‘Our light of hope': Nyassimo Jamillah and the Buliisa Orphans Project

Nyassimo Jamillah lives in the remote and rural District of Buliisa in Uganda. Hundreds of kilometres from the capital and with no local road network, its village communities feel well and truly cut off from the rest of the country. Bordered on the west by Lake Albert, the livelihoods of the local people depend on a precarious relationship with lake and land (fishing and tobacco cultivation being their main sources of income).

The district has been badly hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with 26% of its population currently affected by the virus (compared with a national average of 6.4% of the population). The reasons are complex, but the sex trade that exists amongst Lake Albert's fishing communities and the large number of people displaced by wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda are significant contributory factors. The result is an orphan population of over 16,000. The poverty, emotional devastation, and other hardships brought about by losing one's parents means that the care and protection of orphans in Buliisa, as elsewhere in Uganda, should be of paramount importance. But financial resources are limited. Also, because of its remote location the district is among those considered hard to reach by the government and as a result not enough is done to support its vulnerable children.

A mother of six, Jamillah provides for the basic needs of her children through her meagre farming income. She became the sole provider to the family when her husband passed away:

"The turning point in my life was in April 2005 when my husband died after suffering a long illness due to HIV/AIDS. We were left poorer as most of the assets we had bought over the years were sold off to save his life. But it was in vain. Now I provide every need in this household".

The Buliisa Orphans Project is addressing the need for support. Its goal is to improve the lives of orphans and vulnerable children by encouraging income generation through Village Savings and Loans Associations and better diet by donating seeds and training farmers in more modern agricultural practices. Gardens are supplying families who care for orphans with the nutrition they need. In addition, the project promotes child protection awareness by educating the carers and their children about children's rights.

Jamillah says, "Before support from the Buliisa Orphans Project, life was hard to live. It was hard for me to provide food daily to my family, access medical care and school materials for my children. I depended on casual work whenever an opportunity showed up. Our light of hope was seen when Build Africa, through the Orphans Project, started supplying me cassava stems and bean seeds and training me in the methods of the Village Savings and Loan Association.  Now we have food and financial help to support the orphans and vulnerable children in our families."

Jamilla's life has been turned around. Used to the precarious life of a subsistence farmer, she now hopes to increase her agricultural production, selling surplus produce to improve the family income. With this newly found income she can send her children to school. She can also dare to hope that their ambitions will come true:

"We work together as a family and I am trying to teach my children to understand the value of education. Every day after school I try to help my children understand what they learnt at school. All of the older children have a dream: Abdu wants to be an aeroplane engineer, Zabair wants to a bus driver, Sulaiman wants to be a teacher and Jamillah (my only daughter) wants to be a nurse".