What is the drought doing to our children?

Although we know a lot about the effects of the drought in Sudan and Ethiopia its effects and those created by inflation are giving some very serious problems at our schools.
This report from our Director, Ssempijja Andrew tells the story. We will be helping.

Third Term 2011 will run for 90 days from the 28^th of August until the 26^th of November. The main food products we feed to both our students and staff, is posho made from maize flour and beans, for sauce.

Posho is made from Maize and is like thick porridge.

Due to some food that we have harvested from our farms we have been able to add additional nutrition to the children’s diets in weekends. However due to the current drought, we will not be able to harvest this food from our gardens next term. Therefore students will have to consume a constant diet of posho and beans unless we are able to add some additional variety to their diet, by buying rice at the weekends for example. (Posho fills you but has low nutritious value)

Amount required:

Beans
60kg per day for 90 days	5400kg
Cost per Kg	1500Ush (current price)
Total cost	8,100,000Ush   £2025
Maize Flour
Maize flour needed for Posho	19,500Kg
Maize flour needed for Porridge	2700Kg
Total Kg of maize flour needed	22,200Kg
Price per Kg	800Ush
Total Cost	17,760,000Ush   £4440

During this Second Term, maize corn prices rocketed to 1500Ush per Kg due to scarcity; because of some new harvests we anticipate the price per Kg to drop to 800Ush. However, there is a need to purchase and stock it very quickly as the farmers start harvesting in early August. According to observation, the yield has been poor and neighbouring countries are eagerly waiting to buy it. Therefore food prices may rise much higher than they have been.

Rice
Per meal- 130Kg at 3200Ush per Kg	416,000Ush       £104
For 12 meals (Once per week)	4,992,000Ush £1248 for 6000 meals

If we put the above meal plan into effect, the cost on the posho will reduce by 2,080,00Ush and then the overall cost will rise by 4,992,000Ush.

Summary

Total cost for maize	17,760,000Ush
Plus cost of rice	4,992,000Ush
Plus cost of beans	8,100,000Ush
Total	30,852,000Ush     £7713
Minus value for posho replaced by rice	2,080,000Ush
Final Total	28,772,000Ush     £7193

 This total will feed 550 people for 5 to 7 days a week. About 50,000 meals!!

Water Status

As the population of the community expands, water as a resource is needed much more. Therefore water pressure is increasing within the area. There are three possible alternative interventions that can be considered:

1.    Drill a borehole, since it was discovered that there is an underground river located near St Zoe; we could target and extract the water and be able to obtain a clean water supply.

2.    The second intervention would look at enlarging and completing the valley dam. This could even include a way of filtering this water so as to improver the water quality.

3.    The third proposal looks at building another underground tank on the side of the Secondary School. This would enable the harvesting of more rainwater from the roofs of the Secondary buildings.

W Written by Ssempijja Andrew July 24th 2011