Every new day carries the chance to do something good

Butiru, 27 October 2026

Dear friends,

Crises everywhere, or so it seems right now. The Ugandan currency is in free fall too, and prices are climbing. It affects almost everything, from soap to cement. Within two months the price of diesel has gone up from 4,500 to 7,000 Ugandan shillings. On top of that, El Niño has left crops withered in the fields. And you have similar problems: inflation, the threat of war and left–right battles in politics. Even out here we hear about the terrible unrest in your neighbour, France.

But let's not lose heart, and perhaps not look too closely at every one of these bad news stories. Every new day carries the chance to do something good, even without a political office or a fat wallet. We may not be able to change world events directly. But every day we can spread love and warmth around us and find peace and joy where we are.

Thanks to the Stiftung Kinder in Afrika, we were able to build a small vocational school with several trades next to Munamba Primary School (primary school in Uganda goes up to year 7, roughly the level of the German Hauptschulabschluss). Among them is even a driving school, the first in our region. More than half of the 69 schools we have now been able to build in the wider area around Butiru were funded by “Kinder in Afrika”, and work on another school in Makenya has just begun. We are very grateful!

As most of you know, our work covers the south-west of the Mount Elgon massif. The last census counted a good 12 million people here, almost half of them of primary school age or younger.

At 62, I really am one of the old ones in Uganda, but I still have a wonderful life. Thanks to our two daughters, Hannah and Christine, who have both already taken over large parts of the work in and around Butiru, I am usually only in the office until 2 pm and then go out to my garden or the neighbours' fields. In my old age, the farming genes of past generations of Schulzes seem to be coming through.

Ugandan farming is not only struggling with the effects of climate change, which often means unpredictable rainy and dry seasons. A lot of damage is also done by too much artificial fertiliser and by pesticides, which sit on the shelves of almost every shop next to the sugar and soap and are often already banned in Europe. Here they are still sold, and sometimes sprayed shortly before the harvest.

Just as conventional medicine is only slowly changing and no longer prescribes three antibiotics at once for a cold, farming too is only slowly turning away from European-style fertilising and pest control. We have had many a discussion with our two university-trained agriculture teachers about alternative fertilisers and old, traditional pest control (marigolds planted between tomatoes, for example, are very effective against nematodes in the soil, which would otherwise rot whole tomato gardens without pesticides).

We are also still digging contour trenches along the hillsides, now in eight villages, and replanting them with tree seedlings, to stop soil erosion and to bring drying springs back to life. The trenches catch the often very heavy rain and, over time, raise the groundwater level again.

You have to be patient, and think in years rather than from one harvest to the next.

With more than 1,700 students now at our Butiru secondary school, both the classrooms and the dormitories had become very crowded. Thanks to the Bingo Umweltstiftung, the Müller family and the Stiftung Second Aid, we were able to expand over the past months. The photo shows the new upper-school block. The surrounding secondary schools only go up to O-level (roughly the German Mittlere Reife), so our upper school is likely to keep growing in the years ahead.

A great blessing in Butiru and in the outlying projects are orphans the Freundeskreis once supported, such as our IT teacher Pamela and Juliet, who heads the kindergarten and pre-school. Angela is in charge of the finances at Butiru primary school. Felix works as a dentist in his clinic, which is attached to the hospital and wonderfully equipped thanks to Praxis Hanf. And Ben is one of the nurses at the hospital.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all sponsors with all our hearts for their support over so many years!

The village work is moving forward too. We have now helped start microfinance groups for women in 262 villages, and this chance to run small businesses is changing village life for the better. In many clans, girls used to be valued by how much bride price they would bring, and wives by how many children they had. Now that girls more and more often get to go to school and afterwards, even without a permanent job, get the chance to start small businesses, the old attitudes are beginning to change.

These 262 villages are divided into eleven zones, led by committees in which orphans we once supported often work too.

Besides microfinance, these zones continue to support widows and grandmothers by building small weatherproof houses. Thanks to Mr Wywiol's wonderful “MoreMilk” campaign, we can keep giving dairy cows to new groups, and the protection of polluted water sources is moving forward too. Over the last few months Bingo Niedersachsen has helped us protect 40 springs, which has shrunk our waiting list back to a healthy size. Thanks to the protected springs, we have had none of the dangerous cholera outbreaks in recent years, and other stomach and gut infections, including worms, have dropped markedly too.

Without you, none of this work here in eastern Uganda would ever have been possible. We are grateful with all our hearts!