my host family started out very poor. My father has over 20 children, though I don't know how many wives he has. In Uganda the wives each keep separate homes. He married my host mother when she got out of school, and they ran an inn and made a small profit. But he spent the money on women and bars, so my mother began stealing money from him. Soon enough, the inn went bankrupt, and they would have been turned out had she not kept that small savings.

She heard about a program to help farmers. Farmers make up about 80% of the Ugandan population, and my family had no other way to make money. The government offered a course with Heifer International which taught how to keep a dairy farm. My host mother paid the registration fee to learn how to care for cows and sell the milk, and at the end of the course she even received a cow of her own, which she named Hope. Soon, with the money she earned from selling Hope's milk, she bought another cow, named Peace.

when my host father saw how successful my host mother was, he bought a cow of his own, named Joy. However, Joy had several miscarriages and my father was so furious that he was about to sell her when my mother called in a vet. That year, Joy gave birth to a calf, Happy. After that, my father loved the cows. My host mother continues to run the milk business, selling to neighbors in the village. My father claims the credit.