My Diary in Kazo, Uganda: This Is One of the Families I Saw Today

I cannot express it in English, neither in Chinese, how I felt the moment I got to know Ritah's family. Ritah is a six-year-old girl, always silent in the centre in where I barely noticed her among other kids. She and her mother were chased out of their home by their landlord not long ago for not being able to pay the rent. Since then we accommodated them in our centre. Although I was already familiar with the girl, their family story was completely new to me until I went to profile them.

The first thing I saw was her mother's little shop, too small to be called a shop since it could hardly be noticed by the passers-by. The total capital of what she sells does not exceed 1.5 dollar per day. She told us in a very calm and motherly tone that in average she earns 0.25 dollar per day. Sometimes business is better and sometimes it is worse, so it is quite often by the end of the day nothing is left for the two to buy food since money has to be reinvested into the business for the luck of tomorrow. She had a husband deep in the village where she tasted a life of worse than absolute poverty. So she decided after her husband betrayed her to come to Kazo to earn a living. But life was found even harder than in the village. Leaving another two older daughters with their grandmother, she took Ritah to Kazo, where I got to know them. Ritah's mother struggled hard to send her to school where they paid 10 dollars per term. Despite the poor quality of the school, Ritah performed well and was positioned the first in her class. Of course, as all others, she was sent home regularly for being unable to pay the school fees. So what happened so often was that when the mother raised a dollar or a half, she gave it to the school to let Ritah continue her study. Life went on like that, smoothly but disturbingly. When it was the end of school, Ritah had to take off her shoes and hold them in hands while walking back to our centre, where they are living now, because if the shoe were worn out, they would not be able to buy another pair.

After visiting Ritah's family and her school, my heart was left with completely emptiness. There was just no feeling, let it be Eastern or Western, that could well suit the situation at the time. What I knew was I had to start immediately looking for sponsors for her as well to go to a better school and rescue her family from where it is. I knew she was one of the million reasons why I am here and why I should help them and embrace my life with whatever I have. But I also realised there were already more than thirty children waiting to be sponsored on my list, and she was just one of them, though far worse in some ways. I asked John, who had been working with me, several times without expecting an answer, "what shall I do and what can I do..." He did not answer me straightaway, because we were all in our emotional world where the reality was too painful to see and too hard to bear.

Walking aimlessly beside the pitch in Kazo, I looked up into the sky where dark clouds already started gathering recklessly and said, "We'll do something, John, but let's go first, let's head to the next family..."