MY THOUGHTS OF UNFAIR LIFE
I thought of sharing something with you....just to see how unfair the life is sometimes..
Children of our gardener has come from school to our house to ask for lunch (embarased and sad) since they have not eaten anything because the father was not able to afford buy them posho and beans for their lunch (school requires 25kg of posho and 20kg of beans per child.. this is almost 3/4 of his salary! Per child!) Yunisu (the father) has dealt with the situation the way, that he ordered to his kids not to go to school until he gets his half salary (in 3 days) so he can buy them some food. However the kids still went.
I just wanted to share with you (again) how some people get their priorities completely wrong and it makes me so sad that some parents have worries about what the designed clothes to buy for their children, where others cannot send children to school and if they do, they go all day without food.
Unfortunately this is another issue that has been brought to our project. Yunisu - our gardener, that we employ, we pay him minimum wage which is established by gavernment and it is 100.000 UGSH a month - approximately £26-27 (cca $50). This is how much others are paid (and some are paid even less than this) and we cannot afford more.
Yunisu has 3 children and pays 15000 rent a month. Each child's school fees is around 10.000, so monthly he must pay almost half of his salary just for rent and school fees.. unfortunately the 55.000 USH which he is left with is NOT enough to buy posho and beans to the children for their lunch at school. The whole Uniform for each child is again almost 20.000 and they asking for all the stationery and toilet papers.
For the last hour I was working out with calculator how to do it with his salary so we can manage to pay the school fees and food for the children and so the father is left with some more little money for the for the food in the house. I could calculate and calculate but simply the salary that we give him is not enough to be able to pay all the responsibilities he has.. I constantly feel bad to deal with situation like this. I feel bad because I dont have the money myself to pay (as I am volunteering here myself) and I have such big project to take care for and this applies financial and emotional pressure on me from all corners and sides we can look at it. (I could just turn around and say, "hey his problems are not my problem, he should be happy to have a job) but this is not why I came to Uganda.. I came to help people whaterver it takes..
I have agreed to contribute 30.000 shillings per months to pay for the school fees for his 3 kids and for now the children will be coming here for lunch (to the orphanage) until we manage to save some money from his salary to be able to buy the food, from the rest of his salary, we have to buy school uniforms and other things( obviously not at once).. however this again is extra mouth to feed, since we already feeding around 8 people a day (volunteers and 3 workers). And again how this is fair on our second gardener William who has got 7 children, who are extremely needy, all the time sick children?
This is just a little request I have, if there would be somebody who could sponsor Yunisu's salary, so he would be able to get more money per months so he can provide for his 3 children. He so much taking care of them and they mean the world to him... Even a small contribution per month would make his salary difference.
Thank you.
