One thing was that we could see that the children were not getting enough of the right kind of food, but there were no scales to weigh them with, and nobody had been keeping any records of their growth. So in that sense we started from scratch. The most obvious one was poverty. With the virus hitting the young adult population the hardest, the communities were losing their best labour force and income earners. Farms were being neglected, and the food supply was running low.
Every week brings a funeral.
Entire families have been wiped out. More often, both the father and the mother pass away, within months of each other, and the children are left to stay with their grandparents, or to care for themselves. On the edge of Kakunyu village an old man is looking after his four grandchildren. He is too old to farm, so the children are working the small vegetable garden behind the house. I raised my children thinking that they would give me a secure old age, and care for me the way I cared for them.