The Wealth of a Cow
Uganda – February 2006.
We had just completed a day of farm visits covering many miles on the best roads the modern-day Uganda has to offer. Despite the comfort of our transport, red dirt tracks loose their charm after about 20 minutes!
As we headed back to base our host, Margaret Makuru (Deputy Head HPI Uganda – Project Partners of Bóthar), suggested making an impromptu visit to a couple living locally who owned a Bóthar cow. This family received their cow in December 1995 from one of the last airlifts of Irish heifers sent to Uganda before the current ban, due to BSE, came into place in June 1996.
Erieza and Edith Sebakaki were not expecting visitors on this hot and sunny February evening as they sat in the shade in front of their home with their family of twelve dependants, mostly grandchildren and orphans, scattered around. After introductions we were taken to see the cow. She stood patiently as she was milked by a barefoot teenage boy.
We chatted to Erieza and Edith and took a few photographs as we waited for the milking to be finished. The cow was then untied and given her last feed of chopped fodder for the day and the frothy bucket of milk was taken inside.
On that evening in that back yard we discovered a family that, despite hardships arising from AIDS deaths and lack of formal education, radiated with contentment and an enthusiasm for life.
Every face and every pair of little eyes, from the old couple themselves to the youngest child, shone with satisfaction. The wealth of their cow, its produce and its offspring, allowed this family to survive and flourish at a time when otherwise they may well have been destroyed by poverty and despair. The gift of an Irish in-calf heifer made that difference. Of that, there is no doubt.
Pat McCarrick – Fundraising Projects Director (from a recent staff trip to Uganda)
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