Ochan Self-Help Alliance

People in Northern Uganda have traditionally been able to count on the regularity of rainfall between March and November each year.  They use this ample time to plant and harvest several crops in rotation as well as slower growing crops such as cassava and cotton.  OCHAN, a partner in resettlement with the people of Opac, provided  sunflower crop seeds and tree seedlings last April to 200 women.  To read these blogs of early 2009  with pictures of young sunflower plants rising in the fields is to sense the hope that the women sowed with this cash crop:  a good first harvest since their return from the IDP camps would launch their economic resuscitation.

June 2009

Instead, unpredicted drought attacked right in the middle of this planting season, just early enough  to ruin the young plants along with other food crops such as sesame and millet.  One can read about this drought in Uganda’s New Vision online news and can see it in the droop of the flowers and leaves in this picture.

The women who either immediately planted the seeds provided by OCHAN in early April or waited out the drought and planted late in the season (Sept. or Oct.) realized good harvests and 350%  average return on OCHAN’s investment.  Sadly, these successes amount to less than 50% of the farmers who participated in OCHAN’s program.

January 2010: Women bagging a good harvest of sunflower crop seeds. OCHAN provided the initial seeds, the bags, and the tarpaulin.

For farmers who lost their crops, famine looms high in the months to come during the dry season.  At the December Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, urgent calls by developing countries including Uganda for major polluters to curb carbon emissions  voiced what farmers in Opac are facing in a real way:  volatile and erratic swings in weather that  severely affect their livelihood and environmental health.  Both Uganda newspapers, The Monitor and New Vision, have reported extensively on effects of global warming in their country.

After the clan leaders of Opac Village recorded in the minutes of one of their meetings that a priority in resettlement had to be improving the sanitation of public places such as the market and the churches, OCHAN made it a priority to direct funds towards  this goal.  Through combining the generous  donations  made for two residential 2-door latrines,  OCHAN was able to amplify the impact of these gifts by building, instead,  a 4-door pit latrine to serve over 800 parishioners at their weekly worship on Sundays.

This local church has an 800+ congregation that worship here every Sunday. Church is the highlight of the week for villagers.

The cost of  such a latrine had to include privacy walls separating  doors for men and women and needed to  be dug deeper as well as  be supported by a cement floor. The total cost to build this  structure was $550;  it will see years of service and is  pictured below.   OCHAN hopes to raise funds for 3 other public latrines in Opac.  OCHAN’s partnership with the leaders of the village is crucial to the success of our resettlement mission.  Workers on this project include local youth.

First public latrine is completed in December, 2009

Local constuction team under OCHAN's Building Director, Mr. Alfred Angel, lays the foundation of the public latrine.

The Acuma family on veranda of their new home. Kitchen window at right.

Mr. J. Acuma, the Medical Officer of Ocan Community Clinic, has served for a year and built a reputation for quality service to his patients.  All this while, Mr. Acuma has lived alone with his cat Luta (trans.” my cane”:  a weapon against intruders, like mice, bugs,) in a storage room at the back of the clinic.

Now, thanks to the generosity of OCHAN donors, he has just moved  into a newly built house behind the clinic where his wife and children have been able to join him.   This “core” house can be expanded room-by-room as needed to accommodate additional staff or volunteer workers.

OCHAN's Project Coordinator for Housing, Alfred Angel (center) with his construction team in front of completed core house. Painting remains to be done.

The one-room facility of Ocan Community Clinic, part of a 9-room dilapidated dry goods store, treated over 1,250 patients in its first 12 months of operation.  Demand for high quality high volume service has become self-evident.

Thanks to generous donor response in 2009 to the resettlement health needs of the peasant community of Opac Village, OCHAN received sufficient resources to begin restructuring the entire building that houses the clinic.  This renovation will expand health services in the next several months particularly in the area of maternal/child services, a major need voiced by the women of the village.  Other services will include the following:  inpatient care, limited surgical procedures, a diagnostic laboratory, pediatric care (notably childhood vaccinations), counseling  for victims of war trauma and latest treatment regimens for HIV/AIDS.   Below you will find the following:  picture of OCHAN’s construction team; floor plans for A) an onsite core house for the in-charge medical officer, and (B) the restructured clinic.   Mr. Alfred Angel prepared and  will implement these plans.

L-R: A. Angel, OCHAN project Director for Housing; N. Deli (mason), M. Aber (carpenter), S. Waca (painter), J. Ekol (plumbing/metalworks); not pictured: F. Odongo (electrician).

A lot! Yet a lot more can be done, thanks to your generous donations of 2009. Stay tuned for forthcoming progress reports that depict Ochan’s concerted self-help activities, some achievements, and obstacles in the multiple arenas of our partnership with the people of Opac:  improvements in community sanitation, service delivery in health care, and results of 2009 sunflower/trees program with Ocan Women’s Resettlement Group who heroically battled drought in order to realize some gains in their livelihood. You will read of their success, heartbreaking setbacks, and our big plans to support them again this year.

Here’s a quick view of just one impact of your gifts which allowed a major step forward for the clinic:  a 2,000 liter capacity rain tank for $831.00.  The clinic has no running water so attaching a gutter to the roof and a pipe into a collecting tank with spigots to use is an unprecedented step forward in helping the clinic to deliver better health care.  Before this, staff were riding bicycles to a distant bore hole to fill jerry cans with water or sending young boys to  fill and carry the water on their heads.

A roof gutter collects rain water into a 2,000 liter reservoir tank for use in the clinic.