Elisabeth is still hanging in there (wrote last about her
here) but she is having a lot of pain, getting quite a bit weaker and is struggling more. Life is hard here no matter who you are but life is really hard when you are 90 years old, have no living family, and advanced cancer. Please be praying for Elisabeth. She told us she is often lonely and hungry and always in pain.
I've been to visit her twice this week. She reports a bit of relief from the pain at night with the meds which is good. We also brought her a radio to fill her empty hours. Brought food and fire wood too, to try to make a little less work for her but she still needs her water to come from the borehole that is a ways away from her house and she still has to do her own cooking.
A few interesting things we learned while sitting with Elisabeth: She really wanted to be in school but her father took her out to care for the family cows. It was a catholic school because when she was school age Uganda was still a British Commonwealth so all the schools were run by the English Church. She thinks that she remembers that her first born child was about 10 years old when Idi
Amin was in power (He is the crazy dictator of the 1970's who is known for insane human rights abuses and the death of upwards of 500,000 people.) One of her children died of illness but the rest were killed in the insurgency of the
LRA in the 1980's. I'm in awe of the things she lived through and survived to tell us about. I can not even fathom....
These pictures don't show it well but she is a really joyful lady, laughing and smiling and can't stop telling us how much she appreciates all we are doing for her.
It was a busy few days in Lormoruchbae. Harvesting maize, sorghum, green gram, and sunflower. I've yet to find a specific job for women in Karamoja that I wouldn't describe as back-breaking labor. Even sunflowers. Though beautiful to look at, they are a lot of work for very little gain. After months of planting and weeding comes the hard work of keeping the birds from stealing all of your produce. We hike out to the field and try to find the flowers that are ready. There seems to be a very limited number of days between mature and too late. Mary told me it is because this year was so dry, the flowers are drying too fast. We cut down the stalk, most of which are over six feet tall, remove the heads and carry them back. Then they have to be laid out in the sun to dry. Then threshed, some of which you can do by hitting the heads with a stick but some of the seeds need to be removed by hand. Most of the seeds are just consumed at this stage. But who is satisfied after a meal of sunflower seeds with the shell still on?! So, then it has to be pounded to make paste and rinsed to remove as much of the hull as possible then that watery, oily, gritty paste is used as oil in foods. Yummy! 
We also harvested green gram. Which left my hands bloody the plants are so spiky. They explained this was also because it was so dry this year. Green gram is a little like lentils and a really good protein source in their diet. But also very hard to harvest. This plant has an interesting method of seed dispersal. Though not nearly as interesting if you are trying to contain the seeds. The little seed pods are a bit twisted and as they dry they become practically spring loaded. So when you attempt to pluck them off the plant if you don't have your hand wrapped around them the tiny beans go flying off the plant and there is no getting them back. 
