Clinic

Rainy Season in Uganda

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I’ve spent a lot of time with my Ugandan friends trying to explain the concept of seasons. (I haven’t been that successful!)

In Uganda, there are just rainy and dry seasons – two of each per year. We are coming to the last few weeks (we hope!) of this fall’s rainy season, which has been brutal.

  • At least 24 were killed in flooding in Eastern Uganda in August
  • Thousands were displaced by flooding and landslides in Western Uganda in September

Our own programs have been affected, as you can see from the picture above of Hopeland Primary School in Mbarara. Wells of Hope and the surrounding village in Rwakobo have had even more significant flooding. The work on the farmhouse was delayed significantly by rains.

You may not know it, but Kampala is about 3000 feet above sea level. I’ve only had one trip in 14 where I was hot — often I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt! And few windows have glass in them so the damp cold is hard to get away from when it never seems to stop raining.

We’ve had several girls struggle to control their asthma during this time, and about three times the usual number of respiratory illnesses. We’ve even had some cases of dysentery due to all the contaminated water girls have to walk through to get to class.

So… Did you know that you can sign up as a monthly sponsor of our Haven Clinic? It’s true! We are at 40% right now. There’s no minimum to be a sponsor, and it really helps us keep all our teen moms and teen girls healthy by paying Sherry’s salary and restocking the medications we use daily.

SPONSOR THE CLINIC!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

PS Bonus picture of Sylvia with her new baby boy (no name as of yet) coming home from the hospital to lots of love yesterday!

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Wow, You Really Came Through!

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YOU GUYS ROCK!

Seriously, maybe I need to go away more often because just in the time I was on my trip, we raised nearly $4000 on DonorSee!

FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS! Wow. I’m blown away!

What did you accomplish?

  • blackboards for the new Wells of Hope Primary building
  • a substantial start on part 1 of desks and chairs for the building
  • orphan Miriam’s medical care after she was hit by a boda
  • almost 60% of the transportation for Kellen to her father’s burial
  • medical care for teen mom Mabel’s two sick children
  • a metal crutch for Emmanuel, who was born with one leg
  • help for Clare, the teen mom living in the chicken coop
  • an exit package for teen mom Gloria, to set her up for independence
  • restocking food for our teen girls
  • mosquito nets for 25 students in Skills for Life
  • an emergency intake for 15-year-old pregnant teen Sylvia
  • a 4-bed dormitory for homeless students in Skills for Life
  • medical treatment for Jen’s UTI

Y’all, I was only gone 2 1/2 weeks! THIS.IS.AMAZING!!

Your support while I was gone, beyond this amazing giving, was so appreciated. I got emails and messages on social media, and it was so encouraging. Because it’s hard over there…

Great. But hard. Thanks to all of you, the trip was a success in every way. I really can’t thank you enough!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

PS Becoming a monthly supporter is a GREAT way to help our work! As little as $10 a month makes an impact — $10 can provide food for a teen mom and her child for a week! Just click the button to get started —>

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

It’s Rainy Season & We Need Mosquito Nets!

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Last week we had 7 girls to come to the Haven Clinic with malaria. Nurse Sherry didn’t get her Sunday off, because she was tending to all the cases!

The treatment for malaria is a week-long course of IV infusions. It requires a temporary canula that is left in for the whole course of treatment, as well as the nurse to administer the medication. With 7 girls currently receiving treatment, that’s a lot of medicine and supplies!

Malaria makes you feel terrible, but left untreated it can cause brain damage, or lie dormant in the liver only to cause relapse and illness later. We had a boy in the basketball camp we held in 2013 who had been quite severely impacted by cognitive impairment due to untreated malaria.

Why now?

It’s rainy season, and that means lots of puddles, filled drainage ditches, and other areas of stagnant water. While we have mosquito nets in our residential houses, those do get torn, or mosquitoes can be trapped inside during the day.

Currently, the tailoring class is repairing all of our mosquito nets, but that still leaves all the girls in our program who go home to houses without. We have a project up on DonorSee right now for 25 nets, the first effort to get nets to 100% of our students and staff.

You can help – a donation of any size gets us closer to a net for everyone!

Let’s buy some nets!

An Amazing Donation of Medical Equipment from MDF Instruments

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Back in January, another partner on DonorSee who works in South Africa contacted me. We have very similar (and not the usual) definitions and understanding of nonprofit work, and she wanted to connect me to a medical instrument manufacturer who had donated a lot of equipment to their clinics in SA.

This week we got the box from MDF Instruments in Puerto Rico, and it was Christmas in March! This is professional quality equipment: stethoscope, blood pressure cuffs in sizes from baby to large adult, and much more. (Stuff I don’t know the name of, for sure!) And a sweet note to our nurse, Sherry, about being a nurse.

I will be taking all this equipment over with me in May, along with SO MUCH more that has been donated over the past two years. (To be honest, there’s no way I can take it all in one trip!) We’ve got clothes, shoes, reusable sanitary pads, books, toys, laptops, iPads, tote bags, and first aid supplies… Lots of it.

This kind of generosity and commitment to people you don’t know and won’t ever meet is what makes Ten Eighteen Uganda successful. Whether it’s your money, your product, your kids’ toys and clothes, or handmade reusable sanitary pads, YOUR generosity makes us successful.

And we appreciate you more than you can ever know!

If you have things to donate besides money, do me a favor and hold onto it until June! After that, I’ll have some room to store it until the next visit. 🙂

Blessings,

Jennings

PS. Becoming a monthly donor of ANY amount helps us so much. We’d love to have you join us. 100% goes to the programs. Just click the button below!

I want to be a monthly donor!

Free Health Care Is Crucial To Our Girls

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Since we opened the Ross House in November 2020, providing health care and medical treatment for our girls has been a priority. It is a lot easier to get sick while living in Uganda’s largest slum than it is to stay well!

Up until February, we sent all our sick girls to Dr. Francis, who gave us a discounted rate and didn’t require up-front payment. Still, the cost of an exam, treatment, hospital visits for daily IV injections, and transportation added up. And the bigger we got, the more we spent. (Thank goodness for our partnership with DonorSee that started in September 2021!)

But one day in January along came the idea fairy, who dropped the idea of an on-site clinic in my head. After adding up what we’d averaged per month on medical treatment and comparing it to what we’d have to pay a full-time nurse plus medications and supplies, it was quite obvious that the better solution was to open an on-site clinic.

Lately, we’ve had a run of typhoid in our community, thanks to the rains and dirty, contaminated water that the girls drink at home. Malaria also surges when there are lots of puddles and congested drainage ditches for mosquitoes to breed in.

Because of the Haven Clinic and nurse Sherry, however, our costs are still below what we spent in an average month treating fewer girls. The girls and children are healthier and do better in class. And few are getting very sick now, since we can treat things when they start, not when they’re “bad enough to justify a doctor visit.” It’s been a big win-win!

As always, thank you so much for your support! Please forward this and all our emails to anyone you know who might be interested in our work. I’m available to speak to groups, too! Just use the Contact form!

Webele nyo!

Jennings

THE CLINIC IS OPEN!

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During 2021, we had a LOT of medical issues come up for our girls and babies. The most common were malaria and typhoid, but we’ve also had intestinal parasites, pneumonia, and burns… to name a few.

We have a wonderful doctor who sees our girls at a discount and without requiring payment up front. But he does, of course, require payment in short order, as does the hospital where most treatments have to be done. (Many meds for advanced typhoid and malaria, as well as antibiotics for children, are done through an IV canula that stays in for a week). Plus there’s transport to and from the hospital on boda bodas.

We’ve done a LOT of DonorSee projects to cover medical bills… So I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it before, but in January it hit me: OPEN A CLINIC, DUMMY!

So we did! We’d contracted for more space within our compound in August, and at the end of the year most of it was finally ready. That allowed us to move the Ross House girls to a more private apartment area and free up rooms in the main house. VOILA! A clinic was born.

We are now officially open for business, with a fully stocked medicine cabinet, first aid supplies, IV supplies, a bed, and a full time nurse.

We’ve already had our first patients!

Of course, this is free to our girls and their children (and our staff). But it’s not free to US. We will have ongoing expenses to restock medications and supplies, as well as the nurse’s salary. We also had the expense of setting it up. If you’d like to help, just click the button below – 100% goes to the program.

Thank you ALWAYS for your amazing support! We’re so grateful to have you with us.

Blessings,

Jennings

SUPPORT THE HEAVEN CLINIC

HOW WE’RE USING YOUR DONATIONS

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As you know, we had a lot of donations in December. It was truly amazing! So we wanted to let you know how we’re using your money so far in 2022.

Right now – today – we have finished our daycare!

This has been a long-held dream for us. We’ve watched our teen moms go to class with babies on their backs or having to chase a toddler around during lessons, and it was (of course!) obvious what we needed. But we didn’t have the space or the budget. Until now!

Thanks to your donations, both directly and on DonorSee, we got the funds to create the daycare. Our soft opening is this weekend, and we will be open for “business” (it’s free!) on Monday. Our wonderful social worker Sarah, who has a baby of her own, is in charge.

The Literacy class had its last day of “soft launch” today, too. Monday is the official launch, and we’ve got 20 girls ready to learn basic reading, writing, English, and math.

Monday, the great photographer Bob Ditty is coming to spend the day doing a photo/video shoot. I had a Zoom meeting with him yesterday and can’t wait to see his images and videos. He usually works in rural areas of Uganda, so he’s very excited to take his work to the slum.

And then Tuesday, we start work on the clinic! Having a nurse and stocked clinic onsite will save us SO MUCH MONEY, not to mention catch the common illnesses like typhoid, malaria, and pneumonia early. The nurse will also conduct regular health and hygiene seminars, and visit our families in their homes. We are really excited to add this to our compound and community.

We have a DonorSee project up to help with the clinic. If you’re interested in helping us, click the button!

Thanks for all your support and encouragement – know that you are making a HUGE difference everyday!

I WANT TO HELP WITH THE CLINIC!