22nd November, 2009

Sunday Tribune Editor Nóirín Hegarty and photographer Mark Condren travelled to Masaka, Uganda, to see at first hand the work of Irish humanitarian aid agency GOAL and the difference that donations from Ireland are making to 'the poorest of the poor'

Jack Hopkins and Mik Katamba are both 11 years old. They are the youngest in their respective families. They like music and maths in school and both have a hint of devilment in their eyes. Most of all they both love Manchester United and especially Wayne Rooney.

Jack travels to school by bus each day, his 10-journey ticket, emergency cash and healthy lunch in his schoolbag alongside his books and Manchester United pencil case. His dream is to get to Old Trafford for a game. He dresses in his grey uniform – shirt and tie, flannel trousers, practical black shoes and a coat against the cold and rain before he leaves his home in southside Dublin.

He rarely makes his bed, complete with a Manchester United duvet, and his room contains all the necessary accoutrements of pre-teen boy's life in Ireland – a PSP, a Nintendo DS and a portable DVD player as well as lots of Simpsons and wrestling memorabilia, books and games. The walls are covered in posters and pictures of his friends.

Over 4,000 miles away, Mik Katamba rises at first light in his home outside Masaka, Uganda. There is nobody to get him up – both his mother and father have died of Aids and he is being cared for by his 18-year-old brother.

He puts on a bright-pink school shirt, goes to his aunt's house where he eats some porridge and walks three kilometres to school when his brother can afford the 4,500 Ugandan shillings cost for books each term (about €1.60).

Until GOAL, the humanitarian aid organisation, built a three-room brick house for Mik and his brothers, the boys were practically homeless, sleeping in a dilapidated shack or finding shelter where they could. After their parents' deaths, the family, already struggling to survive, was overwhelmed. Now that they have a home the eldest boy gets casual labouring work which pays only 1,000 USh per day (35 cents) but at least it's steady.

The spartan bedroom Mik now shares with his 13-year-old brother contains a bed, a mosquito net and a couple of hooks for hanging his very limited selection of clothes. On the bare brick wall hangs his pride and joy – a Manchester United poster. His home has no electricity, and he has never even seen a television set, let alone watched football. His knowledge of his favourite team comes from a battery-powered radio on which he listens to the games.

Mik has never celebrated a birthday. He knows he was born in 1998, but nobody ever told him when. In his schoolyard the predominant sign reads in capital letters: 'SAY NO TO BAD TOUCHES'. In Jack's schoolyard the greatest danger is from SUVs driven by mothers collecting their sons.

Jack is my child. Like any normal Irish boy, he looks forward to films and holidays and Christmas. He enjoys having his friends over to his house, a pizza for a treat, sport, affection and encouragement.

Mik's life experiences are considerably more limited. He eats meat once or twice a year, he has never watched a film or left the environs of his home area. If the rains ruin the crop he has less to eat. If money is short he doesn't go to school. There is nobody to recognise his potential, let alone develop it.

Paul Kimbugwe was also born in 1998, although he looks years younger than 11. Small and slight, he stirs a pot of porridge cooking on an open fire beside his home. He barely lifts his head as we arrive. He lives just 15 kilometres from Mik in the countryside outside Masaka, but they've never met.

Like Mik, he is being reared by an older brother, Richard Ndawula (19). Paul was just three months old when his father succumbed to Aids and six when his mother passed away. They are both buried behind the clay-and-wattle hut the family once shared. In front of it now is the new brick home built for the brothers by GOAL donations from Ireland. It's sparse, but they keep it clean and tidy. They own very little, just a washbasin, some plastic mugs, Paul's school shirt and a spare T-shirt each. As in Mik's home, there is no electricity or running water, although they do have a new latrine and a water unit that collects rain from the shiny tin roof on their house.

Unlike Mik, Paul seems to lack a spark of life. His brother Richard gets occasional work collecting herbs for a local witchdoctor, but the price of food has increased recently and the brothers have been living on two bowls of porridge a day. Their grandparents were Rwandan immigrants so they have no close family members around.

"Things are hard for us now," Richard says through a translator. The boys' 16-year-old sister left recently to get married, taking her 14-year-old sister with her. They are keenly feeling the loss of a female homemaker. But they are grateful that they have a home.

Jack lives half a world away from Paul and Mik, but in reality their lives could be centuries apart. All were loved when they were conceived and loved when they were born, but the opportunities afforded to one are in stark contrast to the opportunities open to the other two. One was fortunate enough to be born to an educated mother in the first world, while the other two were born to mothers limited by dire poverty and destined to die of Aids, a disease they had no idea how to prevent.

Paul and Mik are just two of the estimated 1.7 million orphans in Uganda – about 12% of all children under 15 years of age. Almost 800,000 of them have lost one or both parents through HIV/Aids.

Chronic poverty and very poor living conditions have been identified as the key problems in these communities and GOAL, which has been involved in Uganda since the 1979 famine in Karamoja, is making a real difference.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the stories of loss and poverty, but there are signs of hope and progress, too. Communities are coming together and making decisions for themselves. These boys got their brick homes thanks to an initiative that allows the community to decide who is the most vulnerable among them. GOAL then verifies the selection and gets on with providing the shelter. So far 1,000 families have benefited from the scheme at a cost of €4,500 per home.

And with a home they have a chance of continuing in education and breaking the cycle of poverty that blights the southern African continent. Theirs is the first generation with a glimmer of hope for a better life than their parents and grandparents had. It won't match the chances of our children in Ireland in their lifetimes, but it is a start. A badly needed start.

Widow cursed by luck and pain

Nabatenzi Aida, 35, wants a chance for her family, although it looks like there is no hope for herself. A widow, rearing six children and suffering from the final stages of Aids, Aida, also known as Namwandu Ssempijja (widow of Ssempijja), is in severe pain on the day we visit.

She offers a scrawny breast to baby Nalungu Gertrude, who sucks lethargically on it. She lives too far away from the Aids clinic and is too weak to walk the distance necessary to get medication. And she has been warned that, by continuing to nurse, she is increasing the risk of spreading the HIV virus to the child.

"What can I do?" translates Goal's community manager, Aisha Galenda, for her. "I can't afford formula milk and she is hungry. I have to feed her."

Like Scovia, Aida invites us into her home on her knees and asks permission to stretch out her legs before her visitors do to ease the cramps in her muscles.

"My head is sore. I can't see properly. It's like looking in a cloud," she apologises as the flies swarm around her and the baby. They don't come near anyone else in the room.

Her concern now is that the house Goal built for her will go to her 18-year-old son when she dies, and that won't be too long now. He will then care for the other four children and baby Gertrude, if she makes it.

Legacy could come too late

Hoping for the chance of a new home is Nsubuga Constatine (55) his wife Maicate Scovia (30) and four children, one of whom is mentally disabled. Scovia, looking barely bigger than the youngsters she gave birth to, suffers from chronic skin problems. It could be Aids but she has never been checked out. Late diagnosis of serious conditions is a big problem, Dr Maura Lynch at St Joseph's Hospital, Kitovu, explains.

"By the time they come to us it's often too late to help much," she says.

Scovia lies on a bed in the smoky back room of the family's three-room home. It's dark and cramped. She spends her days here for now, sipping a little water but unable to eat. Her weight has dropped to about five stone, but she is desperate to see her family settled in a new GOAL house. On our arrival she insists on getting out of her bed and welcoming us on her knees.

As we leave Constatine follows us out: "He wants you to come back and eat with his family," the translator explains. This man who has nothing wants to give us something. Nsubuga Constatine, complete with a very crudely-stitched scar on his head from a fall off his bike as he looked for work, epitomises the Ugandan spirit of warmth and generosity. His smile mirrors the smiles of the entire community as they welcome us into homes humble even by the standard for dogs in Ireland.

Future in the hands and minds of youth

GOAL is targeting boys aged from 14 to their early 20s in four-month programmes to teach them construction skills to improve their chances of getting a job.

Monaghan man Stephen McEneaney, an engineer, is the programme manager and has spent the past two years in rural areas outside Masaka overseeing the project.

"Education means success for these young men," he explains. "Most of them receive only a rudimentary schooling and this gives them a chance to learn skills while still working on their own land. Some of them go to Kampala afterwards and get paid for work."

Family fortunes, Uganda-style

Five days before our visit, Nakabujo Margaret, a 34-year-old mother of six, delivered her first grandchild in the single-room shack she shares with her family. Her husband died of Aids, leaving her to rear the children, including one little boy who is deaf and dumb. Margaret has just been told that she will be the next recipient of a GOAL home and the joy she exhibits is unbridled. It means that Namulema Silvia and her newborn daughter Naikintu Harriet will have a better chance for the future.

Ultimate goal: O'Shea's lifetime of advocating for the poor

Thirty-two years ago, Irish sports journalist John O'Shea met Mother Teresa in Calcutta and his life changed forever. Rather than coming home and donating some money, O'Shea came home and began to badger the Department of Foreign Affairs for help.

From that first donation of £10,000, John O'Shea and GOAL have responded to nearly every major disaster in 50 countries, raising and spending €536m on humanitarian and development aid.

Today GOAL has projects and volunteers in 10 countries – Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Niger, Kenya, India and Honduras – "serving the poorest of the poor".

Over 1,400 'GOALies' have worked overseas since 1977. Sharon Commins, who was kidnapped along with her Goal colleague Hilda Kawuki in Darfur, hit the headlines this year. GOAL now has 105 people from 15 countries, including accountants, engineers, doctors and nurses, implementing its programmes.

The charity is financed by donations from the Irish, British and American public as well as the Irish, British and US governments, and by UN and EU funds, trusts, foundations and the corporate sector.

You can donate to GOAL online at www.goal.ie, by phone at 01-2809779, or by post at Goal, P0 Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin

From Amin to Aids: Uganda's four decades of strife

IdI Amin Dada seized power in Uganda in 1971 and ruled a military dictatorship for eight years. An estimated 300,000 Ugandans lost their lives during Amin's brutal regime.

He came to international prominence in 1976 when he offered a base at Entebbe airport to the Palestinian hijackers of an Air France flight. However, he was humiliated when Israeli crack troops freed the hostages.

Amin took revenge by murdering a pensioner who had been removed from the plane to hospital in Kampala. He also blamed the Kenyans for colluding with the Israelis and killed hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda.

President Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986. Child slavery, mass murder and conflict in northern Uganda have marked his period in power. In 2006, Ireland decided against appointing an ambassador to Uganda, citing reservations about the policies of its government.

Life expectancy in Uganda is 50 for females and 49 for males. Polygamous marriages are a strong feature of life among both Christians and Muslims and contribute to the spread of HIV/Aids. The population has grown from 12 million 20 years ago to 27 million in 2009. Just 20% of women have access to contraception and the average Ugandan woman has 6.9 children

© 2009 The Sunday Tribune