Lucy, a business woman – Piggery’s project from AJWS
The story of Lucy, a business woman from Paduni parish
Background
Aol Lucy 26 year’s old lady from Paduny Parish lives in Opere Village is the first born in her family. She drops out of school from S.2 when her fathers decided to walk away from home and left her mother with 10 children 6 girls and 4 boys and elope with other women who could not accept her father to continue paying her fees. After dropping out of school, she started struggling on her own doing small, small petty business in one of the trading centre in her village selling small fish, tomatoes and egg plants to allow her meet some basic need to support the family. The difficult struggle made Lucy to decide of getting a man to live with; unfortunately this did not go well her way. The man she elope with could not support her in taking care of the two children they had 4 years old boys and 8 years old girls. Instead she was left to take full responsibility of the kids on her own on a daily basis for them to have some food and basic needs for the family.
Her husband could not offer any little support to help ease her burdens; at times, he often does more harm than good by wasting the family’s earnings obtained from selling crops to support his drinking addiction. By drinking a sizable portion of their income away, he leaves Lucy with insufficient funds for purchasing items like, food, medicine, and other necessities needed for the family
He is a man who does not do any think to support his family including farming. Each day he lives home early and come back very late when families are a sleep.
The Project
Lucy’s turning point came when she got a call from one of the role model man of her Village in Awach, the role model man then went visited Lucy`s home told her about GWED-G- program of working with child mother. She became exited and rolls out for the program immediately. It’s from here that she benefited from a pair of pig a male and female raised well and later sold them got some good income pays her two kids to school and change business from rearing pigs to selling children’s shoes because of an outbreak of the pig diseases in her area. But never the less her business is doing well; she does both retail and whole sells. I can make 30.000 to 50.000 per day and some time more. The business helped her take care of her children`s school fees and some other basic needs for the families
The Results
At the beginning Patricia got one pair of pig a male and a female, fortunately her pig delivered seven piglets (7) this brought smile on her face and for her mother too. She sold 4 piglets, each piglet was100, 000 and in total she got 400,000. Patricia was able to pay her school on time and now she is in school studying without any challenges. The school accepted her back after listening to her story, Patricia rush back home told her mother the good news. I and my mother sold the remaining pair of the piglet at two hundred thousand Ugandan shillings (200,000) to help buy scholastic materials, transport and part of pocket money. Patricia organizes herself paid school fees and went back to school.
Way forward
Despite her numerous hardships, Lucy remains resilient although her husband is unrelenting and extremely troublesome, Lucy’s remarkably strongwill continues to foster her motivation. And she claims that she now simply focuses on her children and being happy, while doing her best to ignore her husband’s brutish behavior. Now that Lucy is enrolled into GWED-G’s livelihood program, the organization plans to provide her with continuous counseling support to aid her in managing her own life and with her perseverance, Lucy remains optimistic about what the future will offer for her and her family.
This Success Story was written by Franny Achoko, Project Officer for AJWS project working with GWED-G. 31.01.2023. © GWED-G.