News: Uganda

After the death of his parents, Geoffrey Ogweng found it hard to survive under the care of his wild elder sister at Kichope Village in Lira District, Uganda. Oftentimes he would escape to the streets of Lira town in search of a better life. Life was so hard for Geoffrey because his elder sister always punished and beat him. The trauma inflicted on him made him mentally unsound; he looked very abnormal and some people thought he was mad.

The pile of bricks near Job Olwol’s house is evidence of what the 8-year-old wants to be when he grows up. “A builder,” Job says in a shy voice, his big eyes turning toward the ground. Job has been making the mud bricks used to build houses in his village in Uganda for quite some time. The motivated young man decided on his own one day to start making the bricks. He says he’s making them for “anybody interested in buying them.” His mother, Middy, smiles and says, “It’s training for him.”

It’s almost 7:30pm on a school night in Lira, Uganda, and the sun is setting. Second-grader Joseph Aweri and several other children at Children of the Nations' (COTN) Uganda Children’s Village have finished their dinner and chores, but they need a little more time to complete their homework. As the room where the children study grows dark, one of the older boys lights a kerosene lamp. But Joseph still has to bend close to the paper to see what he’s writing.

The children at Children of the Nations’ (COTN) Uganda Children’s Village in Lira, Uganda, gathered in excitement around their new yellow van when it rolled into town last month. They leapt in and out of the vehicle and bounced on its colorful seats decorated with cartoon rabbits, monkeys, and bears. “They were pretty excited,” says COTN–International Uganda Liaison Sylvia Taussig of Oklahoma City, who was in Lira when the van arrived.