Last weekend we travelled the very bumpy road 3 hours north to Atiak where the new St.  Monica’s is being built and most of our Tree of Wisdom children are.

St. Monica’s in Atiak is coming along very nicely.  There are 30 students enrolled in tailoring classes and they are ready to learn most anything.  2 classrooms are full of sewing machines, there is another multipurpose classroom, living quarters, latrines and a kitchen.  The large hall is built up to the roof.  It will be a beautiful building when complete.  The plan is to have a restaurant and start catering classes soon, as they are located on the main route between Northern Uganda and Sudan.  There is a new full time employee there named Doreen.  She welcomed us with open arms in true Ugandan fashion.  She lives there, oversees the school, the grounds and the construction.  She is affectionately referred to as “The Mayor”.  Her presence has really been instrumental in the ongoing progress of the project.

Medically, Atiak is an extremely underserved area.  About 9 months ago, they established a Saturday clinic at St. Monica’s staffed by the people from Gulu.  What an eye-opening experience to see the need.  On Friday night we were sitting out on the front porch and saw people arriving at about 9:30 PM.   When we asked what they were doing they said they had walked from a place about 40 kilometers away and wanted to be sure they could be seen the next day in the clinic.  The need is overwhelming.  They only have the capacity to see about 120 patients in a day so they hand out numbers and if you don’t get a number you go home.  They have had over 300 people show up some days.  We found out later that the few doctors they had were on strike at that time.

We worked in the clinic on Saturday morning before the Tree of Wisdom event.  I saw one little 5 year old girl whose face was all swollen and she was obviously suffering from malnutrition.  When I told the mother she needed more food, especially protein, she just looked at me with a sad and hopeless smile.  I asked if there were any feeding programs available in the village and was told there were not.  The NGO’s haven’t made it to Atiak yet.  There are so few resources and so much need.  We gave them some medicine and packaged up some food for them, but it’s only a temporary solution for them.  As doctors we are trained to try to fix things.  It’s heartbreaking to be faced with basic problems that have no apparent solution—at least for now.  The rains have started, so we’ll pray for a successful growing season for these very needy people.

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