Born in south Sudan, Atwon Santa was the youngest of seven children.  Her gray hair hints at her advanced age, which she herself, doesn’t know.  She guesses she’s in her mid 70s. Growing up, money was scarce, especially after the death of her father.  She never stepped inside a classroom, instead her schooling was in the fields where she worked alongside her mother.

When she was 16 or 17, she met her husband at a traditional cultural dance competition.  She continued to work in the garden and make local alcohol, while her husband also farmed.  They had five children together before they separated when he took a co-wife. Meanwhile, war made life in South Sudan unsafe.  They both ended up relocating to a camp for the displaced.  Santa lived alone in a tent as a makeshift home, while her husband took the children and stayed with his new wife – collecting additional food rations and having help to fetch water and firewood which were long distances away.  After just a few months, Santa left, unable to witness her children raised by another woman.

Santa traveled further south, close to Kampala, where she stayed for a few years before moving to the Acholi Quarter.  Like many displaced Acholi, she came to the Quarter to work in the stone quarry.  She spent nearly twelve hard years crushing rocks in the stone quarry in search of a better life and her next meal.  She remarried and had two more children. Five years later, they separated. She struggled to support her family.

Project Have Hope gave her the opportunity to leave behind the drudgery of the quarry and make paper bead jewelry.  Eventually, she was able to start a small business selling charcoal from her home. Two years ago, she traded in charcoal for simsim and groundnuts –
staples in the Acholi diet. 

After a lifetime of hard work, she still rents a simple home in the Acholi Quarter.  She’s managed to save enough money to buy a small plot of land nearby and hopes, one day, to build two rooms – one in which she can live, a second she rents.  As age sneaks up on her, she’s hopeful to find an easier way to support herself.