You may have heard that there has been a drought going on in Uganda since April. Most rural peoples are subsistence farmers and live off the produce of their own gardens. That means that a drought quickly turns into famine. Food prices also go up so that even those with jobs struggle to feed themselves.
Kingsway grows a large garden to defray their food costs because food is expensive in Uganda, so they are affected too.
We asked Milly about what was going on. On July 27, she wrote:
We have a very severe drought this year! Even at Kingsway, there has been no rain since May up to now!
But praise the Lord for Genesis Waters! (who installed a well at Kingsway last year, to their great joy.) We have been watering our vegetables! Our kale and carrots did well. We are now serving them as our only vegetables. The carrots are getting done in two weeks. The kale will take us for some time. But for our cabbage garden and eggplants, they never responded well to the watering. They are just miserably poor! We will get nothing from them!
In the north the drought has been very, very severe! You cannot see any green grass anywhere! The crops which were planted early in the year just dried up completely! Many small streams from which people fetch water dried out. The boreholes are dry, they don’t pump out water! Older people and malnourished children are dying including livestock! The drought has been very severe!
Nevertheless, we are seeing signs of rain in the skies now! The clouds that bring rain appear and disappear without any drop of rain yet. But we are hopeful the rains will come down soon!
Elsewhere she commented,
Due to the long drought, food prices are really extremely high! For example, the maize (posho) we used to buy a 50 kilogram bag at shs 75,000/-; ($19.89) we now buy at shs 130,000/- ($34.38) !
Pray with us!