News about the students of Nebbi

A message from Raphael, The Director of the College.

"Dear Vicenzo and Antonella

Greetings and best wishes to you.

I have been in a Diocesan Meeting the whole of this week. On Monday before going for the meeting I wanted to send you an update but was disappointed when the e-mail services did not respond.

The school is going on well. The Senior 4 finished their final exams on the 12th November and went home and the results will not be out till the end of January 2009. Then I will send you a copy immediately. The rest of the classes will begin their exams next week on Monday and again the results shall be ready by the middle of December then I will send to you the ones of those on sponsorship.

I talked to the students on sponsorship one by one and they wrote the "Thank you" letter which I posted to you on the 8th of this month about two weeks ago and they should be arriving to you soon. Four of the students that time had gone home to try and bring the little they could as fees from the parents and I sent their letters later. Two have not written, that is, Kasamba Cosmas because he is waiting for the new year to come and repeat Senior 4. He is not in the college. And Alan Jero who fell sick and went home last term is still at home and will come back next year.

The work on the new dormitory is going on well. The wall should be finished in the next couple of days latest in two weeks time and we start the roofing. THANK YOU for the donation.

We are giving holidays for the students on the 5th of December. On the 3rd of December we are inviting all the parents of the students to the college for a general meeting and together with them see how we can break even.

We hope to get a good number of students in Senior 1 next year. Many people have picked interest in the college and want their children to come and join us. This has manly been because of your efforts. The new buildings are attracting the people and the dedication of the teachers is also good.

As you meet over diner tomorrow send our best regards to everybody. I fully know it is a lot of sacrifice the people are making to contribute money at this time of hard economic crisis world over. We pray to God to continue to bless all of you people. We keep on remembering you people in our prayers. Greet everybody and God Bless you all. We hope next time many of the people helping us will come to see the fruits of their efforts. Thank you very much.


Thank you.

Fr Raphael OKUMU
DIRECTOR"

The future of the boys in Nebbi starts also with you!!

Being a child in Uganda, as in most African countries, means to live each day with the hope to survive. When arriving in countries like these, you are immediately touched by the manoeuvres, the glances, the smiles, the handshakes of the children representing the present, but also their hope for a better future… Today, the average age expectation for a person in Uganda is 45.
Every single day, thousands of young children die from famine, lack of water and sanitary help, suffering diseases such as malaria and AIDS.
Lots of them become orphans; they become marginal and have no opportunity to go to school and to get appropriate education, enabling them to live a dignified and better life then the ones before them. Up until today, still too many children are being deprived of a “child’s life”. To lots of them “a life” is being denied.

What are these children in Uganda missing? All that we simply consider acquired, to them it does not exist and it represents a daily struggle to achieve it. Water, the source of life and a daily need is the luxury of a few people only, the ones that live close to a spring, strewed about in the area at kilometres’ distance.

The first morning trip is dedicated to the provision of water… one can see roads with lines of women, children, also small children, 7, 8 years old, under a burning sun, barefoot and with wearing four cloths, walking for kilometres and kilometres back to their village these heavy water tanks. Besides getting the water, these women and children also have to gather wood to make a fire, indispensable for cooking the few things that they can grow or amass from nature: polenta made of matocko, chicken- or goat meat, milk from the few goats or from the skinny cows that they possess and where one may wonder how much milk they can still produce.

Food is a gift of nature, each area with different products that go from bananas to papaya, mango or other fruits unknown to us… and everything is distributed, nothing being left over. But even food is a luxury because it depends on the rainfall that may vary from year to year…
These children have little time to play… nevertheless they always know how to offer you a smiling face.

To me, this has been a beautiful sensation, knowing how to read in every single face a desire, a different dream. These faces, these glances and these eyes that know how to look at you with an absolute profoundness… they all have a specific message: they ask for our attention, our help, and our affection. I would never have stopped making pictures… each and every time it brought a new message and, I did not want to lose a single one of them.
In order to understand this experience, one simply needs to live it.
Until today I only saw such scenes on TV, but they never brought the same sensation that one experiences when face to face…

Visiting the Nutritional and paediatric division of the hospital of Angal, guided by a person that is so deeply devoted to these children and to their future, Claudia Marsaj, made me understand how distant this reality is from us, from our sons and daughters that live in a world that offers EVERYTHING and where yet it never seems to be enough. Many times over again I have been listening to the stories of Mario and Claudia, both living this experience for many years already. However, the emotion caused by seeing it all with my own eyes has been quite different to imagining it all.
Believe me, it would happen to all of you… and as such I’m asking you not to be indifferent but to open your eyes, your ears and above all to open your heart to this sad and cruel reality.
To quote Maria Teresa, if we all contribute with one single drop, together we could create the ocean and make the difference for many of these manoeuvres, these little hands that are crying for help and comfort.
Even without words, looks can talk…
I hope that my words can catch your interest and open your heart.

Thanks for having listened to me…
Antonella

A trip to Nebbi

Finally we arrived in Uganda.
Leaving from Kampala we drive towards Omyer in the district of Nebbi.
450 km, a quite adventurous trip in chaotic and disordered traffic, over incoherent and dusty roads.
Father Enrico is an expert driver in the area, mastering the local dialects.

In one way, having an expert guide is reassuring, whilst he navigates our pick up truck to avoid holes in the road that sometimes turn into huge gaps, avoiding the frequent pedestrians transporting water-casks with water they recently gathered from the scarce wells, or carrying sheaves of wood that they had to chop with their “machetes”
Cows, sheep, goats and chicken are embellishing our drive, not far away from the frequent villages with miserable cottages made of mud and with thatched roofs.

Women and children stretched out on the ground, endeavouring their play and their occupation.
These are images of the daily life and struggle that vary from the fields with vegetables, bananas, mango, papaya and other local fruits.
Limited plantations of tea and sugar canes pinch space from a luxuriant forest, making good use of the fertile ground and an ideal climate that apparently seems to ease the daily work in the fields.

These are images that are being printed in our memory; together with the inevitable thought on our privilege not having to live such kind of life where malaria, Aids and famine kill with an impressive speed, in such a way that in this area, life expectations do not go beyond 45.
Fortunately there are people like Mario and Claudia from “Amici di Angel Onlus”, who dedicated 50 years of their lives to these areas and founded a hospital where they welcome anyone in need of care.

And of course there are also the Combonian missionaries that always have been bringing comfort to all people in great need, be it morally of materially.
We had the opportunity of getting to know them in person and we officially thank them for their work and their contribution in controlling the correct use of the funds and following up on the construction works.

Thank you P.Gino and F.Gianni.

Here we are at our school


It looks like everything is under control and clean.
The recent constructions of the shelters for the teachers, the dormitories, the kitchens, the library and the class-rooms are well arranged over the vast properties of the Comboni College.


The laboratory is still under construction and a group of workers are finishing the roof structure and plastering inside.
We give a hearty welcome to P.Raphael, Director of the school, together with the team of teachers and all members of the Board.
Let’s dedicate our time to make a point on the situation.


There are not many boys at the College as it is a holiday period. However, the fourth class is complete and glitter in their uniform.
Already 126 boys visit the college and many of them sleep at the campus.

Nevertheless, some twenty of them left school due to either economical problems or for disciplinary motives.

We need to think of the college’s future, its immediate priorities and on the investments that are still required in order to create an institution that is able to support itself economically, by containing the cost and taking full advantage of the 180.000 shilling, approximately 70 euro that every student needs to pay every term.
Board and lodging as well as college expenses are included in this figure.


What do we need right now?

In order to obtain a budget equilibrium, we need a minimum of 300 students.
However, in order to admit them a second dormitory as well as another building with class-rooms will need to be built.
Let’s add to this another means of transportation for the provision of daily food and water, a millstone for the kitchen and a solar system to provide electricity for all these buildings and it brings us to a total of 165.000 euro that will be needed to complete the college.

We look forward to collect the necessary funds within the coming 18 months, either through private sponsoring from friends and relations, or by soliciting donations from businesses that we come in contact with.
The organisation of theatre- and culinary events will continue to obtain additional funding as they already did in the past.
In addition, let’s think of structuring the collection of additional funds through a program of adoption at distance and which we will present soonest.
We set ourselves an ambitious objective.

Finance the college expenses by means of this program for at least some fifty students. The selection criteria are simple. We will mainly take care of boys that are orphans and meritorious according to the scholastic profile but we will also look into the case of families having a difficulty in paying the annual college expense in total.

We also count on your generosity. Do not stay indifferent and help us in making our African dream come true, that brick upon brick becomes a reality.
The pictures that you have seen in this mail clearly show the situation of our school. We are also preparing a video that, if you would like so, we hope to show you soon.

See you soon African Dreamer,

Vincenzo and Antonella