EWAKA [eh-wa-ka] translates as HOME in the Lugandan language. We believe that quality of life begins at home. The conditions under which you live and consequently the general well-being and health of you and your family, regardless of material comfort, have a tremendous impact on your expectations, your concerns and your priorities.

Who is Justine?

Let us just say, the point of this text is not to paint a picture of a downtrodden lady whom life has treated unfairly; it is also not an attempt to play on emotions to elicit funds. It is simply us trying to convey the truth of one family’s personal circumstance, why we feel moved to help and why we hope maybe you will too.

This is Justine, a very hardworking 36 years old Mother and Farmer who lives in a small mud built house with a roof of salvaged corrugated iron sheets. There aren’t really any windows (or secure doors for that matter) to speak of, making it unbearably dark inside during the day and dangerously vulnerable at night. The floor inside is simply the compacted natural ground surface, a dusty orange earth when dry and a claggy red mud when wet, the later being quite frequently as it is almost impossible to stop rainwater running into the house.

Living in a remote rural village in central Uganda, Justine has four children and the family survives day to day through subsistence farming. Sadly her Husband (and Father to her children) has been estranged from the family for some years and with no extended family locally she is alone but for the friendship of neighbours. What compounds her situation further is that she doesn’t own the property in which she lives or the small plot of land on which she farms, she actually pays monthly rent for the privilege of both of these.

The family’s current situation is the very definition of a hand-to-mouth existence. It’s almost impossible to convey the hardship they face daily. Something as fundamental as water for drinking, cooking and bathing requires a 3km round walk carrying two 10 litre jerry cans and that’s just the first thing on a very long list that starts two hours before sunrise, at 5am, and ends around 11pm.

Our goal is to assist in providing Justine with a safe and secure home and a means to improve her household income, with the ultimate goal being for Justine to own her own home and smallholding. This will free her from financially crippling tenancy agreements, facilitate increased food crop productivity and greatly improve prospects for the whole family. The home build would also make provision for a small external kitchen building allowing for a safer cooking environment and a separate private sanitation area providing toilet and bathing facilities, which are currently woefully inadequate.

Inspite of the hardship, Justine is determined to make the best decisions she can for her childrens' futures and with the support of the UK charity Friends Reaching Out, Justine’s eldest son Samuel is able to attend primary school. Faced with this challenge of giving her children the best opportunities she can Justine took the very difficult decision to send her two daughters (Lovia, 16 & Harriet, 13) to stay with their Grandmother in a distant northerly district of the country; she simply does not have means or space for them to stay at home, we hope between us we can remedy this.

Below is a short piece of footage of the outside of Justine's current rented house, it highlights the inadequate toilet, bathing and kitchen facilities, which we would hope to remedy in the course of the home build.

There's so much to consider with a project such as this and consequently many questions you may have previous to making a donation. As we did not want to swamp the page with text we have compiled a separate document that covers in more detail the longer term plans and ambitions of the project and importantly how it will work moving forwards. Follow the link posted below for our FAQ document, also you can view/download our initial house build drawings from the second link.

EWAKA - FAQ Document

EWAKA - Kyalo House Drawings

At this stage we have a 1 acre plot of good farmland on which crops will be grown and Justine's home will be built. We have working drawings for a simple, comfortable home with a modest solar power installation to negate the use of kerosene lamps. We have consulted with local building contractors and negotiated a competitive price for the home build, which comes in at just over the £3,700 sterling of our target. The link below is an overview of the budget and process, to help show how exactly funds will be used. The new home site is close by to Justine's current house so she will not be moving away from the friends and support she has grown close to. We hope to start the work in late May/early June this year and anticipate a build schedule of 8-10 weeks.

EWAKA - Kyalo House Budget

Justine and her family are one of many such in her village alone, families struggling to survive in debilitating poverty with no hope of getting out of the demoralising cycle. Wives, Husbands, Grandparents, and extended family are often left alone through bereavement, abandonment, and other situations and must provide for, raise and protect children and themselves. Some people may question why Justine? or why at all when the scale of the problem is so large? But for us, even if ONLY Justine, that alone could change the course of lives for generations to come.

This project is the first step down a road that could lead to tens, if not hundreds, of changed family lives. We are not yet a registered charity in the UK, but hope as things develop that it may be a realistic prospect to consider this route. Further down that road we will invest more into the formalities of governing documentation, websites, etc, but for now we thought better to make practical progress with the help and address the formalities as neccesary.

What we’re trying to do is not revolutionary, unless of course you are Justine. Thank you for taking the time to read about our project. We hope, like us, that you can see the value in changing the life of a community, one family at a time and will consider donating to give Justine the step-up we all would hope and pray for if we were faced with similar circumstances.