The original clinic and Midwife Joyce Bbosa
The community of Lukuli-Nanganda relied on the medical skills of Midwife Joyce Bbosa throughout the 1990s. The Lukuli Road from the city to the lake was a dirt road and although more secure than during the 1980s was not a major route for traffic. The population was closely linked through the Local Council, chosen each five years by non-secret community elections by lining up behind their choice. Religious choices were the Lukuli mosque, St Denis Catholic church at Konge and St Stephen's Church of Uganda. The Lukuli Parish council and St Stephen's church formed a small clinic in two rooms in a building shared with the vestry - that was where Joyce worked from, serving the many patients seeking treatment for fevers and the women wanting to deliver their baby with a good midwife
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Reception, waiting room & dispensary
Joyce's clinic and our first 5 years
Vaccine fridge and all our instruments

In the late 1990s a group of friends that met at Silent Corner bar at Nanganda could see that Joyce and the clinic needed help - the water to the standpipe had stopped, the roof leaked, there was no electrical supply and the two rooms were not secure. The St Stephen's church could only provide a very small monthly budget to buy drugs and the consumables necessary for safe deliveries. Joyce herself was somehow managing on a Shs 50,000 salary.

The six long-term residents of Lukuli, plus two Britons who moved to the village in 1996, formed the committee to support Joyce and the clinic (then called St Stephen's Clinic). Helping Joyce meant explaining her needs to the church committee, asking the larger St Francis hospital at Nsambya to hold outreach visits for immunisation at the clinic, and some occasional donations of furniture or materials to rebuild the latrine and patch the roof. By 2000, the church committee had largely let the clinic go and locked Joyce and patients out - leaving women delivering on the grass outside. The committee therefore approached the church and in April, the Shs 70,000 that the church expected to receive as revenue from the clinic was replaced with the church being paid that by the committee as we took on the management role. With a new name, Hope Clinic Lukuli, the committee provided the support that Joyce needed and that the clinic needed to safely care for the needs of the community - our neighbours.