up at Maria’s Care. It’s a small world!

Nico loved playing Dominoes and got extremely excited when he won!

One of Nico’s brothers came to play too but it took him longer to understand the rules and Nico shook his head in frustration!!

He liked to copy me! Notice the position of his head, hands and legs!! Cheeky boy!

And a gift from a pupil at Vernon School

A leaving gift of mangoes for me!

A special gift for Nico too, the dominoes we had been playing with! ‘To Nicholas from Madam Gerry’

Proud parents and a happy Nico outside his new school

Kamuli Day & Boarding School at Maria’s Care in Kamuli. Where my love of Uganda 🇺🇬 all began!

One more photo, this time of Nico sat with his ‘requirements’ – a metal case containing probably not a lot! Maybe a PE kit, a change of his old clothes for doing chores, tooth brush and paste, and hopefully his dominoes!Beside him are items some to put in communal stock, a ream if paper for the office, loads soap for washing himself and his clothes, brooms, sugar, TP (toilet paper), ‘vaseline’ to keep his skin from cracking making him vulnerable to infections, and looks like some orange juice.

A thank you from Nico!

If you’re on Fb please view the video below of Nico enjoying dancing using just the vibrations through his feet of music from a wedding in the village. I enjoyed my entertainment!
https://www.facebook.com/gerry.hambridge/videos/10216742182724077/

Dear friends
It’s a while since I have been in touch with you but things are still moving along slowly. Funds are gradually building for my projects in Uganda from my doggie sitting and also selling items friends and neighbours donate. This week I sold golf clubs and a small tv and received enough to buy several life saving mosquito nets that I will be delivering in February. Thanks to all who have donated items over recent years, please keep them coming! And of course a big thank you to all who entrust their dogs and cats into our care in exchange for a donation. I think they enjoy their stays or visits as much as we do!
Be back soon!